D (2:48)

Hey Sal. Hank, what's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana. Just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.

B (3:11)

Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Okay. This is one of the worst cases I think I've ever had to research. I didn't sleep. It's heavy. Yeah, it is heavy. And it. It really does highlight, I think, some progress, at least in the way we treat the marginalized community that is sex workers. I mean, this. This case, this killer, is often referred to as the streetwalker strangler, the videotape killer. Just kind of like you even can tell based on what they were called in the headlines and how these victims were talked about in the papers. Times have changed a little bit, but I think it's. It's going to be highlighted today quite a bit. Why? I mean, a little bit.

C (4:04)

But we also covered Gilgo.

B (4:05)

I know.

C (4:06)

Which is another one where all. Most of the victims primarily were sex workers. And you see a lot of heads just turning away from it.

B (4:14)

I know. So I know we might. We might have a few marks today. If we miss any, please let us know in the comments. And, like, what you think should have been botched.

C (4:24)

Yeah, we're keeping our tally, but I love hearing the audience's tally. It's always so much more than what we cover.

B (4:29)

So much more. And people are like, you could have given that one for. And I'm like, usually.

C (4:33)

I agree.

B (4:34)

You're right. Right.

C (4:35)

You're right. But.

B (4:36)

Okay, without further ado, let's get into this one.

C (4:38)

Yeah. And if you're watching on YouTube, you're going to see some assets, some images, videos, sometimes maps that will help you kind of visualize the case. And if you're listening, you can find those same pictures videos on our social media that's Clues podcast on Instagram.

B (4:53)

And just a quick warning, this episode does contain some pretty graphic discussions of kidnapping, torture, essay, suicide, and murder. So please, please listen with care. I. We mean it when we say this is a bit of a heavy case this week.

C (5:07)

All right, so this case starts on the morning of May 15, 2001, when a maintenance worker was out mowing grass near Highway 67, close to West Elton, Mississippi. It's an area north of St. Louis that sits kind of along the Mississippi river, when all of a sudden, as he's mowing this grass, he sees something in the distance just laying down in the grass. The Closer he gets, he can start making the outline of a body and it's the decomposed remains of a woman. Now, immediately he calls the police. And while the remains are too decomposed, when the police arrive to identify this victim just by looking at her, the woman does have something on her that helps police make a positive id. Now, one source that I read said that it was this dental plate that she had in her mouth. Another source coming from the St. Louis Dispatch, said that she still had her fingerprints intact. We don't know exactly how the positive ID was made, but regardless, she's able to be identified as 36 year old Teresa Wilson. And aside from her identification, just by looking at her body, the police can tell a few things about the scene. One, foul play was definitely involved. Two, Teresa was killed somewhere else and then her body was dumped in this location. And three, this type of crime was not unusual for this area. And actually it was starting to become much, much more common. Now, after learning the identity of the body, investigators learned a couple more things about Teresa's life leading up to her death. In the spring of 2001, 36 year old Teresa Wilson was living in Baden, a predominantly Black neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri, about 12 miles from where her body was ultimately found. It's a place where about a quarter of the population is living well below the poverty line. And Teresa was described as being somewhat of a latchkey kid. Growing up, her parents left her to her own devices a lot. And typically, you know, latchkey kids can get into trouble, but Teresa really didn't. In her childhood, she always had really good grades. She didn't really mess around with drugs or alcohol. However, she did get pregnant when she was 17 years old. And she was faced with this really tough choice that a lot of teenagers in that position have to make. Does she stay in school or does she drop out and work to support her baby? And ultimately she decided that she was going to drop out. Over the years, Teresa continued living in Baden. She gets a job in downtown St. Louis. But at some point in her 20s, it seems like she really started to struggle. And it's, I mean, doing the research on this, it's kind of hard to read about. But at some point, Teresa began using cocaine and she developed this really devastating addiction to it. And this was happening at the height of what was known as the crack epidemic. And cities like St. Louis were hit especially hard during this time. You're going to hear about that actually a lot in this story. The amount of crack that was like, unfortunately spreading around These communities. Then around 1993, 28 year old Teresa had some issues with law enforcement. She was arrested a few times, once for shoplifting, then for theft, and then for some offenses related to sex work. Teresa was engaged in the sex work industry and she typically found her clients on a famous stretch of Baden's Main Street, Broadway, and it was nicknamed the Stroll. This continued for a couple of years. And then in the winter of 2000, 36 year old Teresa went to rehab. Afterwards, though, it seems like she still continued to struggle. Just a few weeks after she graduated from rehab in 2001, Teresa relapsed and she returned back to sex work. And in early May of that year, she got into a strange man's car and she never made it home after that. It was just a few weeks later that her body was discovered in that tall grass. Theresa's body was found at a time when the police were dealing with a lot of murder cases both in and around St. Louis, but especially in East St. Louis. East St. Louis and St. Louis, for those that aren't familiar with the area, are different cities. They're right next to each other. East St. Louis is just over the border from Missouri, it's in Illinois. And for many years it had the highest murder rate in the country, almost 20 times the national average.

B (9:22)

That's insane.

C (9:22)

It's insane. And we have here that 75% of those murders went unsolved. And wow. I was reading something recently too that said that one of the, the reasons for high crime rates can be unsolved murder rates. Like if you, if you live in an area where the murder rate, where the unsolved murder rate is really high, I mean, think about it, people just feel like they can get away with murder. So it's going to happen a lot more. And so, yeah, unfortunately that was just the reality of the time. Now, between February And May in 2000, the year before Teresa died, four sex workers that were all black women in their 30s were found dead in East St. Louis and they were dumped in a weed covered field near a railroad bridge. Police felt confident back then when they found those bodies, that those four East St. Louis murders were all committed by the same person. But when they found Theresa's body, they did not think it was done by the same person. Her murder, at least to them, felt like it was this isolated case. But after they spoke to the Illinois State Police, they learned about another victim who had died about six weeks before Teresa's body was found. And her case and that case had a lot of similarities. In March of 2001, 33 year old Elisa Greenwade was a sex worker who, like Teresa, also struggled with a cocaine addiction. And also, like Teresa, she worked on the stroll in Baden. And she had recently lost custody of her two children. But unlike Teresa, she did have a safe place to stay. So after some time in jail, Elisa met a reverend named Anuka Monguzi who took in women who were struggling with substance use disorders. And Elisa loved this reverend. She even referred to her as mom. And the reverend really worked with Elisa. She kept counseling her. She was hoping that she would find her way with some time. But Elisa would continue to kind of backslide. She kept using cocaine. She kept doing sex work. One quote that we have from Reverend Mongoose about this is she felt trapped, you know, and she knew that what was happening with her was wrong. It was not good for her. She knew all of this. What she didn't know was how to get out of it. And on the night of March 31, 2001, things took a turn that evening, Elisa called the reverend from a customer's house saying that she was going to spend the night there. And to the reverend's surprise, Elisa actually put the man on the phone, and then she calmly explained that they had just met and she was going to spend the night at his place. After some small talk, Reverend Mongusi let the man know, quote, you got my girl over there. She even said that people would look for Elisa if she didn't come home. And this man told her, quote, you don't have to worry about her tonight because she's with me and she's safe. And those last words, she's safe, would go on to haunt the reverend for the rest of her life. Because nine hours later, on April 1, 2001, Elisa's partially clothed body was found in Washington Park, Illinois, just north of East St. Louis. And she also had been moved there after her death. They determined that the cause of death was strangulation. And the medical examiner also found ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, along with evidence of cocaine and alcohol in her system. Plus, there was something else at the scene.

B (12:41)

And this was a detail that seemed like a pretty big deal to investigators. One that if examined closely, they thought could unlock what kind of car the killer drove. Which brings us to our first clue. A tire track. It was right near Elisa's body. Experts actually determined it was from a Bridgestone Potenza. These were performance tires, oftentimes used for sports cars or amateur racing. So it told them that this killer Might be a car enthusiast. A very specific tire. I know.

C (13:12)

I was gonna say, I imagine it's not super common.

B (13:14)

Not your typical all season tire you get at your Costco.

C (13:17)

Yeah, I've mentioned this in the Maura Murray episode. I know nothing about cars. So maybe in the area, everyone had these tires.

B (13:23)

Yeah, no, these were pretty specific tires. And at the time, Elisa's death seemed like a random one off murder and not related to any other murders in the area. Okay, I think that's a mark. But then six weeks later, Teresa's body was found across the border in Missouri. That's when the neighboring states started comparing notes and realized our second clue, the killer's pattern. Which. Okay, yeah, you know, we do know how difficult it is for these different agencies to talk, and especially when it, you know, crosses state lines. But still, come on, you guys.

C (13:58)

Yeah, different departments, it does. Yeah.

B (14:00)

Yeah, but you also. You had four other women killed and dumped in a field. Like, there's clearly a big issue going on here.

C (14:07)

Something's happening.

B (14:08)

Something's happening. And when these multiple murders happen around the same time and place, obviously police want to know if they're connected. As you all know, the best way to figure this out is through the forensic evidence, the hard evidence, like fingerprints, DNA, ballistics, pointing to the same murder weapon. But when there's none of that, police turn to case linkage analysis, essentially looking at the offender's behaviors, their M.O. as we've learned about in past episodes. Case linkage analysis, though, isn't perfect. According to a study published in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, killers behavior can change over time for many reasons. So it's always difficult to say for certain if two murders are connected without that forensic evidence. But in this case, it was extra complicated. For one, the bodies appeared in two different states. Teresa in Missouri and Elisa in Illinois. Which again, meant that those two departments were going to have to really coordinate and share all of that info that they had to make solving these cases easier or even possible. And at this point, police were still pretty confident that the first four murders in 2000 were not connected to Teresa or Elisa. All of the women did have similar profiles in both sets of murders. Black sex workers in their mid-30s who suffered with substance abuse disorders. But Elisa and Teresa both worked in Bada, Missouri, not East St. Louis, Illinois, like the others, and they were found one at a time, while the other four victims were found in pairs two and two. Three of the other four women were found in garbage bags. Theresa and Elisa were not the four bodies found in 2000 were also discovered near a railroad overpass in East St. Louis called Black Bridge. Also, Teresa and Elisa were both found in roadside ditches. Appeared to have been strangled, like they had a very similar mo so police were confident that they were not connected. They actually thought they're dealing with something even scarier, which is a new second serial killer in the area. And soon they would get even more evidence for that theory.

C (16:22)

Yes, because eight days after Teresa was found on May 23, 2001, police got a call about another homicide. The body of 46 year old Betty James was found in an alley less than five miles from Baden. And sadly, I mean, we looked into this, there's not a lot of information out there on Betty's life. The few things we do know about her was that she was black, she was believed to be a sex worker, and she did have cocaine in her system at the time of her death. And I wish we had more information than just that on her, but that is at least enough for the police to believe that this is connected in some way to the crimes that had been happening. We also know about her, that she was tied up with duct tape and that she was beaten, which was similar, at least in the cops mind. When they see this, they think it's similar to the ligature marks that they saw on Aleeza's wrists.

B (17:12)

Something else noted on Betty's body though was a tire track. And you guys are like a tire track on her body? Yeah, you guys. Her leg had been run over from her ankle to the middle of her calf. Which brings us to our third clue. Another tire track. Investigators thought that maybe the killer, after dumping Betty's body, had accidentally ran her over. And police immediately wondered, is this the same vehicle from Elisa's crime scene? We have the Potenza tire track. However, when they compared the tire print from Betty's leg, they determined that it came from a Goodrich Advantage tire, not a Bridgestone Potenza. Which doesn't immediately rule out that it is the same person. It could mean that they drove a different vehicle or changed tires, but it was going to take a lot more to identify a suspect. But at this point, police do believe that the person who killed Elisa Greenwaid also killed Teresa Wilson and Betty James.

C (18:13)

I know in my mind too, I'm like, it's really sad to think about, but could just someone else have hit her and not realize?

B (18:20)

Like, could it just have been a.

C (18:21)

Tire from a totally different car?

B (18:23)

I know it's hard, but like, that's like Literally all they really knew at this point.

C (18:28)

Right.

B (18:29)

Kind of grasping at straws. And this meant that the killer was still out there, potentially about to strike again before they could find them. This episode is brought to you by Symbiotica. There are so, so, so many supplements on the market, so it's hard to know which ones are clean, trustworthy and actually effective. And that is where Symbiotica comes in. They're changing the game with clean science backed supplements. It's wellness in its most absorbable form. I am super excited to try their magnesium complex. It's in a really good vanilla almond flavor and it's going to help support brain health, stress management and heart health. And the best part, no pills. With Symbiotica. You just take it straight from the pouch, squeeze and go. It makes it super easy to take your supplements wherever you go, whether it's traveling to workouts or just day to day errands. So no matter what benefit you're looking for, Symbiotica is going to have a supplement that's right for you and it'll be as high quality as it gets. Seriously, Wellness made simple for you and your loved ones. Go to symbiotica.comclues to get 20% off plus free shipping. That's C-Y M B I O T I K A.com for 20% off plus free shipping. Today's episode is brought to you by Alma. It can be challenging to find the right therapist. Someone that gets you, teaches you strategies that are actually going to work for you and your needs. And it can sometimes be costly. Well, ALMA is on a mission to change all that. They want to simplify access to high quality, affordable mental health care. And they have over 20,000 diverse therapists and an easy to use platform. One thing I love about ALMA is that you can do consultations with a therapist. It's almost like an interview. And you can make sure you guys match each other's vibes before you really jump in and get started. Their directory helps you find a therapist that takes your insurance and meets your specific needs with filters like gender, race, therapeutic approach and more. And you're going to know exactly how much you're paying upfront with their free insurance, cost estimator, calculator. We're entering a new year, so now is the perfect time to start addressing things you might want to work on. A year from today isn't that far away. Get started now at hell. Hello Alma.com clues. That's hello a l m a.com clues.

C (20:50)

Well, just a month later, a fourth victim was unfortunately added to this list. On June 29, 2001, 36 year old Verona Rooney Thompson was found dead near West Alton, Missouri. Roni was last seen six days before leaving a party in Washington Park, Illinois, near where Elise's body was found. She was also believed to be a sex worker. She did have hard drugs in her system when she died. Roni's body was too badly decomposed when she was found to determine a cause of death. But it was the location that made police pretty certain that these murders were all connected, because she was found just 16ft away from where Teresa was discovered.

B (21:33)

Literally, full blown chills.

C (21:35)

Which meant now the police realized they were clearly dealing with a serial killer.

B (21:40)

Clearly.

C (21:41)

And it was time to bring in more resources. So sometime that summer in 2001, police in Illinois and Missouri quietly formed a task force to help find this serial killer.

B (21:52)

We love a task force in this house.

C (21:54)

Yeah. And to do this, they called the FBI for help because they have all of the profilers for serial killers, but they wanted to keep it out of the news because they figured if it was too publicized, that the killer might catch on to what they were doing and maybe go quiet or run away. Basically, because the victims had so many similarities. Detectives combed the streets because they wanted to talk to people who might have known the victims. For obvious reasons, a lot of the sex workers that they talked to did not want to talk to the cops, even when detectives offered to pay them for information. Which when I read that too, I.

B (22:26)

Was like, I've never even heard of that.

C (22:28)

Oh, yeah.

B (22:29)

Really?

C (22:30)

Yeah. But the, the problem with that is sometimes people will, like, remember things for money. So it get, it gets really dicey when you start paying people for information.

B (22:37)

Yeah, I mean, we saw that in our Natalee Holloway case where a reward was offered and it went up and people started making up these stories and bringing the police on these goose chases to get the reward. It's like, yeah, it could incentivize in the wrong way.

C (22:51)

And it didn't even do that, though. These sex workers were like, we don't care. We're not talking to you. We don't trust you. And no matter what they did, it didn't turn up anything useful. But the clock was ticking. There was this killer out there, and from what we know now, they were already plotting their next move. So on August 25, 2001, less than two months after Roni's murder, another body was found in a patch of weeds in East St. Louis, Illinois. This time, it was a 50 year old woman named Yvonne Cruz. She was also believed by officers to be a sex worker. She also had cocaine in her system at the time of her death. And Yvonne lived with her mother, who last saw her leaving their house in St. Louis, Missouri the day before she was found. Now, Yvonne also had ligature marks on her wrists, suggesting that she had been bound before she was killed, Similar to that of the other victims. She also had scrapes on her knees and she had either been smothered or strangled.

B (23:49)

Yvonne's crime scene revealed a pretty critical clue for investigators, though, and kind of a huge mistake that the killer left behind. But hey, I like it. And this would really get the ball rolling in this case. Police technicians used an essay evidence kit to look for DNA on Yvonne's body. And they were able to recover semen enough to complete a DNA profile for analysis. Which brings us to our fourth clue. But the other shoe is dropping. There were some minor issues that investigators had to acknowledge. This wasn't guaranteed to be the killer's DNA, since Yvonne could have had sex with someone else before she was killed. Another thing, back in 2001, DNA databases weren't as big as they are now. Neither Illinois nor Missouri had even begun collecting DNA from convicted felons yet. I think in Illinois, that one happened for another year. In Missouri, it was like three years away. And so they don't have this big database. I mean, we talk about CODIS quite a bit. It wasn't vast as it is now.

C (24:54)

Right. But we do see in a lot of the cases we cover that they hold on to some of that DNA for later, and then that's how a lot of these matches are made. So at least there was a little bit of foresight.

B (25:03)

But yeah, they were still really helpful because at least now they had a sample, they had something ready for comparison that when they did find a suspect, their suspect, they had something.

C (25:13)

Right. It's just so unfortunate to see that they weren't able to really track anyone down at this point, because it does not take very long for the killer to strike again after these crimes. On October 8, 2001, six weeks after Yvonne was murdered, 33 year old Brenda Beasley was found dead in East St. Louis, just two miles away from where Yvonne's body was found. Her eyes and her arms were bound with tape. She had been struck in the head and she had been suffocated. She was found wearing just her jeans, which were pulled down around her ankles. Brenda also had some similarities to the other victims. She was a sex Worker. She also struggled with a cocaine addiction. But two days after her murder on October 10, her family actually came forward and shared a more intimate version of Brenda with the St. Louis Post Dispatch. So luckily, we do have more information on Brenda other than just the circumstances that surrounded the way that she died. Her family said that she was a mother of four. Her children lived with her mother in Ferguson, Missouri, which was six miles from Baden, where Brenda lived with her boyfriend. And while police claimed that she was a sex worker, because remember, the police are the ones seeing these women being like, sex worker, sex worker, like it must have been a sex worker, her family actually came forward and said she was not a sex worker. She worked a full time job at Hardee's, which was a fast food restaurant near the Stroll, which again, the Stroll is where everyone is walking up and down doing sex work. But Brenda herself worked at the Hardee's that was located on this strip. Now, Brenda had to walk a lot of places because she didn't have a car, which is what she was doing out around Midnight on Sunday, October 7, she was walking home along that long strip of road where men would cruise around looking for sex workers. Now, Brenda had been drinking for several hours. She was planning just to head home and call it a night. She couldn't really afford to miss any work. She really needed the money for her daughter's 10th birthday that week. But instead, sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning, she got picked up by someone, and that person was the killer because her family never saw her alive again.

B (27:20)

Like Yvonne, Brenda's body was examined with an essay evidence kit. And again, investigators were able to recover enough semen for a DNA profile, which is clue number five for us. When investigators compare the samples from Yvonne and Brenda, they learned that the two unknown DNA samples were indeed a match, which made it official. They now had forensic evidence to prove a link between at least two of the murders.

C (27:48)

By mid October 2001, the bodies were adding up and no one could ignore the fact that something horrible was happening. Elisa Greenway, Teresa Wilson, Betty James, Ronnie Thompson, Yvonne Cruz, and now Brenda Beasley. 6 Plus, there was another victim, 61 year old Mary Shields. But police, it seems like they were on the fence as to whether or not she was another potential victim. I mean, her body was found 10 months before Elisa's on July 31, 2000. Now, police believed that she was most likely part of the murders that we've been talking about, the Teresa and Elisa group of murders, rather than those four others from East St. Louis, just based on the details of those other women being found in pairs and in trash bags.

B (28:37)

See, that doesn't, like, do it for me, though. I'm like, when we look at other cases we've had, like, Gilgo was kind of inconsistent. Some had burlap sacks, some didn't like.

C (28:45)

Right.

B (28:45)

You guys don't really know anything right now. You. You don't have a lot to go on. So why be so, like, conclusive that, no, these are not connected?

C (28:54)

Yeah, and I'm curious, too, if they were, like, looking for another serial killer at the same time. Like, they knew that those four were probably connected, but there's not a lot of information as to what they were.

B (29:02)

Doing about those four to me.

C (29:04)

Yeah, well, some of them were even questioning whether Mary was a victim of this serial killer at all, because she didn't fit the profile of the others as far as age. She was 30 years older than them. She was also not a sex worker, even though now we know that one of them, at least one of them, wasn't a sex worker as well. But as the murders continued to go unsolved, the public grew more concerned. At the time, no one even really knew that this task force had been created to look into these crimes. But on October 28, 2001, about three weeks after Brenda Beasley's murder, an article mentioned that different jurisdictions had actually begun working together. And for a little while, it seemed like this announcement did truly make a difference. Because throughout the winter of 2001 into 2002, the murders came to a stop. The police actually figured that the killer had died, or he simply left the area, or he went to prison, or maybe he was just laying low in the wake of all this publicity. And so maybe because of this, the community of sex workers in St. Louis were able to breathe this collective sigh of relief. Because whoever was doing this was gone, at least for now. But that did not last long at all. In early 2002, workers with the Illinois Department of Transportation found three more bodies alongside highways in southwestern Illinois. One body was found on January 30, one was found on March 11, and one was found on March 28. In each case, the bodies had been dumped months earlier. By the time they were discovered, they were just skeletons, and they had a few items of clothing and jewelry on them. But the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death for any of them. So the police called in this forensic anthropologist, who determined that the victims were all black women. The first two were thought to be in their 20s, while the third was anywhere from her 20s to her 40s, they gave kind of a bigger range. The victims fit the same physical profile as the identified victims. They all had been dumped out in the open and plus the timelines all matched. They had all been killed during 2001 when the killer was active. If these were additional victims of the same killer, his body count was now potentially up to 10. And none of this helped answer the bigger question though. Was the killer actually gone or was this just a cool off period?

B (31:38)

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D (32:57)

These women I felt had stories and had lives and there was a need I felt and some of the people at our paper felt also to put faces and a humanity to these women.

B (33:13)

Like again we talked about at the beginning, like times have kind of changed in how we maybe prioritize cases involving sex workers. But again, like people were not treating these women, these victims even with an ounce of humanity it seems. So I really applaud Bill in this moment and just caring about them as human beings. Like yeah, yeah, they had stories as he said. They had these lives and children.

C (33:37)

They were a lot of them were.

B (33:38)

Mothers a lot for their children.

C (33:40)

Just figure out what's going on a lot.

B (33:42)

So thanks to Bill, just five days later, he received a letter that was postmarked from May 21, 2002, just two days after his profile of Teresa was published. And at first he kind of thought this was a prank. I mean, it was, like, addressed really weird, and the stamp that was an American flag was upside down. Like, it just. He thought it was a prank, but he quickly realized that, in fact, this letter was directly from the killer. And this is our sixth clue. The envelope obviously had a fake return address on it, but the fake return address was ithraldom325331 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012, which I had to know what thrall Dom meant. So you guys do too. Unfortunately. Apparently, thralldom is the state of being a slave in bondage or under the complete control of another person. It's a synonym for servitude and subjugation and can refer to physical, moral, or mental enslavement. Thrall Dom is also the name of a bondage website. And while the return address said New York, this letter was postmarked from St. Louis. So it wasn't sent from anywhere else.

C (35:01)

Which is so strange to me. I guess whoever sent this, like, didn't understand how the mail worked.

B (35:05)

Yeah, I mean, clearly an idiot. But this letter, I mean, it looked really weird. I have a picture of it that you guys will see, but it had this, like, homemade looking stamp on it. It was green ink and it had like, fruit and like grapes hanging.

C (35:22)

If you didn't read the contents of it, it looks like a letter from your grandmother.

B (35:25)

It's like a nice holiday looking letter.

C (35:27)

Yes, it does.

B (35:28)

We need a font expert to chime in. I'm sure someone could determine what it is, but it's like almost like a fake cursive, y typed font. And so this red ink on tan stationery said this quote. Dear Bill, nice sob story about Teresa Wilson. Write one about green Wade. Write a good one and I'll tell you where many others are to prove I'm real. Here's directions to number 17. Search in a 50 yard radius from the X, put the story in the Sunday paper like the last end quote. Inside this letter was also a map of West Alton, Missouri, printed from a website. They couldn't tell what website, though, because whoever sent this had, like, cropped the borders that would have displayed the URL and the website logo. An X was drawn over a spot on the map just off Highway 67, close to where Teresa and Roni's bodies were actually found. And Bill, he showed this to his editors pretty quickly after he realized, hey, this is not a prank. This is from the killer. And they turned the letter and envelope over to the police. Unfortunately, police weren't able to recover any DNA or fingerprints from this letter. They did quickly learn, though, what ithral dom was. Again, we all know now, and this made a lot of sense to police, as nearly all of the victims did show signs of being bound before their death. Investigators also followed up on that map. And on May 25, 2002, it became clear that whoever had sent this letter and map was, in fact, the real killer. When searching the area near the X, they found another body. She was a black woman who had been killed months earlier and was unidentifiable due to decomposition. Her cause of death, again couldn't be determined. But now the police knew that this was indeed their killer. They keep going back to the fact that this letter referred to this victim as number 17.

C (37:26)

Yeah, when I read it, that was the first thing that jumped out to me. He said, 17.

B (37:29)

17.

C (37:30)

And we've been keeping track this whole time, and police at this point only.

B (37:33)

Think there's 10, maybe 10, if we're counting Mary. Mary.

C (37:37)

Yeah.

B (37:37)

And so we're at, like, nine, potentially. So the fact that there's that many women, that many victims potentially missing, I mean, they. They're in a tailspin.

C (37:46)

Yeah.

B (37:46)

Like, either he's bragging about more murders than he'd actually committed, or, again, like, there's more people out there to be found. In the meantime, the Illinois state police have an idea about how they could catch this person, though. So as we just talked about, like, the killer did crop that URL. After printing the map from the website, police kind of figured that if they could find out what site that map came from, like, there were multiple providers. I was a mapquest person. There was a bunch of other different providers. They figured that if they could find out what provider that was, they could go to that provider and say, hey, these are the coordinates. Can you track or provide us what IP address requested?

C (38:29)

Specific coordinates.

B (38:30)

Who made that search for that specific area? Yeah. Can you tell us that?

C (38:34)

Boom. They just have them.

B (38:35)

Yeah. They assumed this would likely lead right to their killer, which is clue number seven for us tracking the map. Back in 2002, it wasn't super easy to get maps online. Like, I remember traveling across the US with my dad and, like, having the big book that you'd like, the atlas. Atlas.

C (38:55)

I always remind my dad of that. Every time he yells at me for looking at my phone to go somewhere, I'm like, you used to have, like, 17 pages out on the dashboard.

B (39:03)

Yeah.

C (39:03)

Screaming at all of Them?

B (39:05)

Yeah. I Remember printing off MapQuest directions to go from Duluth, Minnesota, to Minneapolis, and it was like two fricking turns, but still, I had my MapQuest printout ready to go.

C (39:14)

But that's interesting, because back in the day, there weren't a lot of places you could get maps online. So even the police, if they don't know the website because they don't see the URL, I would think there's only, like, a handful of places that it could be.

B (39:26)

Yeah. And it wasn't before long that analysts with the Illinois State Police eventually narrowed down the list to just one website, Expedia.com which was actually owned by Microsoft. And for those of you that don't know, because I feel like it's just common lingo now. It's just like, we don't really know what it means, but we know what it is. An IP address is a unique numerical label assigned to every device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet protocol for communication. So Internet protocol equals ip. And so essentially, this IP address is like a direct mailing address for that device. It basically can reveal the approximate location, but it doesn't actually provide a precise home address, which I found to be pretty interesting.

C (40:14)

Which also, you take for granted how little people knew about technology back then. Like, the person who was doing this probably didn't know that it would have been so easy for them to just find him. Yeah, because I just. We talked about this with BTK as well. This was around the same time that BTK was asking the cops if floppy.

B (40:30)

Floppy disk can be tracked.

C (40:32)

Like, they just. This stuff was relatively new, so people didn't know that. Hey, when I use it, I'm basically leading authorities right back to me.

B (40:40)

Yeah. And I mean, We've talked about MapQuest and Expedia, but, like, there weren't apps. Like, Google Maps was not a thing. Like, you don't have Apple Maps on your iPhone. The technology, even though it's not that long ago, was vastly different. But they knew that, like, okay, this is coming from Expedia.com so next, investigators sent Microsoft and Expedia a subpoena. They wanted every IP address who had searched for a map of West Alton between the day of Bill's article, May 19th, and the day that the letter was mailed, May 21st. So, I mean, they had a pretty tight window.

C (41:13)

At least you have the website, you have the dates, and you have the coordinates.

B (41:18)

And Expedia responded with only one IP address, IP65227106. The user assigned to that number, had clicked to zoom in on this specific area in West Alton 10 times until the map on his screen looked exactly like the version that was sent to investigators.

C (41:46)

Wow.

B (41:46)

After submitting another subpoena to the Internet service provider who supplied that IP address, they were able to trace it to a home in Ferguson, Missouri, on June.

C (41:57)

3, like a week later.

B (41:58)

Just a week later. And I will, I'll give him credit here, I feel like this is a bit of a Sherlock moment even. Like back then, limited technology, Internet's pretty new. All of this stuff is kind of new for investigators. Like they were moving pretty quick on this IP address stuff.

C (42:12)

Well, I think it also is kind of kismet that it was sent to Bill, who really seemed to care about the women involved and really wanted to see this solved. So when, of course, it's like he gets the biggest clue that is what could lead them to the killer.

B (42:27)

I mean, he cracked it. Yeah, he cracked it. Because what investigators find when they get this IP address back, it was from a home that was owned by an older woman named Sandra Travis. Based on, you know, the DNA evidence that police found at the crime scenes, though, they did suspect that they were looking for a man.

C (42:49)

I mean, some of it was semen. They were definitely looking for a man.

B (42:51)

Semen, you guys, it was. It was jizz. So it turns out Sandra wasn't living at the house, but her 36 year old son Maury was. And to really hammer home that they had the right guy. When Microsoft handed over the IP address to investigators, they also were able to provide this, like, Microsoft screen name that, like, this account was going by, and that username was literally Maury Travis.

C (43:22)

First name, last name, first name, last.

B (43:23)

Name just smushed together there. The home was placed under around the clock surveillance at that point, and it wasn't long before they had enough evidence to make an arrest. While surveilling the house In June of 2002, members of the task force saw Maury taking out the trash. So they caught a ride with the garbage collectors and intercepted Maury's trash without his knowledge. That's how we actually get our eighth clue. A used plastic spoon. Within a day, the crime lab retrieved DNA from it. It was a match to the unknown DNA retrieved from the bodies of Yvonne and Brenda. But without being able to say who exactly used that spoon, they couldn't prove it was Maury's DNA. Not yet, at least.

C (44:10)

Well, on June 7, police and the FBI knocked on Maury's door with a search warrant. And Maury Reportedly complained, quote, it's seven in the morning. Why are you here so early? That's what he said to them when he answered the door. And the detective said, quote, you're right, it's seven o' clock in the morning, and we're serving a federal search warrant. And Maury said, okay, why are you here? And they said, you know why we're here. And Maury just dropped his head and agreed. He said, yes, I know why you're here. And he proceeded to let investigators into his home, where he talked to them for over two hours.

B (44:48)

Just sitting there on the couch in the living room, just chatting away for a couple hours.

C (44:52)

And you read something about his cat.

B (44:53)

You guys, this is the, like, weirdest tidbit, rabbit hole piece of information I went down. So I read an article where they interviewed one of the main, like, investigators, Sachs. And Sachs, like, described this. Like, they're just casually chilling on the sofa, asking questions. And Mari had, like, a calico cat that kept wandering about, you know, in between the investigators and brushing past their legs. And, like, when the cat would do this, investigators would reach down and pet the cat. Mori was pissed about this. Like, he was visibly getting, like, irritated by the fact that investigators were touching his cat. And so finally, he, like, picked the cat up from the floor and, like, put it on the couch next to him. And investigators kind of noticed that, like, he just had to be in control of the situation. Like, he was constantly redirecting all of their questions and just, like, needed to be in control.

C (45:44)

Yeah, like, they would ask him something and he would just not answer, and he'd try to move the question to a different topic.

B (45:49)

Yeah, a little bit of deflecting.

C (45:50)

Yeah, exactly. And eventually, investigators just straight up told Mori that they found him through the map that he printed and sent to them. And Maury responds, quote, expletive, computer, damn Internet. Which, I mean, come on, it's probably. Yeah, but who was Maury Travis? Let's rewind just a little bit and talk more about who this guy was. So at the time that police showed up to his house, he was 36 years old, and he worked as a waiter in Manchester, Missouri. He was born on October 25, 1965. He moved to Ferguson with his parents when he was about 10 years old. His parents divorced when he was 13. Other than that, he had no known childhood traumas. And this is, like, trigger warning, animal abuse. We do know that he was killing animals in the neighborhood. There was, like, reports of a neighbor's dog that he maybe killed. This came out much later in his life, though. Yeah, A lot of the people that were close to Maury when he was growing up didn't really think he was that off as a person. No.

B (46:47)

I saw one neighbor that was like, he wouldn't hurt a fly.

C (46:51)

Teachers and neighbors remembered him as being quiet, shy and withdrawn. But it seems like he came out of his shell long enough to make a lifelong friend named Khadisa, who described Mori as being a big brother figure and that he taught her how to drive. Maury graduated high school late. He was 19 years old in 1985 when he graduated, and afterwards he spent two years in the Army Reserves working as a medical and dental assistant. After that, he went to Morris Brown College in Atlanta. And according to Maury, while he was there, he developed an addiction to crack. And that cost him nearly $300 a day. In 1988, 22 year old Maury used a plastic toy gun to rob five stores so that he could have money for more drugs. And that earned him a 15 year prison sentence. But he was released after just five years, and that was June of 1994. After his release, he was 28 years old and he moved to Ferguson where he made an impression amongst his neighbors as being quiet and polite. People described him as being this really polite neighbor, but he was still living with this addiction that he had. And In February of 1998, when he was 32 years old, he went back to jail, this time for possession and for violating his parole. And that December, he was released into a rehab program where he stayed until May of 1999. Afterwards, Mori worked various restaurant jobs. He started being very vocal as well about hating drug use. A co worker remembered him saying, quote, crack and heroin were the worst thing that God put on this earth. In the absence of drugs, he spent his time and his money on these new hobbies that he had developed. He bought himself a 2000 black Mitsubishi Eclipse and he spent his days off working on it. And it's around this time too, that people started noticing a little bit more red flags about Mori. He mentioned to a co worker that East St. Louis was, quote, a good place to dump things because police weren't very attentive in that area. The conversation was about a friend's car that had been stolen. But still, when Maury's co worker heard this, they thought it was just a weird thing to say.

B (48:59)

Yeah, who's dumping things?

C (49:00)

Dumping things, like talking about a car too. It's like easy to dump things there because the police don't pay attention.

B (49:06)

How would you know that.

C (49:07)

Well, that feeling grew in July of 2001. At that point, these murders had already been taking place when Maury met that same co worker's girlfriend. At the time, she was interning for a TV news program. And Maury suggested that she cover a story about a serial killer targeting sex workers. He claimed that he had friends who knew about bodies being dumped, that he had some sort of insider information into this. And that was three months before the police said they were looking for a serial killer targeting sex workers. It was not on anyone's radar. And he brings up that he thinks it's a serial killer. And it was also almost a year before he became a suspect, which, I'm.

B (49:48)

Sorry, like, co worker, you're getting a little bit of a botched mark there, because I get you're a civilian, but when you hear crazy, crazy like that, you should maybe tell someone. Maybe you should tell the police.

C (50:02)

I know. And she worked for a TV news program, too. Like, she didn't say anything to anyone.

B (50:07)

Well, and it's like if, like, the police aren't connecting this and they're not talking about it in the news, and you have your co worker making claims that, like, oh, I know someone who knows the serial killer and where they're dumping bodies. How do you know about this? What do you mean, the news isn't talking about this? I'm a news reporter. Yeah, come on. Yeah, tell someone something.

C (50:28)

I know it's interesting. No flags were raised.

B (50:30)

They could have reported it, and then maybe he would have gotten a tail put on him and you would have caught him how many months sooner? And how many people could have been spared?

C (50:41)

No, I know. I know that botched. Well, also, four months later, Maury gets picked up on drug charges, and he goes to jail between November of 2001 and March of 2002. And at that point, whoever was doing the killings had gone quiet. So it definitely matched up with the timeline of the killings as well. That was when the killings had mysteriously stopped. And that brings us to the police being in Maury's living room, having this conversation with him. And, I mean, just on the map alone, you think that they have enough to really make an arrest. But there was a lot more evidence collected in Maury's home during that visit.

B (51:18)

When they searched Maury's basement, it was obvious that this was a crime scene. And this basement is our ninth clue. The basement had one main room with a hallway and a couple other bedrooms off the hallway. Investigators immediately, just like, even upon going down the stairs they were met with just a horrible, rancid smell. And one of the investigators said that, like, he could tell that someone had tried to use, like, a Febreze or something to cover the smell, but it didn't work. It just reeked bad.

C (51:53)

That always makes it so much worse, too, when you have something that smells bad and you just try to spray something on it.

B (51:58)

Yeah, because then it's the horrible smell plus the deodorizer. Yeah, it's just disgusting. And when investigators really opened their eyes and just took a look about, they noticed that there was blood pretty much everywhere. The walls, the furniture, the floor. I mean, I saw a couple pictures where they peeled back the carpet and the blood spots that pooled. I mean, there was a lot of blood in this basement. There was one room that was, like, off the hallway and kind of towards the end of the hallway. And this was where his computer was, where there was, like, a mattress. And one investigator describes the color the room was as, like, this disturbing blue. It had gray carpet. And when they opened the closet door that wasn't painted the blue color. It was left unpainted, just like a white. And there was blood spatter. They could see everywhere in it.

C (52:56)

Did they think that he had painted the blue over all of the blood then? Maybe.

B (53:00)

They didn't really say, but that was a question I had. Or, like, was the blue. Like, did they go with, like, an eggshell finish or something that was easy to wipe? I had a lot of questions about this basement. When they started looking through things, they discovered various women's items like shoes, underwear, wigs. They also discovered a stun gun. When they went and started looking at the computer and the area around it, they noticed that there was a filing cabinet next to the computer. Inside, officers found a backpack with duct tape, straps, ligatures for strangulation, and a stocking material that they assumed he used to cover his hands to avoid leaving fingerprints. The computer had clearly been used to write the letter to Bill the journalist, because there were many drafts saved on the hard drive. There was also a locked door, and when officers ended up breaking it down, they immediately smelled decay. Inside was a mattress with another bag containing duct tape restraints, the stun gun. In the closet, there were chains, more ligatures, boards with blood on them. There was just, like, so much evidence that they gathered from this basement. They actually had to set up an entirely new evidence room at the station just to store all of it.

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B (55:26)

I read somewhere that they collected over a third thousand samples of blood in that basement. And blood samples ended up matching six different victims. Investigators also found this diagram that Travis had made showing plans for this new basement extension. Investigators also found this diagram that Travis had created showing plans for a basement extension. And they concluded that he was going to build two cells in there where he would chain women up. He was planning for these like little air vents that went out into the basement and there was no bathroom facilities in the plan. And he had like made a list of things that he needed. One thing on the list was adult diapers so that he could keep these women captive for long periods of time. Like again, just like we knew this person was just depraved, but like, yeah, clearly like this is one of the worst I think we've encountered.

C (56:30)

Yeah, he was making plans so that he could keep people in the basement for even longer periods of time.

B (56:35)

Even longer. You guys, it gets so much worse when we get into clue number 10. Mori had a whole bookshelf of VHS tapes in the basement. And you guys, this next section is going to get pretty graphic, so please skip ahead if you can't handle it. Most of them looked like they were just home videos or kid movies. But when investigators started looking at some of these tapes, on one tape they saw 46 year old Betty James being tortured. Another tape labeled your wedding day showed Mori torturing some of his other victims. Though the tape wasn't labeled which victims they were. Another tape showed Maury strangling a young woman while she was chained to a wooden beam in that very basement. After her body goes limp, he turns to the camera and says, quote, this is first kill number one, first kill was 19 years old. Name? I don't know. I don't give a blank. I don't give a expletive. First kill was nice. End quote. Now, these tapes are beyond disturbing. I don't want to play any clips for you guys because, like, they are genuinely.

C (57:52)

Are they even out there for people to watch?

B (57:54)

There are some of these recordings out there that have been released and they're horrible. Like, this man was truly one of the most sick, psychologically torturous out there. And I mean, he would, like degrade these, you know, these women in these clips, but he would go so far as to, like shame them. Like, don't you feel stupid for getting in the car? Like, your kids? Who's taking care of your kids? Do you want to say sorry to your kids? Like, it was horrendous. And so you have these women who are horrified and like, they're literally apologizing to their kids, their children.

C (58:34)

I mentioned it at the beginning too, that the police who watch these videos, because they had to go through all the tapes, were ordered to get mandatory counseling afterwards because it was that they were that for them to watch.

B (58:45)

They were that bad. Just absolutely horrendous.

C (58:50)

So the victim in the video that you mentioned, Morgan, that first kill, was not even someone that was on the police's radar at the time. They would later identify her as 19 year old Cassandra Walker. She was described by her uncle as, quote, a good kid who got off on the wrong track for a minute. Cassandra's body was found back on March 24, 2001, near Nashville, Illinois, 50 miles southeast of East St. Louis. And if Maury was telling the truth in the footage and she was his first victim, then the plan was always that he was going to kill again. I mean, if he's calling her number one, then this is obviously like a pattern he wants to repeat. So in the letter that he sent to Bill, Maury said that he killed 17 women. So police wanted to know who all of the victims were, because counting Cassandra, if we count Mary Shields and all four of those still unidentified victims that were found before, that still only gets the police to 12 victims. So they continued searching the house and the grounds and in the driveway, they found that there was two vehicles, Maury's beloved Mitsubishi Eclipse and also a Chevrolet Cavalier. The Cavalier's tires ended up matching the marks on Betty James's leg. And the Mitsubishi's tires match the tracks near Elisa Greenwaid's body. And one thing you know, as the police are starting to kind of, like, run around the grounds of Maury's house, figuring out if they can, you know, find any other clues. They also see that Maury has a girlfriend who is in the house the entire time that this is happening. And somehow police figure that she doesn't know anything about these murders. She tells the detectives, I need to hear from the community on this one, because I don't know how you are with someone who has a torture room in the basement. We literally covered a case like this on Heart starts Pounding about this guy in Germany in the 80s who had a torture room in his basement and a wife. And when they talked to the wife, and they were like, how did you not know he had a torture room in your basement? She goes, I never thought to ask. He always kept it locked. I figured it was none of my business.

B (60:59)

Psychopath like, you, too. You're roped in there, lady. You. That's your house. And you don't. You're not curious what's in the basement at all?

C (61:05)

Curious?

B (61:06)

You're married. Come on.

C (61:08)

Well, this one, too. Like, you never go in the basement and see all of the blood everywhere. Like, once you go into his basement, there's blood everywhere.

B (61:16)

And, yeah, it's apparent.

C (61:17)

She said that she never even entered the basement one single time. The woman was identified as being a childhood friend of Maury's and a former neighbor. Her name has never been released. The police did mention that they had only been together for two months when Maury was arrested. So I guess maybe most of their interactions had happened outside of his home, though. I can't believe his house smelled.

B (61:43)

I mean, they. They did say immediately upon walking downstairs, they could smell it. And so, I don't know, maybe she had decreased smell, but, like, I. I don't know. It's a very convenient story, I guess. Like, I just. I find it very hard to believe that you knew nothing.

C (62:02)

Nothing. I remember I went on a date with a guy once, and I went to his house, and he had bugs in his bathroom. And I never, ever called him back ever again after that. Because even that, like, I just don't understand how, you know, like, your house smells that weird.

B (62:14)

And I don't know, my friend Lauren, literally, we just talked about this on an episode, but she went into someone's house, like, after they had helped her move into her apartment, and the guy was like, do you want to come back to my place for a drink?

C (62:25)

Like, blah, blah, blah.

B (62:26)

And she goes into his place, and there were, like, axes everywhere. What? Yeah, axes.

C (62:33)

Did he have an Explanation as to what they were for.

B (62:35)

She quickly left. She didn't even wait to find out. She made up some excuse, was like, bye.

C (62:40)

You cannot hang out, and no, no.

B (62:43)

No, no, no, no.

C (62:44)

Oh, my God, that's horrible. I'm curious if you're listening. What is the most appalling thing that you've seen in someone's home?

B (62:49)

People were, like, kind of defending it in my comments on that episode. They were like, that's not that weird. People have collections of stuff all the time. And I'm like, I feel like then you warn someone, like, hey, just, you know, I have axes on my wall. I like medieval weapons. I don't know. It's. It's still. Hey, it's weird to me.

C (63:06)

I'm just gonna say no. I totally agree. I. Bugs. I didn't call someone back over bugs. So I feel like there's even. Like, the bar is even lower than that. So Mori gets arrested on the same day that that search happens. June 7, 2002. He was interrogated for eight hours, but he never revealed anything that the police didn't already know. So investigators felt like Travis didn't even think that these women could be considered victims. He definitely saw them as less than. And during the interrogation, he would say things like, huh? Victims? When the police were showing him images of the women being like, are these, like, the victims? He even went so far as to say that he didn't know any of them when he was asked to identify these women. However, a few minutes after they asked him, Travis asked if he could look at the photos of the dead women again. And at that point, Detective Sachs told Travis that he never told him that those women were dead or that they had been murdered. It was Maury who came forward with that information.

B (64:03)

Gotcha.

C (64:04)

And at one point, Travis can be heard saying, I'm toast. I'm toast. He then goes off the rails, and he offers to lead investigators to a body in St. Louis. But when they started driving towards the location, he changed his mind, and he just demanded that they take him back to jail. They did get another DNA sample out of that interrogation, though, after Maury drank out of a soda can. And that matched DNA on the plastic spoon and the DNA from Yvonne and Brenda's bodies, because, remember, they had only gotten a sample that they couldn't specifically say was his. It had come from the trash from the house.

B (64:40)

But who in the house?

C (64:42)

Right. They needed to, like, be looking at him in the eyes as he gave.

B (64:45)

Them a DNA sample.

C (64:46)

So now they had enough. Eventually, Morry refused to say another word without a lawyer. So the police had to end the interview.

B (64:53)

And I will say here, like, this is something I thought was really interesting. And also kind of speaks back to our interview with Denise Huskins about different interview techniques. So Sachs questioned Travis for nearly eight hours. And eventually he was just like, okay, like, I'm good. Like, you're not giving me anything. Okay. But he kept talking, like, for those eight hours, he kept, like, talking, like, didn't ask for a lawyer. And when he handed the interview over to other detectives, they immediately started a more like, in your face, confrontational interview. And in just 19 minutes with those other investigators, Travis asked for an attorney and the interview was stopped. So I think it just goes back to again, like, what we talked about with Denise about, like, interview techniques and how much they matter.

C (65:42)

Yeah, that's so true that you can get someone to talk for eight hours.

B (65:45)

Yeah.

C (65:46)

Or you can get them to ask.

B (65:47)

For a lawyer after 19 minutes. Eight hours. 19 minutes. And like, if those techniques would have been continued, maybe you would have gotten more.

C (65:56)

That's what maybe we talked about. Chris Voss, the FBI negotiator, one thing he says during his negotiations when he's trying to get more information out of people is he just takes the last thing they said and he rephrases it as a question.

B (66:09)

Genius.

C (66:10)

So. Oh, you think that's genius? And then you're like, yeah, it's really smart the way he does crack. Like, oh, you think that would make you crack? And then they'll start like, oh, yeah, because people kind of get nervous and they'll just start talking.

B (66:22)

Oh, I'm a nervous oversharer.

C (66:23)

Same, same. And so it was. It's amazing just to see how much you can kind of lure out of someone just by, like, asking them questions.

B (66:30)

Yeah. Because they also, they just gave that information up willingly, like, and so it's like, it's kind of a Jedi mind trick. Yeah, that's really interesting.

C (66:37)

I mean, if you talk for eight hours, he clearly wants to talk about this.

B (66:41)

Clearly.

C (66:42)

But after that 19 minutes, when he asks for a lawyer, he gets placed under suicide watch. And that happens while he's in his prison cell and there's a guard that's required to check on him and every 15 minutes. But on the evening of June 10, this is just three days after Maury's arrest, the guard skipped two checks in a row between 7:15 and 8:00 clock at night. And that is when, if you believe the way that police reported this one down, Maury Used a noose made out of a bed sheet to take his own life. He even went so far as to put.

B (67:18)

Kidding me? Are you kidding? You Kidding me?

C (67:21)

I know. Two missed checks coloring the entire botched.

B (67:25)

Sorry, everyone. Sorry for your ears. I'm just, like, I literally. My stomach just dropped. Like a check. I'm sick.

C (67:31)

Two checks. That's a really. That's a long time to leave someone by themselves when they've been on suicide watches for a few days. Yeah. Mori went so far as to put a tissue in his nose, a gag in his mouth, and a pillowcase over his head. Which is why some people don't believe the official police report that he did take his own life. It seemed like a little bit more than someone. Like there was maybe some foul play involved.

B (67:55)

He was also somehow able to restrain his hands behind his back. Yeah, so it did look really suspicious. Like, Clayton Police and St. Louis County Medical examiner even agreed it was super odd, but suicide nonetheless, which would have been a big mark.

C (68:15)

And he did leave behind a note. It was addressed to his mother. But other than that, his last remaining secrets all went with him to the grave.

B (68:23)

And again, like, think about that interview. Like, he's now gone. And because of those interview techniques, you only got 19 more minutes. Like, just imagine if that had gone differently.

C (68:35)

Yeah. So how many victims were still out there? At least five. At least five that they didn't know about.

B (68:43)

I mean, he claims 17.

C (68:44)

So this is what the. The note read. He wrote, dear Mom, I'm sorry for the pain this caused you and the family. My death seems to be the only way out. And a fast end to all the publicity. You were the best mother a man can have. But I've been sick for a long time. Sick in the head since I was about 14. I don't know why. I was just sick. I've never felt normal or happy at any time in my life. I think about the life I lead and what is ahead of me. This seems like the best solution for all involved, especially me, because I won't spend the rest of my life locked up or worse, let them kill me with a needle. Tell Grandma Marina, James and everybody I love them dearly. I love you the most, but you know that. Forever. Your son, Toby Travis. And there's a little image here, too, of it scrawled out. He, like, underlined a couple points to really highlight that.

B (69:33)

I feel like, underlined, normal and happy. I won't, underlined, spend the rest of my life locked up. Won't let them kill me like it's all about you. This whole letter, it's all about you.

C (69:45)

When you read it, it's just. He's just so focused on what's going to happen to him and the publicity surrounding it. He's not concerned about anyone else or about writing out the coordinates of the other bodies or any clues that would help investigators. He only cares about himself. Now, to this day, the police and the FBI are interested in any tips from the community about those five additional victims. And if you have something to share, you can call Crime Stoppers at 866-371-TIPS or visit tips.FBI.gov But I will say there have been a couple recent updates.

B (70:20)

Yeah.

C (70:20)

In this case. So let's go through. I'm. I'm just going to read out the names of the suspected victims that we have. So number one being Mary Shields, then Cassandra Walker, Alisa Greenwade, Theresa Wilson, Betty James, Roney Thompson, Yvonne Cruz, Brenda Beasley. And then this year, this year, 2025, three victims previously just known as Jane does were identified thanks to this new partnership that just happened between Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville students.

B (70:49)

Students, you guys.

C (70:50)

And Illinois State Police using forensic genealogy. So these students were actually able to go through these old cold cases and positively identify bodies that were just Jane Does. And they identified Crystal, Alicia Ley, Kelly Johnson and Carol Hemphill, and they were basically confirmed to be victims of Maurice. There's also a Charles County Jane Doe that gets added to this list as number 12.

B (71:18)

Very likely still five, if not six out there, because Mary Shields still has not conclusively been linked to Travis yet. So if Mary Shields isn't included in that list, like, then we're only at 11, and there's six potential more victims out there. And honestly, I'd be curious what you guys think about this, but I really don't think he was lying about 17.

C (71:42)

No, I don't think so either. And I think those women have probably been found and are just Jane Does.

B (71:49)

Yeah, I saw somewhere and I. Oh, I don't remember the exact years, but it was like something like 341 people were found and they were unidentified between like 2000 and 2018 or something like that. So there's a lot that is now being brought to light because of this amazing partnership and this forensic genealogy. I mean, this just happened this year. So I think there's a lot that is going to continue to be discovered with this, with this technology.

C (72:20)

I mean, those other four could still be, but they haven't been identified.

B (72:25)

So as for the first four East St. Louis murders in the early 2000s. Police still believe that those have nothing to do with Travis. There was a man named Donald Young who was arrested in January 2002 after DNA evidence tied him to a sexual assault of another sex worker. He was eventually charged with three of those killings and suspected of the fourth. But after he was already in prison, a key witness that was expected to testify against him was actually killed in an unrelated stabbing. The prosecution's case pretty much fell apart after that. And after spending more than six years in a Missouri prison without being tried for the East St. Louis murders, the charges were dropped. But Donald didn't go free. He was actually extradited to Utah to face trial in another murder and sexual assault case. He remains alive and in prison, and in 2024, was charged in connection with another Utah cold case murder.

C (73:24)

Wow.

B (73:24)

So clearly murdering people. But whoever committed those first four crimes, whether Young or someone else, was obviously targeting the same victim demographic as Travis and using the same area. So it's. It's kind of hard to know at this point who really those victims belong to. Like, honestly, I. I could see them being a part of Travis's 17. Like, it kind of fits with mo and timeline.

C (73:52)

Yeah, definitely.

B (73:53)

But.

C (73:53)

And they say that mo can change over time. It can.

B (73:56)

Yeah. Maybe. Trash bags he felt were necessary, but by the fourth, he's like, I don't really have.

C (74:01)

No one cares.

B (74:02)

Don't need them.

C (74:02)

Yeah.

B (74:03)

And then you don't see trash bags again. Like, it could be very likely.

C (74:07)

Yeah.

B (74:08)

You know, investigators also wonder, like, did they know about each other? If. If you know, those weren't Travis's victims? Like, did he know about Young? Like. Right. It is interesting. But something else interesting that's happened since all of this went down is the house. Like, a lot of people online are fascinated with Travis's old house, which belonged to his mother, Sandra. The house actually made news for being rented out in 2014. And the person that rented the house from Travis's mother, Sandra, had no idea that this house was used in such a horrific way, that this was, like, essentially like a serial killer murder house.

C (74:46)

Yeah.

B (74:47)

And they actually found out about it from, like, seeing a segment on, like, the TV as a documentary about this serial killer, and like, oh, that's my house.

C (74:58)

Yeah. Wow.

B (74:59)

So they end up going to Sandra and being like, hey, you didn't disclose this to us. We want to break our lease. And she was like, no, no.

C (75:09)

Some states have laws about that. Some do state by state, but Missouri.

B (75:14)

At the time did not. You Only, I think at the time, I don't know if it's changed, but you only had to disclose, like, damages. Like, oh, the wall has a crack here, whatever. Like, you had to disclose damages but not killings. And Justin, my husband, actually lived here in LA in a house that had a double homicide committed in it. And was he told about it before he moved? He wasn't, because he was renting. So if you're selling the house, you have to disclose, but even if it's like, outside of the year limit, you don't have to disclose it. So in la, I think it's like only three years or something. Like, really short.

C (75:50)

Yes. And so there's the Ghostbusters ruling. Have you heard about this?

B (75:55)

No. When is this?

C (75:55)

Zamboski versus Ackley.

B (75:57)

What year?

C (75:58)

It's from 1991. The court held that a house which the owner had previously advertised as being haunted by ghosts was legally haunted for the purpose of an action for a recession brought by a subsequent purchaser of the house. Basically, they were saying that because they had advertised as the house being haunted before the people had moved in, that they were legally required to tell the people that the house was haunted when they moved in.

B (76:24)

Yeah, that makes sense.

C (76:25)

But it became so now it's, like, taught in US law schools all over. Okay. And it's like the case that people point to to be like, well, how much do you have to disclose about a house? Is like, dark past when you're talking about.

B (76:34)

Yeah, it varies state by state. I don't think the laws are really good enough. I think it should just stick with the house forever. And you should know what you know. But this tenant was eventually able to break their lease. So the house did end up selling in August of 2025. It was listed at 84,500. However, when it sold on August 25, 2025, they kept the price redacted. But you can see some of the other history. Like, in February 4th of 2021, the rent was a thousand dollars and it was removed a couple days later. Unclear if it was rented or if it was just removed because no one would rent it. You can actually still find the Zillow listing. We're gonna put some house pictures in the YouTube video and on our Instagram. But, like, you can walk through this house in the Zillow listing. I mean, you can see.

C (77:29)

You can see the whole basement.

B (77:30)

The basement. The floor has been changed. It's no longer carpet. It's. It's wood. But, I mean, it. It's just insane. Like, it's insane. Like, I'm sorry, but this house should have been burned to the ground.

C (77:41)

No, I know. Yeah, it should have been burned down. It's like, can you just get rid of the house?

B (77:46)

It's so disrespectful. Like, burn it to the ground the property, build a new house in the back. And I know, like that is.

C (77:53)

Yeah, but who's going to do it, right?

B (77:55)

I don't care who. Honestly.

C (77:58)

No, it doesn't matter who. But no one's, no one's going to take on that financial burden.

B (78:02)

All the little cluminati come together. If everybody gives a dollar, we the house and do a controlled burn with the fire department because then it's giving back to the community because the fire department needs to learn new skills. And they do controlled burns on houses all the time.

C (78:15)

Yeah, right. They have practice houses.

B (78:16)

Putting this out there for you guys, you know, just crazy. His mom went on to start a paternity testing company.

C (78:25)

What? Wait, I did not see this.

B (78:27)

Called Baby maybe. So, yeah, DNA testing caught her son and now she started a DNA company to.

C (78:37)

So it's like to make sure that the child is yours. Like that's the company that she started.

B (78:41)

A paternity testing company.

C (78:44)

Wow. Baby maybe I didn't called Baby maybe Baby maybe not. Read about that. That is wild.

B (78:51)

Yeah, so that's where we're at with this one. I mean, there's a lot on Reddit you can go down the rabbit hole of like, did he actually commit suicide or was there some sort of COVID up? A lot of people on Reddit do not believe it was suicide, especially given the pillowcase over his head and the hands being tied. Hands behind his back. I've seen a lot of comments on there questioning that. I also found one comment that obviously cannot be verified. This is all alleged information. But someone did comment that two or more of the victims were the mothers of correctional officers. And so a lot of people believe like some sort of inside job. I mean, you have someone who's been in police custody for three days on suicide watch and two checks get missed.

C (79:39)

Two checks get missed. It looks like someone was in the jail cell, maybe kind of did that to him.

B (79:43)

I also wondered about cameras. Like this was again 2002, but like, were there no cameras? Did we not have any comings and goings? I know in a lot of modern cases, camera footage disappears.

C (79:55)

No, I know, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Like sometimes even having the cameras there doesn't really give us any answers.

B (79:59)

I know, a lot of speculation on that piece of this.

C (80:02)

Yeah, it's interesting. Like all the little rabbit holes that you can go down, I went down them. Well, in East St. Louis, where Maury Travis left at least four of his victims. It's a place that's had a lot of violent crime for a long time. But since 2017, the East St. Louis murder rate has dropped by almost half. That's positive. By 2020, their homicide clearance rate was up to 67%. That's from what, like 25? They had a 75 unsolved.

B (80:31)

Yeah.

C (80:32)

Rate. And now it's up to 67 clearance.

B (80:34)

That's pretty good.

C (80:35)

And that's partly due to these public safety enforcement groups that they started. They launched it in 2020. It's a partnership between the Illinois State Police and the East St. Louis City Police and also some community based groups. They're also working to make sure that surviving victims and witnesses of violent crime get immediate trauma support. And they're trying to build more bridges within the community.

B (80:55)

I do appreciate that because one thing we haven't talked about is there are survivors from Maury Travis. And there's a YouTube interview I watched with one of them, and she shares about her life and just her circumstances. And it's really sad, but she's lucky to be alive. And one potential victim had so much brain damage. Like, they're not. So it's just.

C (81:20)

Yeah.

B (81:20)

Well, it's good that the support's there.

C (81:22)

It's great that the police that had to see the footage were like, forced to go to or had to get.

B (81:28)

Yeah.

C (81:28)

Counseling for that. But also, if that's your loved one and you hear about that happening to them, like you are also, you need that, you should be entitled to some sort of support as well.

B (81:36)

Absolutely.

C (81:37)

So you can learn more about Community Lifeline and their support work at community lifeline. Estlnp.org and with that, let's get to our missing person of the week.

B (81:51)

This week we are highlighting the case of Keshia Sylvester. Keshia has been missing since 9 22, 2017. She went missing from Brobridge, Louisiana. Described as a female black, 29 years old, 5 to 145 pounds. Now, I will say there are very suspicious circumstances surrounding Keshia's disappearance. Her purse and cell phone were left behind at her home. The food that she had made for dinner was left on the stove. She didn't pick up her last paycheck from her job at a casino. And she also missed her daughter's prom. This was all super Uncharacteristic of her behavior. She had really been looking forward to her daughter's prom, had already picked the hairstyle she wanted her daughter to have for the event. According to her family, prior to her disappearance, Keshia had seemed confident and happy, and she kept in daily touch with her family and often visited her father. Only days after her disappearance, her landlord moved her belongings and the trailer in which she lived, something that her family believes led to possible evidence being lost or destroyed. Foul play is possible in her case, which still remains unsolved. Keshia has not been found. I saw in a recent update computers and items were seized from the landlord, but nothing has been released at this time. So if you have any information in regards to Keshia and her disappearance, Please contact the St. Martin's Parish Sheriff's Office at 337-394-3071. Obviously a very suspicious.

C (83:30)

Whoa. Case. The landlord moving the trailer right afterwards. Within just a few days, all of.

B (83:35)

Her belongings, everything, gone.

C (83:37)

Oh, my gosh.

B (83:37)

And, like, she went and visited her daughter before, like, as she was getting ready for prom. Like, gave her some money or something. Like, for prom. Like, it's. She was supposed to go back and.

C (83:46)

Yeah.

B (83:46)

You know, and see her daughter after. So very, very suspicious. So, yes, if you guys have any information, like, make sure it gets. It gets known.

C (83:55)

Sounds like one of those ones where someone knows something.

B (83:58)

Someone definitely knows something.

C (84:00)

That's all we have. Clues as always. Now you can share anything you want with us. Your theories, your thoughts, feedback, anything on social media. We love hearing from you guys. We get a lot of our missing persons from the week from you guys.

B (84:15)

Yeah, that's been a really, really impactful thing over the past year, seeing you guys show up in the comments again and again and subscribing. You know, we just recently hit 50, 000 subscribers.

C (84:27)

And yeah, thank you so much for that.

B (84:29)

It means the world like, crazy. Know we have such a great team here and we all put so much work into this show. So seeing your comments, I. I literally read everyone. So thank you guys so much for your support and adding your theories and continuing conversations about these cases and highlighting those that aren't very known. Like, we really, really appreciate your support, especially here at Crime House. So again, share all those thoughts and remember to rate, review, and follow subscribe to clues to help others discover our show.

C (84:58)

We'll see you next time, guys. Bye.

D (85:04)

It's okay not to be perfect with finances. Experian is your big financial friend and here to help. Did you know you can get matched with credit cards on the app. Some cards are labeled no Ding Decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. Download the Experian app for free today. Applying for no Ding Decline cards won't hurt your credit scores. If you aren't initially approved, initial approval will result in a hard inquiry, which may impact your credit scores.

C (85:32)

Experian.

A (85:36)

Looking for your next listen? Hi, it's Vanessa Richardson, and I have exciting news. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is leveling up starting the week of January 12th. You'll be getting two episodes every week. Wednesdays we unravel the conspiracy or the cult, and on Fridays, we look at a corresponding crime. Follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen.