B (3:15)

Let's start off by talking about you as a mom. I'm a mom and this story really kind of gave me goosebumps because, you know, I have kids who are 20s and your kids are younger, but a 19 year old girl full of promise at home. She's in between semesters at school. Jesse, and tell me about you as a mom when you approach this story. I mean, obviously we have to try to be distant in a way, but it's very hard, isn't it?

C (3:42)

Right? It is, it is hard to compartmentalize. But we, we have to as journalists. But you're, you're absolutely right going into this story, you, you feel for the family and you obviously never want and want to envision being in a position like that. But Jesse was this young woman doing all the right things. She had such a promising future. Like you mentioned, she was a college student and trying to stay busy teaching students piano, giving piano lessons and joining the local theater group.

B (4:12)

And as a mom, you know, when you think about her mother finding her in her bedroom, dead, I mean, and the 911 call that we heard, Stephanie, it's awful.

C (4:23)

It's absolutely awful and heartbreaking. You hear Jesse's mother in that 911 call, you hear her pain, you hear her desperation and just her trying to help her daughter, but also knowing that she's gone. She's saying that she's gone. And while we were there visiting Hartford, we went to the house. Jesse's family doesn't live there anymore, but the family that does live there now was gracious enough to let us see the room. And it was, it, it gives you chills because this is where her mother found her. This is where she lost her baby girl, their only child. It is absolutely heartbreaking. It's very difficult to listen to, but you just, you can feel her pain, especially being a parent. It's, it's never anything that you want to envision or, or, or, or wish on anybody.

B (5:19)

Yeah. Unfathomable.

C (5:21)

It's gut wrenching. And, and as a mom, you have to say this, this is horrific. Obviously you don't want to, you know, go through anything like this, but it is our job to, to share this story. They, Jesse's parents, they want to keep her memory alive. And they, they have done so much to do that. And that's why we're there. We're. We're there to tell that story and.

B (5:42)

To highlight that, and we're gonna talk more about what they did after the fact later. But let's just talk about the community. Okay. Hartford, Wisconsin. I had never heard of it before. Small town America, the Midwest. What did you find when you got there in terms the reaction to such a tragic story?

C (6:00)

Yeah, Hartford, Wisconsin, lovely town. Like you said, small town. We got a chance to visit a lot of the spaces that Jesse would often visit from her theater group. She had been in the production of Fiddler on the Roof. We got to visit the theater and interview folks there. And also a coffee shop that she would frequent often after school. She would go there with friends. She would play the piano. And you really, really got a sense that this is a tight knit community. Everybody knows each other. They, they know what happened to Jesse Blodgett. Everybody was shaken when they learned of this, and they're also trying to keep Jesse's memory alive.

B (6:38)

One of the things that was interesting about the case when we, you know, portrayed it on television was that it was unique in how police actually solved the case. Talk to us a little bit about the, the unique ways that police actually began to sort of put this together.

C (6:50)

Yes. So days before Jesse's murder, there had been an attack in a park nearby, just a few miles away. This young woman named Melissa was in the park walking her dog. She noticed a vehicle had been parked there for, for quite some time. She didn't think anything of it. Like you said, this was, this was a town, this was an area. Even surrounding neighborhoods there, they weren't known for crime. So Melissa's walking her dog through the park. She's coming back to her car, and she notices the same vehicle that had been parked there when she first arrived. She looks and notices there's a young man sitting in the driver's seat. And she, she explained to us that he looked at her and then kind of hid back in the car. She starts walking toward her car, still not panicked. She still thinks nothing of it. She thinks nothing of it. She goes, she continues to walk to her car and something kind of tells her, turn around. She feels a presence. And there he was. There was this young man right behind her, holding a knife. This attack happened days before Jesse's murder.

B (7:50)

And it would prove to be significant too. The police began to kind of look at this now when they heard from Melissa about what had happened. Tell us a little bit about this because there's this van. Police began questioning a guy by the name of Dan Bartelt. Tell us how he entered the picture.

C (8:05)

Right, so Melissa's at the park and she is now fighting off this young man. Doesn't know who he is. He's got a knife. She is fighting for her life. Melissa at this point, has grabbed the knife blade. She's holding that.

B (8:21)

That's impressive.

C (8:22)

Absolutely impressive. At this point, this young man asks her, can I just go? He's given up. He's. He's figured, okay, this woman is not gonna, she's not going down. She's fighting for her life. He turns around and he leaves. She grabs the knife, she. She runs to her car, tosses it in her car and takes off. She's dating a guy at the time. She runs to his parents house. That's where they call police. And that's when police get involved in this and start asking her what happened. And initially police didn't believe her, which is they really thought she was kind of making it up. They couldn't believe that such a violent attack would have taken place and that.

B (9:00)

She was able to, you know, overpower the guy and grab the knife and all of that. But ultimately they do start looking. They look, they look at this vehicle and they are able to track it down. They're able to figure out who owns this vehicle. And that leads them to Dan Bartel.

C (9:14)

So a few weeks before Melissa's attack, a police officer, officer notices this vehicle parked there at the park, makes a note of the license plate and moves on. Now when he hears that this young woman, Melissa, has been attacked in that.

B (9:29)

Same park, he starts to put those two together.

C (9:31)

And she's now identified or has given a description of the vehicle that was there. They put two and two together and run the plate, learn that or figure out who that car belongs to and pinpoint Dan Bartel.

B (9:46)

So they start talking to him about this attack. But then he hits on something that leads police to connect him to Jesse's.

C (9:54)

Murder at the time when they called him to say, we need you to come to the police station to ask you a few questions about Melissa's attack. He was with Jesse's family mourning her at the, at the family, at the vigil, which was being held at Jesse's home. So Jesse's mom hugs him goodbye. The friends drop him off at the police station. So now he's being questioned by investigators. He basically admits, yeah, I was at the park. I wanted to instill fear. I wanted, I've been feeling a certain way, I've been feeling scared. And I wanted someone else to feel the same way. And then investigators bring up Jesse and he goes on to say how horrible it is. And man, this young, too bad she was sexually assaulted. And investigators, in that moment, smart, quick thinking, make a note of that, speak with the investigator that are looking into Jesse's case and realize no one should have known that.

B (10:46)

Yeah, ding, ding, ding, ding. The bells go off. Well, you know, it's interesting because he was, and you talked about this in the piece on Friday night, that he was amongst the crowd that was there for a vigil. And it's sort of reminiscent of those stories that we do when there's an arsonist, right? And then they show up to see the fire and see what happened afterwards. And police often will find the person in the crowd who actually was responsible. And in this case, now they're looking at Dan Bartelt. So how does he even connect to this? Because again, you're talking about this tight knit community. Jesse was a theater person. A lot of her friends were theater people. And he knew Jesse. They had actually dated in high school. So he was sort of in her orbit.

C (11:25)

Absolutely in her orbit. It's, it's so tragic just to think that he knew her family so well. He knew Jesse so well, was such close friends with, with her and everybody else. And like we've discussed this when you're part of a theater group. I'm a theater kid. I, I, you're, you're tight. You have, you've got a group that is focused on the arts. You've got, you all share this.

B (11:48)

There's a camaraderie there, there's a camaraderie.

C (11:51)

So here we see Jesse and Dan. They dated in high school briefly, but they remained friends and they, they wrote music together, they sang together, they had this, this shared talent. And so many of Jesse's friends shared with us that they, they would look at the two of them and say, gosh, you're so lucky to have each other even as friends now. You're so lucky to be able to share in all that you do together, together. And it's it's just really tragic that clearly he was seeing her in a different way.

B (12:19)

Yeah. Yeah. Which is so, so disturbing. Well, there's more there. So you stay here. Don't go anywhere. Which you won't. And don't you go anywhere. Because when we come back, we're gonna share some bonus information, bonus details about this story that you didn't hear about before, more information about Jesse and d relationship, and also details from Dan's girlfriend. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

D (12:48)

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B (14:22)

Welcome back to 2020 the After Show. I'm sitting here with Stephanie Ramos talking about Our most recent 2020 episode, which was called Her Last Note, centers around 19 year old Jessie Blodgett. And by the way, that title sort of touches on the fact that she was an aspiring musician. She actually taught music lessons to children. And this is something that was just really, really, I think, heartbreaking in this story to talk about this young woman who was full of life, a performer who had been on stage, she starred in Fiddler on the Roof we just talked about had a couple of performances in that recently under her belt. And so when police are trying to solve her murder, they're asking around, as they often will do. You know, if it's. If it's a married couple, they'll go to the spouse. If it's somebody like this, they'll go to their friends.

C (15:07)

Oh, absolutely. I mean, they were. Investigators were fully aware of who they needed to talk to and that this was that. That Jesse's circle of friends were performers, they were actors, they were musicians. As we mentioned earlier, Dan slipped while being investigated about a completely separate attack. We interviewed one of Jesse's friends who said that the two were just really close, really, really talented. But clearly this young man was troubled. He had this act going, but deep down inside, he was a troubled, very troubled young man that was looking into really dark things online.

B (15:41)

In fact, you mentioned one of the things that didn't make it into our piece, but you talked about. And we talked about this, too, the two of us. A bonus detail was that one of his friends talked about a book that he was writing that had some eerie similarities to what actually happened to Jesse.

C (15:57)

This who we interviewed. One of Jesse's friends said that the two main characters in this book were named Jessica and Dee. And she says that Jessica's parents were both pediatricians. Jessica in the book and Jesse's actual parents were both chiropractors. So there were a lot of eerie similarities also, like creating a story line.

B (16:20)

That sort of fit what his dark imagination was all about.

C (16:24)

It's. It was this kind of sick love connection in the book, but also he was making that a reality.

B (16:31)

Well, let's talk about the investigation, because when you talk to investigators and you went deep inside their investigation and you. You said how they stumbled upon really kind of a stroke of luck when they were investigating this case, because oftentimes these detectives will go rummaging through garbage or places that might reveal something, some evidence to them, and that happened when they were actually lucky. A stroke of luck.

C (16:56)

Oh, absolutely. So as D is being interviewed by investigators, they're. They're, of course, they're asking him where he was the day Jesse was murdered. So he says he tells him exactly where he was at the park. Luckily for police, the trash bins at that park had not been dumped out yet.

B (17:13)

Typically, they would have been. They would have been.

C (17:15)

It was scheduled to be cleaned out.

B (17:16)

The.

C (17:16)

The bins had been scheduled to be cleaned out.

A (17:18)

They.

C (17:19)

They hadn't. So when police go and they retrace his Steps. There's one camera there at the park. He was spotted on that surveillance camera. They go back there, they look in every single bin and they find a bin. In that garbage bin, they found a cereal box. And inside that cereal box they found tape, antiseptic wipe that had blood on it and ropes. And all of that was eventually tied to Dan. The cereal box had a UPC code on it. They were able to track that cereal box to the local grocery store. And it was a stroke of luck. Here they are in the park. They're just looking for any type of evidence. The garbage had not been picked up. It had been days after Jesse's murder. They look inside and that's proof of evidence.

B (18:02)

The investigation is always so fascinating to our viewers and in this case, some of our listeners, too, how they put all of this together. So ultimately, Dan Bartelt is arrested. He's charged in Jesse's murder. He facing possible life in prison without parole. This was a big shocker to everybody in this community. One of the things that didn't make it into our episode is that Dan's girlfriend testified for the state, for the prosecution in this case against Dan.

C (18:30)

Dan's girlfriend, Ashley. They had discussed getting married. That's what Ashley shared. And she described them during the trial as best friends. And she shared that Dan had been lying about his job to her. One thing that Ashley also mentioned was that on the day of the murder murder, she got a missed call from him while he was supposedly at work. They got together sometime after 3:00 clock at her house. They hung out, had dinner and watched tv. And she says there was nothing unusual about his behavior. Here you have a young man who's just murdered someone violently that same day.

B (19:03)

And just casually watching TV and hanging out.

C (19:06)

Exactly. She says there was nothing unusual about him. He was his normal self on the day of murder.

B (19:12)

There were a lot of chilling moments in this story, Stephanie. When we come back, we're going to talk about what Jesse's dad said to Dan Bartelt in the courtroom. So stick around.

D (19:27)

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B (20:00)

Welcome back to 20 20, the After Show. I am speaking with my colleague Stephanie Ramos about our most recent episode of 2020 called Her Last Note. The chilling story of 19 year old Jessie Blodgett who was found murdered by a young man who turned out to be a former friend of hers classmate, someone she'd even dated in high school. Dan Bartelt goes to trial, he's eventually convicted first degree intentional homicide and then he gets a sentence of life without parole, the possibility of parole. But one of the things that was so I think also heart wrenching in this story was that it was kind of a tale of two, two mothers. Also Jesse's mom who's lost her daughter, but then also Dan's mother who is, is heartbroken over what had happened with her son. That was, that was hard to watch.

C (20:45)

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean this is a mother and, and the father. They, they thought they had done everything right and they're being told by Dan that he's going off to work. The, the mom was, Dan's mom was packing him lunch every single day.

B (21:02)

So they're deceived by him as well.

C (21:04)

They were also deceived.

B (21:05)

Let's talk about the moment in the courtroom that really surprised a lot of us and that was just really I think riveting in your story. And that was Jesse's father, Buck Blodgett, who spoke at, during court in a victim's impact statement and surprised a lot of people. But also I guess maybe it's a touching thing too when he said to Dan that he was able to forgive him.

C (21:28)

Jesse's dad was able to forgive Dan. And I think for those who know him well, weren't necessarily surprised because that's the type of person he is. And that is the exact feeling I got when I interviewed him in Hartford, Wisconsin. It's this overwhelming just compassion and love and just. He obviously misses his daughter. But he shared with us that he, he needed to move forward. He couldn't be upset with Dan knowing, even knowing that he had welcomed Dan into their home on a regular basis. Such betrayal, such betrayal. What Buck has done in starting this organization in Jesse's name.

B (22:08)

And let's talk about this organization because one of the things that many times these people do that we interview is that they find purpose in something that has just tragically happened. And he has done that. He's founded an organization called Love is Great.

C (22:20)

Love is Greater Than Hate project.

B (22:21)

Yeah. Tell us about this.

C (22:22)

He dedicated this project to ending interpersonal violence and promoting forgiveness. So he's turned his family's pain into purpose and that's what drives him. And Buck has been able to share Jesse's memory and share with the community and really across the country just what this organization means and how to stop this type of violence and also how to spot it, how to identify when a person who might be going down the same path.

B (22:52)

Yeah. For people who didn't see those signs to give you some ideas. Well, that's the one thing I think that always gives us a little bit of hope at the end of these tragic episodes is that oftentimes family members will find a way to keep shining a light on the name of the person saying their name in a positive way. And Jesse Blodgett's name now has a purpose and a good cause and hopefully something that will change lives attached to it going forward. It was just a remarkable story. Stephen, thank you. I'm sure it's going to stick with you for a while.

C (23:19)

Oh, absolutely.

B (23:21)

So thank you. Steph.

C (23:22)

Thank you very much.

B (23:22)

Always great having you here and always great having you all join us too. So thank you so much for being a part of this program and taking this with you. Remember, you can also catch 2020 on Friday nights, 9pm Eastern, all 2020 episodes on ABC. And of course, you can stream episodes like this one on Disney plus and Hulu. Take good care.

D (23:49)

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