# 5 Twisted Cold Cases... That Left Experts Shocked | 248

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 5 Jun 2026, 1 h 04 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO3405829640.mp3

Join me for 5 twisted cold cases, some solved, some unsolved. Episode 248 of the true crime podcast btw. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 unsolved mysteries, true crime, cold cases, unsolved mysteries, missing persons, murder investigation, forensic evidence, serial killers, crime scene analysis, dark history, criminal psychology, real life horror, police investigations, DNA breakthroughs, forensic genealogy, crime documentaries, criminal profiling, mysterious disappearances, solved cases, justice system, law enforcement stories, cold case files, creepy mysteries, true crime storytelling, crime reconstruction, chilling cases, investigative reporting, modern forensics, victim advocacy, unidentified remains, crime scene forensics, cold cases, true crime, true crime solved, 5 true crime cases

## Transcript

[0:00] He found her at a shopping mall in West Los Angeles with a pitch
[0:03] that sounded like a dream. There was a role in the next
[0:06] James Bond film, A6 Figure Payday, and one small
[0:11] instruction about what to wear to the audition.
[0:15] A week later, the young woman who'd taken him up on that
[0:18] seemingly too good to be true offer was gone.
[0:23] The thing that would eventually undo the man behind the offer
[0:26] wasn't a fingerprint or an eyewitness to the worst of it.
[0:30] It was a habit. The same script repeated to one
[0:34] woman after another for years, until the pattern itself became
[0:38] the closest thing to a confession anyone would ever
[0:41] get. Christine Johnson, or Christie
[0:45] to everyone who knew her, grew up in Saugatuck, Michigan, a
[0:49] small town on the Eastern Shore of Lake MI.
[0:52] She was born in February 1981, graduated from the local high
[0:57] school in 1999, and spent a stretch at Western Michigan
[1:01] University before the pull of the film industry got the better
[1:05] of her. By the end of 2000, she'd
[1:08] relocated to the Santa Monica area, where she took classes
[1:11] part time at the Community College and chased work on real
[1:15] productions. She'd already gotten a taste of
[1:18] it, and in that year she landed a job on a Sandra Bullock film,
[1:23] though perhaps not in her ideal role in front of the camera.
[1:27] Some sources say that she worked as a production assistant on the
[1:30] set, while others claim that she was working as a personal
[1:34] assistant. Regardless of what she was
[1:36] doing, precisely, one thing was clear.
[1:39] She was actually making some inroads to finding steady paid
[1:43] work in Hollywood. On the other side of her
[1:47] Hollywood dream was a young woman who was close with her
[1:50] mother and her brother back home, the kind of daughter who
[1:53] called Michigan almost every day just to talk.
[1:56] That last detail mattered because it's the reason anyone
[2:00] noticed so quickly when the call stopped.
[2:03] Christie wasn't someone who'd drop out of contact or run off
[2:06] without a word, so when she went quiet, the people who loved her
[2:10] knew right away that something was wrong.
[2:14] On February 15th, 2003, Christie was at the mall in Century City
[2:19] when a well dressed man approached her.
[2:22] He carried himself like someone important, a producer or a
[2:26] photographer, a man with connections to the Bond
[2:29] franchise. He told her she had exactly the
[2:33] look they'd been searching for, that there was a part in the
[2:36] next Double O Seven film with her name on it.
[2:39] There was just one thing to really sell it At the audition.
[2:44] She should turn up in a white blouse, a black miniskirt, sheer
[2:48] nylons and stiletto heels. None of that was as bizarre as
[2:54] it sounds, and studios did apparently sometimes scout faces
[2:58] in public to a young woman trying to break in a stranger
[3:03] with a smooth line and a big promise wasn't automatically a
[3:06] warning sign. Christy bought a new pair of
[3:09] heels that very day, and she mentioned the audition to her
[3:13] roommate. Then she went off to meet him,
[3:16] and that was the last anyone heard from her.
[3:20] In a small twist of fortune for investigators, Christie would
[3:23] leave the receipt for the heels that she purchased in her room,
[3:27] giving them an exact time to work with.
[3:30] When Christie's mother couldn't reach her over the following
[3:33] days, something unheard of for the two of them, she filed a
[3:37] missing person report on February 18th.
[3:40] Her phone records told an alarming story.
[3:43] Her final call had gone out at 5:34 in the evening on the 15th.
[3:48] The signal had bounced off a cell tower in Studio City, right
[3:52] at the foot of the Hollywood Hills.
[3:54] And after that, there was nothing.
[3:56] For a conscientious young woman who phoned her mother daily,
[4:00] that kind of total silence pointed in one terrible
[4:03] direction. Investigators went to the mall,
[4:07] where her roommate claimed that she met the producer and poured
[4:10] over the security footage. They found her on tape alone,
[4:15] buying clothes, including those heels, the receipt for which was
[4:19] sitting in her room, But the man who'd made the pitch never
[4:23] appeared on camera beside her. Her roommate filled in what the
[4:27] tapes couldn't the Bond audition, the wardrobe
[4:30] instructions, the promise of a fortune.
[4:34] Unfortunately, Christie hadn't informed her roommate where
[4:38] exactly in the mall the two of them had met, though given that
[4:41] it was 2003, security camera coverage was still relatively
[4:46] minimal. There was one more detail that
[4:49] really showed that this wasn't legitimate at all.
[4:53] When detectives looked into it, they learned that no new James
[4:57] Bond film was actually in production.
[5:00] The audition she dressed for and the role she'd been promised had
[5:03] never existed in the 1st place. A press conference went out with
[5:08] her photo and a picture of her car, but the tapes in the
[5:11] timeline only deepened the worry, rather than pointing
[5:14] anywhere useful. Then the case cracked open from
[5:19] a somewhat unexpected direction, and this was definitely
[5:22] disheartening for anyone who had hoped to find her alive.
[5:26] As Christie's photo and a description of her car hit the
[5:29] news, a woman named Susan Murphy came forward with a story that
[5:33] gave detectives chills. She'd been approached at the
[5:37] very same Century City Mall by a man claiming to be a producer,
[5:41] and he told her she could be a Bond girl.
[5:44] He dangled A6 figure sum, and he'd given her the identical
[5:48] shopping list. White shirt, short black skirt,
[5:53] nylons and stilettos. He gave her a place to meet near
[5:57] the corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica boulevards.
[6:02] Murphy had shown up without the outfit on, and when the man
[6:05] realized it, his charm evaporated and he grabbed her.
[6:10] Her boyfriend, who had suspicions about the whole
[6:13] thing, was waiting in the car, and he jumped out and the man
[6:17] bolted. This mysterious man had called
[6:20] himself Victor Thomas, but a search for that name went
[6:24] nowhere. Murphy sat down with a sketch
[6:27] artist and helped build a composite that investigators
[6:30] pushed out to the media. Detectives went back to the
[6:34] mall, footage found a man who matched the drawing, and Murphy
[6:38] confirmed it was him. All the while, on February 24th,
[6:43] Christie's car turned up parked at a hotel and left there by a
[6:48] man, though it offered nothing useful.
[6:52] The break came on February 25th. A parole officer saw the
[6:56] composite sketch on the news and recognized her own parolee.
[7:00] His name was Victor Paleologus, a man in his early 40s with a
[7:05] long and disturbing record. For all the supposed Polish, the
[7:10] producer with bond connections was an invention, completely
[7:13] unmoored from anything he'd actually done in his life.
[7:17] In reality, Paleologist was a failed restaurateur who'd spent
[7:21] years faking the credentials that made his pitch sound
[7:24] legitimate. The year before, court records
[7:27] show, he'd been handed a sentence of eight years and
[7:30] eight months on charges that included passing fictitious
[7:33] checks, burglary and an illicit offense against a woman.
[7:39] Perhaps most disturbingly of all, he'd walked out of prison
[7:42] just 26 days before Christie vanished.
[7:46] Despite the chilling nature of that last particular offense, he
[7:50] lived near the spot where Murphy had been attacked, and both
[7:53] Murphy and her boyfriend picked him out of a photo lineup.
[7:57] And here's the thing that should have made him easy to find.
[8:01] He was already in custody two days after Christy disappeared.
[8:05] Paleologus had been arrested trying to steal a luxury car in
[8:09] Beverly Hills, and he was sitting in the county jail.
[8:14] Detectives interviewed him and he flatly denied knowing
[8:17] anything about Christy Johnson whatsoever.
[8:19] And for a while, that left them stuck.
[8:23] Another tip? Push things forward and slowly
[8:26] tighten the grip around Paleologus.
[8:28] A real estate agent recognized the sketch as a client.
[8:31] He'd shown around in early February, a man who toured
[8:35] roughly 10 houses, all of them clustered near the area where
[8:39] Christie's phone had last pinged and the client had made one
[8:43] request the agent never forgot. He'd wanted to stand inside a
[8:47] bedroom and have the agent listen from elsewhere in the
[8:50] house to find out whether shouting could be heard through
[8:52] the walls. He'd framed it as a question
[8:55] about how well the place was insulated for sound, claiming
[8:59] that he was serious about wanting privacy.
[9:02] The real estate agent found it incredibly odd, but of course,
[9:06] being odd in and of itself wasn't enough to trigger him to
[9:10] do anything more. Detectives searched all 10
[9:13] properties and found nothing that connected any of them to
[9:17] Christie. Then, on March 3rd, a group of
[9:20] hikers in the Hollywood Hills came across the body of a young
[9:23] woman in a ravine. She was identified by a hibiscus
[9:27] tattoo on her lower back, and her hands and her ankles had
[9:31] been bound. The coroner estimated she'd been
[9:34] there for roughly 16 days, which placed her passing right around
[9:38] the evening of that last phone call.
[9:41] Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate, and the recent
[9:45] rain had accelerated the decomposition substantially.
[9:49] However, despite the elements not playing along, the cause was
[9:54] determined to be strangulation, with evidence of a head injury
[9:58] as well. The decay was advanced enough
[10:01] that investigators couldn't determine whether she'd been
[10:04] subjected to other forms of assault, and there was no
[10:07] evidence tying paleologist to her body.
[10:11] What they had against him at this point was a pattern, and
[10:14] they needed a great deal more of it to make an airtight case.
[10:19] If they attempted to prosecute him on what they had at that
[10:21] moment, there was a very real risk he could be found not
[10:25] guilty given the case needs to be proven beyond a reasonable
[10:29] doubt. If that was the case, then
[10:32] double jeopardy rules would apply and there'd be a serious
[10:35] chance that he would effectively get away with this crime.
[10:40] Detectives had a hunch that there were way more victims out
[10:43] there, and when they went looking for other women, the
[10:45] floodgates opened. Two days after Christie was
[10:48] found, a woman who'd worked at a restaurant in the Century City
[10:51] Mall told police that Paleolagus had approached her in late
[10:55] January. He came at her with the same
[10:58] Bond girl story and the same wardrobe instructions, and that
[11:02] the meeting he'd arranged had turned violent.
[11:06] By the end, investigators say something like 13 women came
[11:10] forward, describing encounters that ran from unsettling to
[11:14] nearly fatal, and the trail stretched back well over a
[11:17] decade. Prosecutors would later lay it
[11:20] out in the sentencing documents as a near continuous crime spree
[11:25] dating to 1989. That year, posing as a record
[11:31] company executive, he'd lured a 21 year old to a hotel room
[11:35] where she said he ambushed her with a rope and choked her.
[11:40] His ultimate goal of that attack wasn't known, because the moment
[11:44] he started choking her, she bit him with tremendous force and
[11:48] made her escape. He was acquitted of the most
[11:51] serious charges and pleaded guilty to false imprisonment.
[11:55] Walking away with probation, the woman warned anyone who'd
[11:59] listened that he'd do it again and that someone would die.
[12:03] But sadly, no one listened. In 1996, he forced his way into
[12:10] the home of a woman he'd briefly dated and came at her with a
[12:13] ligature and she drove him off with pepper spray. 3 weeks
[12:18] later, when authorities moved into arrest, he barricaded
[12:21] himself inside a trailer with a hostage before surrendering.
[12:26] The hostage wasn't harmed, and Paleologus pleaded guilty to
[12:29] burglary and was handed probation again.
[12:34] Now I get why in 1989 a court may have had some difficulty
[12:38] giving him a more serious sentence because thankfully the
[12:42] woman fought back immediately. Proving what his intent actually
[12:46] was in that situation beyond a reasonable doubt would of course
[12:50] been somewhat difficult given her heroic defensive actions.
[12:55] However, this hostage taking in 1996 seems like it should have
[12:59] been the moment the justice system said put a fork in it.
[13:03] We're done here. This was a guy who attempted to
[13:06] strangle yet another woman, and when the cops came to get him,
[13:10] he took a hostage. The fact that he simply got
[13:14] probation for this and was turned out back on the street to
[13:17] continue his reign of terror is absolutely bizarre.
[13:23] In 1998, he approached a woman at a Hollywood bar as a Disney
[13:28] producer, scouting faces for a Bond promotion.
[13:32] He told her to wear a black miniskirt and heels to a closed
[13:35] set, then bound her ankles and tried to strangle her with a
[13:38] necktie. She thankfully got away before
[13:41] he could do the worst of what he had planned, and that one
[13:44] finally stuck, earning him some time in the slammer.
[13:48] One of the most unsettling accounts also came from 1998,
[13:52] from a woman who'd had a recurring role on a Star Trek
[13:55] series. She described being approached
[13:58] at a mall near Beverly Hills by a smooth, well dressed man who
[14:02] introduced himself as a producer and floated the idea of putting
[14:06] her on a Bond poster. He told her to come to a house
[14:10] up in the Hollywood Hills to park across the street and to
[14:14] wait, saying he'd be watching from inside and would let her in
[14:19] when she arrived. He also told her to wear that
[14:22] same general outfit that he always told his potential
[14:26] victims to wear. She didn't trust it, and she
[14:29] turned up without the costume and brought along a friend who
[14:33] worked as a stuntman, just in case.
[14:36] They sat outside the house for about 20 minutes.
[14:39] No one ever came out, and eventually they drove away.
[14:43] She had no way of knowing how close she'd come, or that the
[14:47] same script she just walked out on would be run a few years
[14:50] later on a young woman who didn't get the chance to leave.
[14:54] In the end, he seemed to be rehearsing this sick act for
[14:58] over a decade, with only the names of the women he targeted
[15:02] changing and most of the rest staying the same.
[15:06] Personally, I suspect he did end up using a house in the area
[15:09] when he attacked Christie, but for whatever reason the cops
[15:12] were never able to locate it. Paleolagus was charged with
[15:18] prosecutors signaling they'd seek the death penalty.
[15:22] His trial opened on July 13th, 2006, and the prosecution had a
[15:27] problem and they knew it. There was no forensic evidence,
[15:32] no confession, nothing physical linking him to Christie's death.
[15:37] Had the elements not taken their toll on Christie's body, the
[15:41] case may never have gotten to trial.
[15:44] But that wasn't the case here, and the defense decided to roll
[15:48] the dice. What the prosecution had were
[15:52] the women who had the misfortune of running into this disturbed
[15:55] monster. Over the course of the years,
[15:58] one after another, several of his earlier targets took the
[16:02] stand and described the same man running the same con.
[16:07] There was the producer act, the bond pitch, the costume request,
[16:11] and the rage when the fantasy didn't go his way.
[16:15] The deputy District Attorney who tried the case said later that
[16:18] without those women, there likely would have been no case
[16:22] at all. And based on the evidence, I
[16:24] have to agree. After about two weeks of that
[16:28] testimony, the defense saw where it was heading and the two sides
[16:33] struck a deal. Paleolagus would admit to his
[16:37] crimes and in exchange the prosecution would take the big
[16:41] DP off the table. He pleaded guilty and then
[16:45] almost immediately he tried to take it back, sending the judge
[16:49] an 11 page letter claiming he'd only agreed because he was sleep
[16:54] deprived. The judge wasn't moved, and in
[16:58] September 2006 Paleologus was sentenced to 25 years to life.
[17:04] He kept insisting he was innocent, kept maintaining he'd
[17:07] never posed as anyone or forced himself on anyone.
[17:11] He later tried to appeal on the grounds that his own lawyer had
[17:15] pressured him into the plea, but the courts turned him down for
[17:20] all the noise he made about his innocence.
[17:22] The case against Victor Paleologus had been built almost
[17:26] entirely by the women who'd refused to stay quiet.
[17:30] It was the ones who got away and remembered every detail, who
[17:33] were able to secure justice for Christie.
[17:37] It was also the women who were ignored for years, who were
[17:40] shattered to see this monster end up with probation or a light
[17:44] sentence, who turned up in force.
[17:47] Christy Johnson would have turned 22 the week after she
[17:50] disappeared, and ultimately I have to conclude that the entire
[17:55] system failed her. She chased her dream and thought
[17:59] this meeting was potentially her big break, but little did she
[18:02] know she was walking into the clutches of a predator who kept
[18:06] being turned loose on society. As a bit of a postscript on this
[18:11] case, I have to question whether Paleologus may have been a
[18:14] serial killer. He'd been attempting to do what
[18:17] he did to Christie for over a decade and just kept getting
[18:20] away with it. Even though the women escaped.
[18:24] The women he was known to target weren't on the outskirts of
[18:27] life, they were all women whose absences would be noticed.
[18:32] I can't help but think he may have targeted more vulnerable
[18:35] groups as well, groups that the cops are notorious for not
[18:39] investigating, such as addicts or street level escorts.
[18:45] That said, I have to admit that there's nothing to suggest that
[18:48] these women were part of his victim profile.
[18:52] I just find it difficult to accept that he only succeeded in
[18:55] achieving his sick goal once in the entire decade he was
[18:59] actively hunting for victims anyway.
[19:02] Even if he wasn't a serial killer, he was a convicted
[19:06] serial predator and a ticking time bomb regardless, and it's
[19:10] somewhat shocking to me that he was even out on the streets.
[19:17] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy, with my usual reminder to hit that
[19:19] subscribe button and tap the notification bell.
[19:23] Also, don't forget that you can suggest a true crime case in the
[19:26] comments as well, either something that's solved or
[19:29] unsolved. Somewhere in the Piney woods of
[19:36] southern Mississippi, there's a patch of dirt that two grieving
[19:40] parents once sifted through themselves.
[19:43] They were looking for a bullet the authorities had never gone
[19:45] out to find, and they found it. What that small piece of metal
[19:50] told them turned what was officially a tidy case into one
[19:55] of the most unsettling unsolved mysteries the state has ever
[19:59] produced. Picayune sits in Pearl River
[20:03] County Down near the bottom of Mississippi, and Norman Ladner
[20:07] Junior was born there on the 29th of May 1972.
[20:12] By the summer of 1989 he was 17 and by most accounts he was well
[20:17] liked and popular with his peers.
[20:20] Norman Senior and Charlotte ran a small general store in town,
[20:24] and the family also owned a sprawling piece of land.
[20:28] It was somewhere around 122 acres of pasture and thick
[20:32] forest, and that land was Norman's second home.
[20:36] He fished it and haunted it, and he knew its tree lines and it's
[20:39] low spots, the way you only know ground you've walked since you
[20:43] were small. His parents trusted him out
[20:46] there alone, with one expectation that mattered more
[20:49] than any other. Norman was to be home by 7 and
[20:53] he never broke it. And that simple fact is the
[20:56] first thing that should bother you about what happened next.
[21:00] On the 21st of August 1989, Norman told his father he was
[21:05] going hunting on their plot of land.
[21:07] Nothing about that was unusual, and he picked up his rifle,
[21:11] walked off into the family's acreage like he'd done 100 times
[21:14] before, and the day went on. Then 7:00 came and went, and
[21:20] Norman didn't return home as expected.
[21:23] For a boy who never missed that deadline, that fact would mean
[21:27] everything, and Norm Senior went out looking for his son
[21:31] immediately. He searched the property as the
[21:34] light failed, working through the pasture and into the trees,
[21:38] and after more than an hour of it, he found him.
[21:42] Norman was lying on the ground with a single gunshot wound to
[21:45] the head when his father knelt and touched him.
[21:49] Norm Junior was already cold, which meant he'd fallen hours
[21:52] earlier, not long after he set out.
[21:56] Whatever happened in those woods had happened early in the day,
[22:00] and his body had lain there while the family went about its
[22:03] business unaware. The ladners called for help, and
[22:08] then they waited a very long time, given the severity of what
[22:11] happened. It was somewhere around 10:00
[22:14] that night before the law finally arrived at the property,
[22:17] hours after a father had carried the worst news of his life out
[22:21] of those trees. The law in this case came in the
[22:25] form of Pearl River County Sheriff Ulmer Lawrence Lumpkin.
[22:30] And as a total aside, if you made-up a character by that name
[22:34] for a novel or a screenplay, I feel like audiences would think
[22:38] that it was a little too much. By most descriptions, the
[22:42] sheriff's investigation was thin to the point of being almost
[22:45] theoretical. Lumpkin came to the scene and he
[22:48] looked at the body, then declared it all a big accident.
[22:51] Importantly, he didn't collect any evidence whatsoever from the
[22:55] scene, and most controversially, he didn't even look for the
[22:59] bullet. The county coroner reportedly
[23:02] told Norman's father he was 90% sure it had been an accidental
[23:06] shooting as well. Then, within roughly a day, the
[23:10] finding hardened into something else entirely.
[23:13] The official ruling came back that Ladner did it to himself
[23:17] and the coroner signed off on it.
[23:20] Almost nobody who actually knew Norman believed it, and by every
[23:24] account he was a happy, settled teenager with nothing in his
[23:28] life that pointed towards such an act.
[23:31] There was no note, and the people closest to him couldn't
[23:35] tell a story that made the ruling fit since he had no signs
[23:39] of any internal or external turmoil whatsoever.
[23:43] I will say, of course, to play devil's advocate for a moment,
[23:47] that since this case was never really properly investigated,
[23:51] there may have been more there, but there's no evidence of it.
[23:55] And then there were the physical details that the findings simply
[23:59] didn't account for. The sort of stuff you seem to
[24:03] see happen a lot in these small town cases.
[24:06] By the coroner's account, the fatal wound was a close contact
[24:11] shot that entered at the right temple and passed out the left.
[24:16] But there was also a laceration on the top of Norman's head, a
[24:20] cut more than an inch long sitting up near the crown that
[24:24] couldn't be accounted for at all.
[24:27] When pressed, the sheriff offered an explanation that
[24:30] strained belief suggesting the cut probably came from Norman's
[24:34] head striking a tree root at the scene as he fell.
[24:39] Now here's the thing. If the scene had been properly
[24:42] investigated, there may have been some sort of evidence to
[24:46] suggest this. But as far as I can tell from my
[24:49] research, this was just a weird theory that Lumpkin tossed out
[24:53] that wasn't backed by evidence whatsoever.
[24:57] You would think that if Norm's head struck a tree root so
[25:00] severely and in such a way, there may have been some sort of
[25:04] biological material on the tree root.
[25:07] Instead, we don't even have proof that a tree root existed
[25:10] in that spot where Norm fell, which would clearly cause a
[25:14] major problem with this hypothesis.
[25:17] To me, it sounds like Lumpkin was just shooting from the hip,
[25:21] wanting to shut this case down as fast as possible.
[25:25] Whether that was due to laziness, incompetence, a
[25:28] genuine belief in his position, or something more sinister has
[25:32] been argued about for almost 4 decades now.
[25:36] Norman Senior kept circling back to the same problem with that
[25:39] bizarre hypothesis. The cut sat right at the peak of
[25:43] his son's head, and a boy who'd taken a shot to the temple and
[25:47] dropped straight back had no reason to come down on the
[25:50] crown. And there was the matter of the
[25:52] bullet, the thing that, by any standard should have anchored
[25:56] the entire investigation. According to the family, the
[26:00] weapon was never dusted for fingerprints and no real effort
[26:04] was made to recover the round that had ended their son's life.
[26:08] Picture that for a second. A 17 year old is found shot on
[26:13] his family's property and the investigators don't lift a print
[26:16] off the weapon or dig around for the bullet.
[26:20] Perhaps the most basic question in any shooting, where's the
[26:24] bullet was left for two heartbroken parents to answer on
[26:27] their own. And so answer it they did.
[26:31] Unable to accept the ruling and getting nothing from the people
[26:34] they theoretically trusted to investigate, Norm and Charlotte
[26:38] began working the case themselves.
[26:41] They went back to the spot where their son had been found and
[26:44] sifted through the soil where his head had rested.
[26:48] A couple of inches down in the dirt, they found the bullet.
[26:52] It carried dried blood and a single hair, and to them it
[26:56] looked as though someone had pressed it into the ground.
[27:00] Now you're about to see why the cops should have been the ones
[27:03] to find this bullet, and why chains of custody are an
[27:06] important thing. Then came the detail that's kept
[27:10] this case alive for more than 30 years.
[27:13] The bullet didn't match Norman's weapon.
[27:16] By their account, it was the wrong size, longer than
[27:19] anything. The Chamber of his rifle was
[27:21] bored. To hold a round that doesn't fit
[27:24] the weapon at the scene isn't a small inconsistency by any
[27:27] means, and it raised questions about why the bullet was never
[27:31] found. The Ladners handed the bullet to
[27:34] a state Ballistics expert, and by the time it came back, they'd
[27:38] lost faith in the whole exercise.
[27:41] The expert couldn't even say for certain whether the round had
[27:44] come from Norman's weapon. But there was a complicating
[27:47] factor. The parents became convinced
[27:50] that the bullet handed back to them wasn't the one they'd sent
[27:53] off in the 1st place. Somewhere in the chain of
[27:56] custody, they believed their evidence had been quietly
[27:59] swapped for something less inconvenient.
[28:03] This, of course, is a very serious allegation, and many at
[28:06] the time thought that it was completely off the wall.
[28:10] But as you'll see, there was more.
[28:13] Norman's wallet was eventually found, but it had been cleaned
[28:17] out by one account. It had held around $140, and the
[28:22] cash was gone, along with his identification.
[28:26] Last I checked, theft isn't usually on the menu when someone
[28:30] does something like this to themselves.
[28:34] But then the ladners found the device, and here's where this
[28:37] case turns incredibly unusual. Roughly 300 yards from where
[28:42] Norman had died, there was a crude homemade contraption that
[28:47] looked like a makeshift radio. The family didn't know what to
[28:51] make of it, so a neighbor pointed them towards someone who
[28:54] would. A former narcotics agent took a
[28:57] look and gave them an answer that recast the whole picture
[29:01] and suggested the hunting grounds had been used for
[29:04] something far darker. By his read, it was the kind of
[29:08] low range signaling device drug traffickers used to guide
[29:12] aircraft. A beacon to line up a plane and
[29:16] tell it where to drop a load if there was smuggling equipment
[29:20] tucked into the back of that property.
[29:22] Norman wandered every day weren't as empty as they looked.
[29:26] The emptied wallet starts to read less like a simple robbery
[29:30] than like someone working to muddy what had really happened.
[29:33] A 17 year old who knew that land better than anyone could very
[29:37] easily have walked into the middle of something he was never
[29:40] meant to see. I want to be careful here
[29:43] because this is the point where a case can tip into pure
[29:46] guesswork and speculation. The device was identified, but
[29:51] the smuggling theory was never proven in any court, and state
[29:54] authorities waved it off as unimportant.
[29:58] Still, it sat there alongside everything else, and it's hard
[30:03] to look at the whole pile of bizarre evidence and just call
[30:06] it a simple run of coincidences. If the family had any.
[30:11] Doubt they were poking at something dangerous.
[30:13] A stranger removed it while they were at the coroner's office
[30:17] trying to challenge the ruling, Charlotte was approached by a
[30:21] man she didn't know. He got her alone on.
[30:24] The pretext of having something to say about her son and what he
[30:28] actually delivered was a warning.
[30:30] He told her in so many words to leave the case closed and she
[30:36] was gently reminded that she had other children.
[30:39] She was told that she should think about raising them and let
[30:42] this go because she was never going to find the person
[30:45] responsible anyway. Then he walked off.
[30:49] And she never saw him again, or learned his identity, or even if
[30:54] what he said had any truth whatsoever behind it.
[30:59] The case drew enough. Attention to reach national
[31:01] television the year after Norman died, and despite an appearance
[31:05] on Unsolved Mysteries, still nothing shook loose years later.
[31:11] His missing identification. The same identification that had
[31:15] vanished from his emptied wallet in the Mississippi woods
[31:18] allegedly turned up far away in New York City.
[31:22] How it travelled more than 1000 miles from a patch of dirt in
[31:25] Picayune to the other end of the country, nobody has ever
[31:28] explained. That said, though, it remains
[31:31] unclear if this is just a local rumor that made it online in the
[31:35] decades following his death, or whether this is actual fact.
[31:39] At any rate, I can't find any primary source reporting on it,
[31:43] so I would treat it as improbable or speculative at
[31:46] best. Personally I find this.
[31:49] Element of the case? Doubtful, but it pops up enough
[31:52] that I felt I had to address it at the very least.
[31:57] Norm Senior and. Charlotte spent the rest of
[31:59] their lives pushing against that ruling that Norm Junior did it
[32:02] to himself. The official file, for what it's
[32:05] worth, was closed a long time ago, but the mystery of what
[32:08] happened to Norman Ladner remains.
[32:12] Personally I feel like. There's too much smoke here for
[32:15] there to not be a fire, but ultimately the lack of a proper
[32:20] investigation makes any real firm conclusions impossible.
[32:26] And given Charlotte's. Encounter in the coroner's
[32:28] office and some of the general strangeness surrounding this
[32:31] case. Many have argued that was a
[32:33] feature, not a bug. Nouri, Amaya.
[32:40] Co-owner of a popular Washington DC restaurant was a vibrant
[32:44] presence known for her love of salsa dancing, a passion that
[32:48] earned her the nickname The Salsa Queen.
[32:52] On Halloween night, 2938 year old Nori was in her element.
[32:57] She spent the evening salsa dancing at some of DC's hottest
[33:00] Latin clubs, dressed in a black evening gown and even wearing a
[33:05] festive masquerade mask adorned with Peacock feathers.
[33:09] But just two days later, that lively spirit was extinguished
[33:13] in the most chilling way. Nori's family found her
[33:17] strangled in her own bed in what has become one of the capital's
[33:21] most haunting unsolved crimes. Nori Amaya was.
[33:27] A well known figure in DC's nightlife and culinary scene,
[33:31] she Co owned Coppy's Organic Restaurant, a cozy Italian
[33:35] eatery, with her brother Carlos. Friends and patrons.
[33:40] Described Nori as warm and full of life, the kind of person who
[33:44] would greet customers with a hug and make them feel at home.
[33:48] Outside of work, her greatest passion was salsa dancing.
[33:52] By October 2009, Nori was juggling long hours running the
[33:56] restaurant with her nightly dance outings.
[34:00] October 30. 1st 2009 was a rainy Saturday in DC, but Nori was
[34:06] determined to enjoy the Halloween festivities.
[34:10] She worked an early shift at Copies that day, then shared a
[34:13] bottle of wine with her brother at the restaurant's bar before
[34:16] heading out close to midnight. Dressed for a masquerade and
[34:20] excited to dance, Nori made a circuit of her favorite clubs
[34:24] that night. First, she stopped by a Dupont
[34:27] Circle nightclub and then Roomba Cafe, a spot owned by Gustavo
[34:31] Hwapala, a man she had been dating.
[34:35] According to later accounts, Nori wasn't her usual upbeat
[34:39] self at Roomba Cafe. Behind her mask, she appeared
[34:43] sad and even asked Gustavo to sit with her, but he was busy
[34:47] working the crowded Halloween party.
[34:50] Feeling upset, Nori slipped out without saying goodbye.
[34:54] From there, she took a taxi to BB, a downtown salsa club, where
[34:59] she met up with her regular dance partner, Israel Salamanca.
[35:04] Normally, Nori might dance the night away, but that night she
[35:07] cut the outing short, reportedly leaving after only about 15
[35:11] minutes. It was unusual for Nori to leave
[35:14] the dance floor so early and reportedly she was even seen in
[35:18] tears as she departed the club. Israel escorted.
[35:22] Nori to a taxi and watched her ride away, not realizing he'd be
[35:27] the last friend to see her alive.
[35:31] Around 2:30. AM In the early hours of
[35:33] November 1st, Nori arrived back at her apartment building, a
[35:37] large complex called The Woodner.
[35:40] If you're one of those people who just listens, you may want
[35:43] to check out the security footage now as I'm talking about
[35:46] it. That said, there's.
[35:49] Absolutely nothing earth shattering in this footage, and
[35:53] it's perhaps paradoxically more interesting for the fact that
[35:56] there's nothing unusual about it.
[36:00] Security camera. Footage from the lobby captured
[36:03] her entering the building alone. The video shows Nori pausing to
[36:07] speak briefly with someone at the front desk before checking
[36:10] her mailbox and heading toward the elevators.
[36:14] Because it was Halloween night, the lobby was bustling with
[36:17] costumed partygoers returning home.
[36:20] But Nori appeared to be by herself, and no one obvious was
[36:24] following her. That grainy early clip of Nori
[36:28] stepping into the woodener would be the last known sighting of
[36:31] her. What happened after she?
[36:35] Reached her 11th floor apartment remains a mystery.
[36:39] Notably, Nori's cell phone did not make it home with her the
[36:44] next day. A cab driver found her phone
[36:46] left behind in his taxi and turned it in.
[36:50] As a result, when family and friends tried to contact Nori on
[36:54] Sunday, they got no answer. However, those close to her
[36:58] weren't immediately alarmed. Her brother Carlos assumed she
[37:02] might be sleeping off a hangover from Halloween night.
[37:05] But as Sunday turned into Monday, with still no word from
[37:08] Nori, concern began to set in. By Monday, November. 2nd Nori
[37:16] Amaya had failed to show up for work at the restaurant for two
[37:19] days in a row, an absence that was very out of character.
[37:23] That morning, Carlos Amaya decided to check on his sister
[37:27] in person. He drove to the Woodener and
[37:30] went up to Nori's apartment, but got no response when he knocked.
[37:35] Oddly, he found the door locked, which struck him as strange
[37:38] because Nori often left her door unlocked out of habit, at least
[37:42] during the daytime. Thinking she might simply.
[37:45] Be sleeping inside, Carlos left, only to return later that
[37:50] evening with their younger sister and a building security
[37:53] guard to get access. Around 9:00 PM.
[37:57] On Monday night, the guard unlocked Nori's apartment door
[38:01] and the siblings entered with a sense of dread.
[38:04] The apartment was dark and quiet, and as they crept into
[38:08] the bedroom and switched on a light, a horrific scene
[38:11] confronted them. Nori was lying.
[38:15] Lifeless on her bed, someone had covered her body with her bed
[38:19] sheets or a comforter, almost as if to cloak the crime.
[38:23] It was immediately clear she had been the victim of foul play.
[38:28] Carlos later recalled the jarring moment he realized his
[38:31] sister was dead, crying out as the gravity of the situation
[38:34] flowed over him all at once. The arriving police.
[38:40] And paramedics arrived immediately and confirmed Nori
[38:42] was deceased. The scene was officially
[38:45] declared A slaying and she was found to have been strangled.
[38:50] But perhaps the most. Disturbing discovery was yet to
[38:53] come, something that deeply unsettled even veteran
[38:56] detectives. All 10 of Nori's fingernails had
[39:00] been meticulously cut off. Investigators at the.
[39:05] Scene were shaken by that bizarre detail.
[39:08] The removal of a victim's fingernails is extraordinarily
[39:11] unusual and was clearly done intentionally by the
[39:14] perpetrator. Detectives immediately theorized
[39:18] why Nori had struggled against her attacker.
[39:22] She might have clawed at them and trapped critical DNA
[39:25] evidence under her nails. By cutting off her nails post
[39:29] mortem, the perp was likely trying to eliminate any chance
[39:32] of forensic evidence under her fingertips.
[39:35] It was a chilling sign that this predator was both calculated and
[39:39] cold blooded. DC Metropolitan Police launched
[39:44] an intensive investigation into Nori's slaying, but from the
[39:48] outset, the case presented perplexing challenges At the
[39:52] crime scene. Detectives found minimal
[39:54] physical evidence. There were no obvious signs of
[39:57] forced entry into the apartment and no indication of theft.
[40:02] Nori's wallet, credit cards and other valuables were reportedly
[40:06] untouched. This suggested that robbery was
[40:09] not the motive, and it raised the likelihood that Nori knew
[40:13] the perpetrator and had willingly let them into her
[40:16] home. Indeed, Nori's family firmly
[40:20] believed she would never open her door in the middle of the
[40:23] night to a stranger, especially since she was security conscious
[40:27] living in a big complex. Notably, while Nori was known to
[40:31] leave her door unlocked, as I had previously mentioned,
[40:35] reports imply that this was only something she did during the
[40:38] day. The fact that the door.
[40:42] Was found locked when Carlos first visited.
[40:45] Is also puzzling, with no broken locks or forced doors.
[40:49] The initial profile was that the culprit was likely someone in
[40:52] Nori's circle, or at least someone who didn't raise her
[40:56] suspicions. Investigators did uncover 1
[41:00] crucial piece of evidence from Nori's body.
[41:03] Despite the nail clipping ploy, they managed to retrieve an
[41:07] unknown male DNA profile from the scene.
[41:11] The police haven't publicly disclosed where this DNA was
[41:13] found, but it could have been from touch DNA on her clothing
[41:17] or skin. This genetic clue?
[41:21] Was immediately run through national law enforcement
[41:24] databases, but it didn't match any existing offender profiles
[41:29] with the DNA. Unidentified detectives began
[41:33] collecting voluntary DNA samples from the men in Nori's life.
[41:38] Over the next months, more than 20 individuals who had
[41:41] interacted with Nori were tested and one by one, each one was
[41:46] ruled out. Meanwhile, detectives.
[41:51] Meticulously reviewed the surveillance footage from the
[41:53] Woodner apartment complex on the night of Nori's slaying.
[41:57] Unfortunately, because it was Halloween, the video proved to
[42:01] be more frustrating than fruitful.
[42:04] The lobby tapes showed. A parade of residents and guests
[42:08] in costumes, many wearing masks, wigs or face paint, making it
[42:13] extremely difficult to recognize individuals.
[42:17] Investigators couldn't definitively pick out any
[42:19] suspect trailing Nori in that late night crowd.
[42:23] The surveillance footage essentially hit a dead end due
[42:26] to the Halloween disguises. Police noted that.
[42:31] One personal item was missing from Nori's apartment, but
[42:34] they've kept tight lipped about what that item is.
[42:38] This detail has been deliberately withheld from the
[42:40] public to keep it as knowledge only known to the perpetrator
[42:44] and investigators. If a so-called tipster was to
[42:47] report something related to this item, for instance, it would
[42:51] raise an immediate red flag to intensively investigate that
[42:55] person. Despite extensive.
[42:59] Police work The investigation stalled in the absence of a
[43:02] clear suspect. The baffling nature.
[43:07] Of Noriya Maya's slaying has led to extensive speculation about
[43:10] who could have done it and what the motive might have been.
[43:14] Investigators themselves lean strongly toward the theory that
[43:17] Nori knew the perpetrator. The combination of no forced
[43:21] entry and the apparent comfort the perp had to spend time
[43:25] altering the scene suggests a personal connection, at least
[43:30] according to investigators. Further, there was the fact.
[43:34] That her body was covered in a blanket.
[43:37] Criminologists often note that when a victim's body is covered,
[43:40] it can indicate the perpetrator felt remorse for what they had
[43:43] done. One early focus.
[43:48] Of the investigation was Nori's tumultuous love life.
[43:52] In the months leading up to her death, Nori had been involved
[43:55] with Gustavo Huapala, the Roomba cafe owner.
[44:00] That relationship had its stresses.
[44:02] Nori had even confided to her brother that she didn't see a
[44:05] future with Gustavo. She also complained about the
[44:09] difficulty of finding a good man and feeling lonely despite her
[44:13] vibrant social life. Some wondered if a.
[44:16] Jealous lover, ex partner or even a scorned romantic rival
[44:22] could have been involved. Notably there.
[44:27] Was an odd incident where someone claiming to be Gustavo's
[44:29] wife called Nori at her restaurant shortly before her
[44:32] slaying. But here's the thing, Gustavo
[44:36] wasn't married anymore and his ex-wife denied ever making the
[44:40] call. Detectives eventually dismissed
[44:43] that strange phone call as an unrelated prank and Gustavo
[44:47] himself was cleared. Gustavo's account and others
[44:50] placed him elsewhere during the critical hours and police have
[44:54] stated they do not consider him a suspect.
[44:57] Further, he voluntarily gave ADNA sample and voluntarily
[45:01] submitted to a polygraph and was fully cooperative with the
[45:04] investigation. But I want to come back to.
[45:09] That weird phone call for a moment before we move on.
[45:12] This call seems very odd to me though, and I do have to
[45:16] question if the actual perpetrator may have put someone
[45:18] up to making the call. It suggests to me that there was
[45:22] someone out there who may have wanted to break up Gustavo and
[45:25] Nori, or at least put some significant doubts into Nori's
[45:28] mind. That suggests to me that this
[45:31] unknown caller may offer a substantial clue which should
[45:35] perhaps have been investigated more thoroughly that.
[45:39] Said. It's an active and ongoing
[45:41] investigation, so it's possible that investigators saying it
[45:46] isn't related is actually an investigative tactic in and of
[45:50] itself. With known friends and.
[45:54] Boyfriends ruled out, attention shifted to other possibilities.
[45:58] The Woodener is an enormous, complex home to roughly 2000
[46:03] people and has its own security staff and maintenance crews.
[46:08] An insider with knowledge of the building might have known of
[46:10] Nori or even interacted with her casually.
[46:14] Nori was outgoing. And might have made
[46:16] acquaintances in the elevators or lobby.
[46:20] It's conceivable someone living there developed an unhealthy
[46:23] fixation on her. Such a person could easily
[46:26] follow her to her door without standing out, especially on
[46:30] Halloween night, and might know about her habit of leaving the
[46:34] door unlocked. Online sleuths have speculated
[46:38] about the role of a security guard or other staff since they
[46:41] had access to master keys and would understand the
[46:44] surveillance system. However, no evidence pointing to
[46:49] a specific employee has ever been made public.
[46:52] It remains an open question whether the perp had legitimate
[46:56] access to the building or was an intruder who tailgated in behind
[47:00] someone else that night. And that's another important.
[47:05] Factor to mention here, Since it was Halloween, this would have
[47:08] been the ideal time for anyone to tailgate into the woodener,
[47:12] despite the usual security. There is also the Grim.
[47:17] Possibility of a serial predator who saw an opportunity The
[47:21] Halloween timing being inconvenient for surveillance
[47:25] could have been less than coincidental.
[47:28] Investigators haven't linked Nori's case to any others, but
[47:32] the fact that her fingernails were removed suggests the
[47:35] attacker may have at least been an aspiring serial offender.
[47:40] At this point though. In my view, it's only a matter
[47:43] of time before the perpetrator is caught and there's justice
[47:47] for Nori and her family. For regular viewers.
[47:52] The fact that there's DNA on this cold case and all leads
[47:55] have dried up probably means you know what I'm going to discuss
[47:59] next. Genetic.
[48:01] Genealogy could be the key to finally cracking this case wide
[48:05] open. Traditional forensic DNA testing
[48:08] has already produced an unidentified male DNA profile
[48:11] from the crime scene, which is an extremely valuable lead.
[48:15] While this DNA hasn't matched any entries in law enforcement
[48:19] databases, that doesn't mean the suspect is untraceable.
[48:25] This is where genetic. Genealogy comes in Unlike
[48:28] traditional DNA matching, which looks for exact matches in
[48:32] criminal databases, genetic genealogy uses consumer DNA data
[48:36] to identify potential relatives. By comparing the unknown DNA to
[48:41] thousands of samples submitted by ordinary people researching
[48:44] their family trees, genealogists can build out family lines.
[48:50] If the person responsible has any biological relatives who
[48:53] submitted their DNA to a genealogy site, the net can then
[48:57] close. Using this process, they can
[49:00] eventually narrow the possibilities down to a small
[49:03] number of individuals, often even to just one person.
[49:07] From there, investigators can obtain a sample of the suspect's
[49:10] DNA, often surreptitiously, and confirm the connection prior to
[49:16] making an arrest. It's not clear to me at.
[49:21] Present if Nori's case has been referred out for genetic
[49:23] genealogical testing. Given that her family is so
[49:27] involved in advocating for her, though, I speculate that it's
[49:31] only a matter of time before this is done.
[49:34] I hope that the next time I mentioned Nori's case, it'll be
[49:38] in an update segment talking about how the perpetrator has
[49:41] been brought to justice. Valentine's Day is.
[49:48] Usually a time for love and hope, but in 1978 it delivered
[49:52] something much darker. On that morning.
[49:56] A jogger made a gruesome discovery along a lonely Rd. in
[49:59] otay, CA. The partially burned body of a
[50:03] teenage girl, the. Shocking find.
[50:06] Left authorities with a nameless victim and almost no clues, a
[50:11] mystery that remains unsolved decades later.
[50:16] She was small in. Build around 5 foot 1 and under
[50:19] 90 lbs and wore blue denim overalls with a floral patterned
[50:24] white top and notably she had no shoes or socks on her feet.
[50:28] She was noted to be somewhere in her middle to late teen years,
[50:32] with the identification of her age being potentially hindered
[50:35] by her small stature. The girl had brown hair tied in
[50:39] a ponytail and her right ear was slightly malformed, a
[50:44] distinctive detail that could have helped identify her if
[50:47] someone had reported her missing.
[50:50] The medical examiner. Estimated she had been deceased
[50:52] for about two days before the discovery.
[50:57] Investigators. Noted more disturbing clues.
[51:01] Her body had been set on fire after death, with most of the
[51:05] burns concentrated on her torso, while her face and limbs
[51:09] remained unscathed. In fact, the charring was
[51:12] heaviest around her lower abdomen and her fingertips were
[51:16] burnt. Likely an effort by the
[51:18] perpetrator to destroy evidence or hinder identification they.
[51:23] Also observed the. Girl's left eye was swollen
[51:25] shut, her left cheek was bruised and a front tooth was cracked in
[51:30] half. This indicated she had been
[51:32] beaten, perhaps over a prolonged period.
[51:38] An autopsy. Toxicology screen revealed A
[51:40] lethal amount of the painkiller Demerol in her body.
[51:44] Investigators concluded this overdose was the likely cause of
[51:47] death, firmly establishing the case as a slaying by poisoning.
[51:53] The medical examiner also noted the girl had extensive dental
[51:57] work, including a fairly recent root canal, which indicated she
[52:01] had received good dental care during her life.
[52:05] Investigators. Compared her dental records
[52:07] against missing persons databases but found no match.
[52:12] Given the good state of her dental care, the authorities
[52:15] expected to be able to at least identify the girl quickly, but
[52:19] unfortunately, this wouldn't be the case.
[52:24] The crime received little. Media coverage in 1978.
[52:28] Just a brief mention in a local paper, so it didn't generate
[52:32] many tips from the public. Later efforts to spark
[52:36] recognition, such as releasing an updated facial reconstruction
[52:40] in 2014 and highlighting the case in media, also brought no
[52:45] breakthroughs. Unfortunately, all sources list
[52:49] that no DNA is available in the case and it's unclear where her
[52:53] remains presently are, but I'll get back to that in a moment.
[53:01] A number of theories have. Been proposed In this case, some
[53:05] suggest the perpetrator was someone in the victim's life,
[53:08] possibly a family member or caregiver.
[53:12] If she came from an unstable home, it's conceivable that her
[53:15] own parent or guardian administered the fatal poisoning
[53:19] and then dumped her body, never reporting her missing.
[53:23] This would explain why no one came forward to identify her.
[53:27] The very people who should have sought her were responsible for
[53:30] her death. However, some have suggested the
[53:34] fact that she had good, extensive dental work is
[53:37] contrary to this claim. After all, it does seem unlikely
[53:42] that a family who was treating their daughter in such a cruel
[53:45] way would at the same time be paying for extensive dental
[53:49] treatments. Another possibility.
[53:54] Is that she was a runaway or transient hitchhiker who fell
[53:57] prey to a dangerous individual on the road.
[54:00] In the 1970s, many teens hitchhiked and some
[54:04] unfortunately encountered violent predators.
[54:08] The Otai Jane Doe could have left home voluntarily and then
[54:12] met someone who ultimately administered the lethal dosage.
[54:16] The brutal but hasty nature of the crime, signs of beating, an
[54:20] overdose, and a clumsy attempt to burn.
[54:22] The evidence suggests an impulsive act rather than a well
[54:27] planned act. If she was far from her home
[54:30] town, it would also make it harder to link her to any
[54:33] missing persons report. Another theory.
[54:38] Suggests that she may have fallen into a trafficking ring
[54:42] and been moved as far away from her home state as possible.
[54:46] Under this theory, she was perhaps a runaway who was taken
[54:49] advantage of. This theory explains why she had
[54:52] good dental care, and also why no one came forward to report
[54:56] her missing locally. It's very possible that another
[55:00] parallel case exists somewhere for this missing teenager under
[55:04] her actual name. Like with many cold cases such
[55:07] as this that haven't received much attention at all, it's
[55:11] possible that word of the O Tai Jane Doe simply hasn't reached
[55:15] the right people. Perhaps the next steps?
[55:19] To bringing justice in this case would be to exhume her body, if
[55:23] it exists, and send her remains off to a state-of-the-art
[55:26] forensic laboratory. If adna sample can be obtained,
[55:31] genetic genealogy could locate this teenager's parents.
[55:36] Given the situation, it's possible that locating the
[55:39] parents could solve both her identity and the crime itself.
[55:43] As for now, the OTAI Jane Doe remains one of the numerous
[55:47] unidentified victims of crime for whom justice has been so
[55:51] elusive. In April 2000. 19 A Bush plane
[55:58] droned over the vast subarctic wilderness of Canada's Northwest
[56:02] Territories. Far below, a lone figure and
[56:06] three dogs stood beside a remote campsite on the shore of Rolfe
[56:09] Lake. The pilots passing glimpse of
[56:12] this isolated camp would be the last time anyone saw 63 year old
[56:16] Glenfield alive. Glenn was an experienced
[56:22] outdoorsman, a loner who fully embraced life in the wild.
[56:27] He had moved to the Northwest Territories in 2018, determined
[56:31] to make the Bush his permanent home.
[56:34] In the fall of that year he had a charter plane drop him off at
[56:37] Rolf Lake. This is a remote area, only
[56:40] accessible by plane, about 100 miles northeast of Yellowknife,
[56:44] the only city in this isolated region.
[56:47] He was dropped off along with his three German shepherd dogs
[56:50] and enough provisions to last the winter.
[56:56] He understood the dangers. Decades earlier, Glenn had lost
[57:00] several toes to frostbite during a solo winter expedition.
[57:04] Nonetheless, he remained determined to live off the land.
[57:07] Indeed, he endured the brutal winter of 2018 to 2019.
[57:13] A passing pilot. Spotted Field and his dogs at
[57:16] the lakeside camp in April 2019, confirming he was alive and well
[57:21] as the ice began to thaw. Sometime after that.
[57:26] April 2019 sighting, Glenfield vanished without a trace.
[57:31] He never arrived back in Yellowknife, nor did he make his
[57:34] usual periodic check insurance with acquaintances in town as
[57:37] the summer passed. When Field failed to appear or
[57:41] contact anyone by the fall of 2019, those who knew him grew
[57:45] alarmed. The RCMP were alerted and on
[57:50] October 11th, 2019, police issued a public appeal for any
[57:55] information on Fields whereabouts.
[57:58] A missing person investigation was soon underway in the
[58:01] unforgiving terrain where he was last seen.
[58:06] Searchers eventually. Reached Glenn's campsite later
[58:09] in 2019 only to find it deserted.
[58:13] The camp was neatly packed up with no garbage or personal
[58:16] items left behind. Just a few tree stumps remained
[58:19] as evidence that he had been there.
[58:22] Nothing indicated when he had left or which direction he went.
[58:26] Crucially, Fields Gray canoe was gone, along with all his gear
[58:31] including his tent, axe, rifle and his satellite phone.
[58:37] The three dogs he arrived with were also nowhere to be found,
[58:41] and there was no trace of them either.
[58:45] As mentioned, he. Had carried a satellite phone
[58:48] for emergencies, yet no distress call was ever sent from it.
[58:52] All signs suggested he had set off on his planned journey home,
[58:56] but somewhere along the way something had gone very wrong.
[59:00] Despite extensive search efforts, no clear trace of field
[59:04] was found in the vast wilderness.
[59:07] In the summer of 20. 20 RCMP conducted further aerial
[59:11] searches and urged anyone travelling in the area to watch
[59:15] for any sign of fields, equipment or dogs.
[59:18] On August 24th, 2020, searchers did discover some scattered
[59:23] equipment believed to belong to him near Rolf Lake.
[59:26] However, there was still no sign of Glenn himself, nor of his
[59:30] canoe or the German Shepherds. With no leads to follow, active
[59:35] search operations were called off in late 2020, leaving the
[59:39] mystery unresolved. The leading theory is.
[59:44] That Glenn Field met with a fatal accident during his
[59:47] journey back towards civilization.
[59:50] His brother, Wayne Field, believes Glenn likely capsized
[59:53] his canoe while trying to trek back to Yellowknife with the
[59:55] dogs. A drowning in frigid, windswept
[59:59] waters could have taken his life in an instant, even given his
[1:00:03] expertise. Such a mishap would also explain
[1:00:07] why neither Glenn nor his canoe nor any of the three dogs were
[1:00:11] ever found. Another possibility.
[1:00:15] Is that he succumbed to an injury or exhaustion on land
[1:00:18] before he could find help. He had skis with him to traverse
[1:00:22] spring ice and snow, so it's conceivable he fell through ice
[1:00:26] or was hurt while portaging between lakes alone in the Bush.
[1:00:31] Any serious misfortune could turn deadly without anyone to
[1:00:34] rescue him. There is no evidence of.
[1:00:39] Foul play in this case, and given the remoteness of the
[1:00:42] area, that scenario is highly unlikely.
[1:00:45] However, that hasn't stopped speculation that a human
[1:00:49] predator could have seen this isolated man as a viable target.
[1:00:54] That said, Glenn was fairly heavily armed and also had three
[1:00:58] tough dogs with him, so he wouldn't have been an easy
[1:01:01] target. The presence of his three.
[1:01:04] German Shepherds would have made it difficult for anyone to
[1:01:07] ambush him, given the dogs would have been alerted to any camp
[1:01:11] intruder by scent alone. The authorities also.
[1:01:16] Investigated whether he disappeared intentionally to
[1:01:19] start a new life, Glenn Field was by all accounts a bit of an
[1:01:24] unusual guy, to say the least, so him packing it all up and
[1:01:28] trekking to a new location isn't impossible.
[1:01:31] He's also the sort of person who would go out of contact with
[1:01:34] absolutely everyone in his life for extended periods.
[1:01:38] However, after extensive investigations and following
[1:01:41] some leads in British Columbia and Canada, the authorities
[1:01:45] turned up no trace of him and ruled out the idea.
[1:01:50] In the end, it appears. To me that the simplest
[1:01:52] explanation is the most likely in this scenario, and he very
[1:01:56] likely had an accident and perished.
[1:01:59] Glenn took a big risk by heading out into the wilderness alone,
[1:02:02] and as a very experienced woodsman, he was aware of these
[1:02:05] challenges. We don't know exactly what the
[1:02:08] travel corridor was for Glenn's trip back to Yellowknife, but
[1:02:12] the city is exactly 93 miles from Lake Rolf.
[1:02:18] Let's assume for a moment that the travel corridor width was 30
[1:02:21] miles. Given that there are no trails
[1:02:24] whatsoever in this area, this would mean that the authorities
[1:02:28] would have had to investigate approximately 3000 square miles
[1:02:31] of densely forested terrain for any sign of Glenn.
[1:02:36] Putting the math aside. For a moment, finding any
[1:02:39] concrete evidence of Glenn was a virtually impossible task for
[1:02:43] investigators. This was compounded by the fact
[1:02:46] that no one even knew when he disappeared for certain.
[1:02:50] That said, of course all this ambiguity could be seen to be in
[1:02:53] favor of the non accident related theories as well, but
[1:02:57] Occam's razor definitely applies in this situation.
[1:03:02] That said. The accident theory does leave
[1:03:05] some unanswered questions, like why he never used his satellite
[1:03:08] phone to send a distress call. In my view, this can likely be
[1:03:13] best explained by a sudden accident on the water where
[1:03:16] there would be no opportunity to make any sort of call.
[1:03:22] In April 2000. 22 Three years after he disappeared, a
[1:03:26] Yellowknife court found Glenn to be legally deceased.
[1:03:30] Officially, however, the RCMP still consider the case open.
[1:03:34] Until concrete proof of Glenn's fate is discovered, the vast
[1:03:39] wilderness may forever hold its secrets.
[1:03:42] Field's final resting place could lie at the bottom of a
[1:03:45] lake or somewhere lost in those woods, never to be found.

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