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Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before we get into today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love. Hidden history with Dr. Harini Bhat. Every Monday, Dr. Bhat goes where history gets mysterious. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files. Not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look. Hidden History drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen, so you never miss a mystery.
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This is Crime House.
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All right friends, it's time for your daily true crime rundown. Grab your coffee, settle in. Let's talk about the cases everyone's going to be discussing today day. We're starting with the biggest one. On the night of May 14, 1986, a 22 year old woman left the library where she worked in Virginia beach, headed to meet up with friends and never made it. Her body was found the next morning in a field directly across the street, stabbed multiple times for 40 years. No one was charged. This week that finally changed. This is crime house 24 7, your non stop source for the biggest crime cases developed, developing right now. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Vanessa Richardson and we have quite a lineup for you today. Here's what you need to know. Lately I've been trying to take the stress out of getting dressed. Just focusing on pieces that feel easy, comfortable and still put together without a lot of effort. That's really what's been pulling me toward quints. 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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com crimehouse247 for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com crimehouse247 for 40 years, the man investigators say killed Roberto Walls went about his life. He aged. He moved. By the time investigators came for him, he was living quietly in Connecticut, hundreds of miles from the field in Virginia beach where Roberta's body was found on a spring morning in 1986. He was 26 years old when she died. This past Monday, May 18th, the Newington Police Department in Connecticut arrested now 66 year old Charles Randall Barry on behalf of the Virginia Beach Police Department's Cold Case Squad in connection with the 1986 sexual assault and murder of 22 year old Roberta Walls. On Tuesday, May 19, almost exactly 40 years to the day since the crime was committed, Virginia beach police publicly announced the arrest, calling it a landmark moment decades in the making. Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Newgate held a press conference at department headquarters on Wednesday morning alongside senior investigators and command staff to provide additional details about the case and how Barry was ultimately identified. We'll have those details for you as continue to surface. To understand the weight of this arrest, you have to go back to where the story begins. Roberta Walls was 22 years old and living in Virginia beach in the spring of 1986. She worked at the Bayside Public Library, a neighborhood branch on Ferry Plantation Drive, situated in a quiet residential part of the city not far from the Chesapeake Bay. By all accounts, she was a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. On the evening of May 14, 1986, Roberta finished her SH at the library and left. She was heading out to meet up with friends and she never arrived. The following morning, May 15, 1986, at 6:30am Roberta's body was discovered in a field directly behind old Donation elementary school in the 1000 block of Fairy Plantation Drive. That field sits directly across the street from the Bayside Library where she'd been working hours earlier. She had been stabbed multiple times and sexually assaulted. Her death was ruled a homage homicide. Virginia beach police investigated immediately. Detectives worked the case hard in those early months, canvassing the neighborhood, interviewing anyone with a connection to the library or to Roberta, pursuing every lead available to them. But the technology that investigators would need to definitively identify a suspect just didn't exist in 1986. There was DNA evidence collected at the scene. At the time, there was nowhere meaningful to take it. The case went cold, but but it was never abandoned. Virginia Beach's Cold Case Squad kept returning to the evidence through the years, periodically Resubmitting it As forensic technology advanced, each time a new method emerged, detectives asked whether it could finally give them a name. For a long time, the answer was not yet. Then, in November 2017, Virginia beach police obtained funding to send DNA from the 1986 crime scene to a forensic lab in Northern Virginia. That lab did something that had not been done before in this case. It used the DNA evidence to generate a composite image, a rendering of what the suspect likely looked like based on genetic markers in the DNA itself. According to WAVY TV, which covered the 2017 development, this was the first time the Virginia Beach Police Department had ever used that type of phenotyping technology. The composite did not immediately produce a name, but it was a turning point, a tangible image derived from evidence that had been preserved for more than three decades that investigators could use to narrow the field. The work continued year after year. The cold case squad kept pushing, following new leads, resubmitting evidence to new labs, applying new techniques. According to the Virginia Beach Police Department, decades of persistent investigation ultimately led to this arrest. Charles Randall Barry, 66, was living in Newington, Connecticut when Newington Police officers arrested arrested him on Monday morning. Barry was taken into custody by the Newington Police Department acting on behalf of Virginia beach, and he's currently awaiting extradition back to Virginia to face charges in connection with Roberta's sexual assault and murder. No information about Barry's background, his potential connection to Roberta Walls or to Virginia beach in 1986, or the specific investigative steps that led detectives to his door has been publicly confirmed. Beyond the arrest announcement and Wednesday's press conferen, he has not yet entered a plea. What the timing of this arrest carries is worth sitting with for a second. May 15, 1986 is the date Roberta Wall's body was found. May 15, 2026 is the 40th anniversary of that discovery. And it's also the same week police announced that a man has been charged with her murder. For Roberta's family who spent four decades without an answer, I that timing is not lost. Virginia beach police have credited investigators across multiple generations of the department who kept returning to the case. Detectives who worked this case in the 1980s, detectives who resubmitted the evidence in 2017, the cold case squad members who pushed it across the finish line in 2026. That continuity of commitment is ultimately how a 40 year old murder results in an arrest. We'll continue to follow this case as additional details emerg emerge from this week's press conference and as extradition proceedings move forward from Virginia Beach. We go north to Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, a small city of about 15,000 people in Dodge county, roughly an hour northeast of Madison, and to a case that's one of the most disturbing we've covered this week because the evidence investigators gathered paints a picture that's almost too calculated to believe. Trying to lose weight can feel like a full time job, and even then, the results don't always match the effort. That's why weight loss by hers is built to actually work with your life, not against it. Hers now offers access to FDA approved GLP1 medications, including the Wegovy Pill and the Wegovy Pen. Wegovy helps regulate your appetite so you feel fuller, longer, making it easier to eat less and maintain results over time. 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On Friday, May 15, 2026, Dodge County Sheriff's deputies arrested 43 year old Aaron Nelson of Oakfield, Wisconsin. He's been charged with first degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse in connection with the disappearance of his wife, 42 year old Alexis Nelson. The two had been married for Alexis Nelson's body has not been found. The Dodge County Medical Examiner's office has confirmed there is no documentation of her death in the state of Wisconsin. What investigators have found in the more than a year since Alexis vanished and in the months of investigation work that followed is a trail of evidence that tells a deeply troubling story about what allegedly happened inside the couple's Beaver Dam apartment and what Aaron Nelson allegedly did in the days, weeks and months that followed. Let's start with what we know about Alexis. According to the criminal complaint, Aaron Nelson was allegedly physically and verbally abusive toward his wife. The abuse had not gone unaddressed. At some point prior to her disappearance, Alexis had filed a restraining order against Aaron following a domestic incident which forced him to temporarily move out and stay with a co worker. The couple's relationship was described by Alexis's mother as on and off. A neighbor, Carrie Piane, who lived near their Beaver Dam apartment, told WITI TV that she often heard arguing coming from inside the unit and that she rarely saw Alexis without Aaron present. Aaron also has a 21 year old daughter from a previous marriage who had lived with them during her teenage years. The last confirmed sighting of Aaron and Alexis together was the morning of March 29, 2025. Surveillance footage from a Quick Trip convenience store in Beaver Dam captured the couple that day. It was the last time anyone would see them together. Cell records show that Alexis's phone was later tracked moving toward Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, roughly 30 miles away. Then it went silent. Her phone stopped communicating with the local network entirely on May 21, 2025. According to the criminal complaint, the last text message from Alexis's phone to Aaron was sent at 6:44am on March 28. The day before that Quick Trip footage. The day after the Quick trip surveillance footage March 30, 2025, Aaron Nelson went to a Menards home improvement store in Beaver Dam and purchased a 32 gallon Rubbermaid trash can. On April 2nd, just four days after that last surveillance footage of him and Alexis together, Aaron Nelson did not show up for work. That same day, he created a new Facebook account under the name James Nelson and updated his relationship status to Widowed. He was telling people two different stories about what had happened to his wife. To some, he said Alexis had died from excessive alcohol abuse. To others, he said she had died of cancer. When law enforcement officers viewed his Facebook page in November 2025, his status still read Widowed, Alexis's family did not yet know any of this. On May 7, 2025, Alexis's mother received a text message that appeared to come from her daughter's number. It said in words prosec allege. Aaron said from Alexis's phone quote, been meaning to tell you that we moved to Missouri, end quote. Her mother tried to get a mailing address. Alexis never responded. The last message her mother received from Alexis's number was a happy mother's day text on May 11. Alexis's social media activity decreased around May 29, 2025. Not long after, the landlord of the couple's Beaver Dam apartment told investigators that Aaron Nelson had last leased the unit in May or June of 2025, and that he was gone. Meanwhile, Aaron Nelson had been building a new life with startling speed. On April 28, 2025, less than a month after that last quick trip footage, he created a Tinder account. Two days later, on April 30, he matched with a woman on the app. By the end of June, just weeks after Alexis's family last heard from her, Aaron had moved into his new girlfriend's home. At the end of October 2025, Alexis's mother contacted Beaver Dam police. She told them she hadn't heard from her daughter in six months. She described Aaron Nelson as controlling. A statewide missing person alert was issued on November 20, 2025. A missing person's flyer was posted publicly on February 6, 2026 by the Dodge County Sheriff's office and Beaver Dam police department, who stated they'd been investigating Alexis's disappearance for several months and were any public tips. The investigation had by that point already begun to build a case. Investigators executed a search warrant at the girlfriend's property in June 2025. Inside, they found the 32 gallon trash can Aaron had purchased at Menards in March. The trash can tested positive for Alexis Nelson's blood and contained evidence consistent with human decomposition. A cadaver dog brought to the property alerted near a shed where the trash can had been stored, indicating scent of decomposing human remains. When investigators interviewed Aaron Nelson's new girlfriend in December 2025, they noticed she was wearing an engagement ring. She told officers that Aaron had told her Alexis had died of cancer. That was the story he had given her from the beginning. When investigators looked more closely at the ring, they confirmed it belonged to Alexis Nelson. It was her wedding ring from her nearly 20 year marriage to Aaron. The evidence continued to compound. A search of the couple's former Beaver Dam apartment produced more, including blood matching Alexis's DNA and signs consistent with decomposition. A cadaver dog alerted in the bedroom, at the kitchen sink and in the trunk of his car. A search of a storage unit also yielded blood matching Alexis. And when investigators searched a vehicle formerly owned by Aaron Nelson, they found a gun and two knives, all of which tested positive for Alexis's DNA. A DNA comparison for Aaron Nelson himself had not yet been completed as of the criminal complaints filing. Aaron Nelson was arrested on Friday, May 15. He made his initial court appearance on Monday, May 18, in Dodge County Court. Dodge County District Attorney Andrea will requested a $1 million cash bond, noting that Nelson should have no contact with any witnesses listed in the criminal complaint. Court Commissioner Stephen Syme granted it. Nelson has a review hearing scheduled for May 27 and a preliminary hearing set for May 28. He's currently being held in the Dodge County Jail. The Dodge County Sheriff's Office released a statement acknowledging the difficulty of the case for Alexis's family and the community. Sheriff Dale Schmidt said, quote, the Dodge County Sheriff's Office recognizes that this investigation has been difficult for Alexis Nelson's family and many within the community because this matter is now before the court and out of respect for the family, the judicial process and the continued integrity of the investigation. No further details or comments will be released by law enforcement at this time. End quote. Beaver Dam police are still asking anyone with information on Alexis Nelson's whereabouts to contact the department at 920-356-2552. That's 920-356-2552. Alexis Nelson was 42 years old. She and Aaron had been married for nearly 20 years. She'd filed a restraining order against him. She had, by the accounts of people who knew the couple, rarely been seen without him. And somewhere between a quick trip convenience store on March 29 and a Mother's Day text on May 11, she disappeared. And no one has found her since. We'll continue to follow this case as it develops. Stay with us on crime house 24 7. In the suburbs of D.C. a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. 911 which emergency?
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We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.
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For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 202020 blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, before I let you go, you know we can't end without giving you a little something extra. Over on Murder True crime stories today, Carter Roy's diving into the case of the kidnapping and assassination of aldo Moro. On March 16, 1978, former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Morrow was kidnapped off a busy Rome street by the Red Brigade's terrorist group. His five bodyguards were killed in seconds. For 55 days, he wrote 86 letters begging for his life, while his own government called his death a spiritual victory. In this episode of Murder True Crime Stories, Carter Roy is joined by Dr. Harini Bhatt, host of Hidden History, to examine the assassination, the political forces that may have sealed Morrow's fate, and the questions that no official investigation has ever fully answered. We grabbed a clip from today's episode. Take a listen, and if you like what you hear, don't forget to follow Murder True Crime Stories.
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To understand why anyone would want Aldo Moro dead, you have to understand who he was. And to do that, you have to go back to the beginning. Aldo Moro was born on September 23, 1916, in the region of Puglia in southern Italy. Known as the country's boot heel, Puglia was one of the most underdeveloped parts of the country. Its people were among the poorest in all of Italy. But Aldo's parents had bigger plans for their son. His mother was a teacher, his father a school inspector. They understood the value of education, and they made sure Aldo did too. When he was five, the family relocated to the port city of Taranto, where the schools were better. And by the time he was 18, Aldo had graduated near the top of his class. He'd always been ambitious, always hungry to make a mark on the world. He just hadn't found his arena yet. After Aldo graduated, the family moved again, this time to Bari, the capital of Puglia and one of southern Italy's most important economic centers. It was there, surrounded by the noise and energy of real civic life, that Aldo found his call. Calling politics. Italy in the early 20th century was technically a democracy. But King Victor Emmanuel III still had a lot of influence over politics. In 1922, when Aldo was just six years old, the king appointed Benito Mussolini as Prime minister. What followed was a decades long fascist regime that reshaped the country from the inside out. Mussolini ruled through fear. He instituted a police state. Imprisoned critics, built a cult of personality around Roman imperial history and pulled Italy into conflicts it had no business fighting. For a young man growing up under this regime, it was hard to know any different. Like a lot of young Italians at the time, Aldo wasn't immediately turned off by Mussolini. In some ways, he was even impressed by Mussolini's ability to Project National Unity. So when Aldo enrolled at the University of Bari to study law, he joined a fascist student organization. It seemed like the natural thing to do. But Aldo had another defining trait that would eventually pull him in a different direction. He had grown up deeply Catholic and this wasn't a casual show up on Sunday kind of faith. It was the real thing. And the more he leaned into it, the more Mussolini's ideology started to feel like a problem. In 1935, 19 year old Aldo joined a second student group, the Italian Catholic Federation of University Students. Known by its Italian acronym F U C I F U C. The organization was run by the Catholic Church as a way to connect university students to their faith. And it stood in sharp contrast to the fascist group Aldo was also a member of. Mussolini's government was using fascist college groups to create a monopoly over education, deliberately shaping young men into loyal subjects of the state. The Fusi resisted that. They championed independent thought and allegiance to God. God, not government. And because the organization was backed by the Vatican, Mussolini couldn't touch it the way he did his other opponents. Under the fuses influence, Aldo began developing his own moral and political identity. He also met a friend who had come to define his entire life, a young Catholic priest named Giovanni Battista. And the more time Aldo spent within the Fusi, the more the fascist group lost its appeal. Eventually he dropped out of it altogether. It was a quiet act of conscience. But in Mussolini's Italy, choosing faith over fascism was never entirely without risk. By 1939, Aldo was about to graduate from the University of Bari and Montini, who had risen to become chief of staff to Pope Pius xii, had a new job for him. He wanted Aldo to serve as the national president of the FUSI in Rome. Aldo accepted. He moved to Rome, stepped into the role with confidence and privately he began envisioning what a truly democratic Italy might look like. He was still a few years away from having the power to build it. But the dream was already forming. In 1940, Mussolini allied Italy with Adolf Hitler and dragged the country into World War II. At the time it probably seemed like a winning bet. France and Belgium were crumbling. Mussolini thought Britain was next and he wanted a share of the spoils. He was wrong. Britain held held. The United States and the Soviet Union entered the war. By 1942 the Italian army was badly outmatched. That year, 26 year old Aldo was drafted. He resigned his Fusee presidency and left for war, leaving a young idealist named Giuliani Andreotti in his place. Remember that name. He'll come back into the story. Story, and not in a flattering way. In July 1943, Allied forces invaded Sicily. The Italian military had already suffered devastating losses in North Africa. There was no stopping what was coming. The blame fell on Mussolini, and King Victor Emmanuel III finally dismissed him as prime minister. After 20 years, the fascist regime was beginning to crack. That same month, Aldo, still technically in the army, helped lead a conference of Catholic intellectuals. They were trying to lay the groundwork for what Italy might become after the war. After a week of deliberation, the group published a document called the Code of Kaldoli. It was a sweeping blueprint for Italian economic policy, one that emphasized family, Catholic values and equality under the law, and support for the poor. It was a remarkable document for its time, and it gave Aldo something concrete to build on. In the months that followed. He co founded a newspaper in Bari called La Rosenha, or the Review, which promoted the code of Commandoli's ideas and gave a platform to center right thinkers. On September 8, 1943, Italy officially surrendered to the Allies. The long process of rebuilding began, and Aldo Moro wanted to be at the center of it. As new democratic institutions took shape, the Code of Camaldoli served as the ideological foundation for a new political party, the Christian Democrats. Aldo was one of its founding members. He also had some personal milestones. In 1945, he married a woman named Eleonora, who he'd met through the Fusci. She was an intellectual in her own right, studying Italian literature at the University of Rome, and they would go on to have four children together. And soon, Aldo got some more good news. In 1946, King Victor Emmanuel III abdicated the throne. Grown, Aldo was appointed vice president of the Christian Democracy Party. In the general election that year, he was elected to the Constituent assembly, the body tasked with drafting Italy's new constitution. Two years later, with the new government up and running, he was elected to the Italian Parliament and made Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. At 32 years old, Aldo Moro was no longer just a dream dreamer. He was a power player. Over the next 15 years, Aldo became one of the most formidable figures in Italian politics, which was no small feat. The country's political landscape was extraordinarily fractured. You had the centrist Christian Democrats, the left wing Italian Socialists and Communists, and the right wing Italian Social Movement made up of nostalgic former fascists. Navigating all of that required patience, strategic thinking and a willingness to make uncomfortable compromises. Aldo had all three. In 1960, he helped push out the conservative head of the Christian Democrats to build an alliance with the Socialist Party. It was a bold move and it worked. He became the party's new Leader. Leader in June 1963, Giovanni Battista Montini, the priest who had given Aldo his first major role, became the new Pope Paul vi. He promised reform, unity and the church focused on the poor. Six months later, 47 year old Aldo Moro was appointed Prime Minister, Minister of Italy. He and the Pope were making similar promises at the same moment in time. That wasn't a coincidence. They'd been building toward this together for decades. Aldo's first term as Prime Minister showed his potential and his limits. He built a coalition with the Italian Socialist Party, the first time they'd held real power since the post war period. But political infighting and rising inflation made it nearly impossible to push through the reforms he promised. By the end of his five years in office, the Christian Democrats were weaker than when he started. When Aldo left office in 1968, the Socialists and communists were gaining ground. The political right saw this happening and they were alive. What happened next tells you a lot about what Italy was up against in those years. And it sets the stage for everything that followed. On April 25, 1969, right wing terrorists, reportedly with support from the CIA, detonated a bomb inside a bank at the Piazza fontana in Milan. 17 people were killed, killed, 88 more were wounded. I want you to sit with that for a moment. A bomb inside a bank in the middle of a City, killing 17 people. This wasn't a fringe incident. It was the opening shot of what would become known as the years of lead, a roughly two decade period of political violence that tore through Italy from both the left and the right. And Aldo Moro was standing right in the middle of it.
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That's Carter Roy on Murder True Crime Stories. And that's just a taste. The full episode on the kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro is out right now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Just search Murder True crime stories and make sure you follow so you don't miss any episode. You've been listening to crime house 247 bringing you breaking crime news. I'm Vanessa Richardson. We'll be back Monday morning with more developing stories. Stay safe and thanks for listening. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes. Each week I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases in American history. Listen to and follow America's Most infamous crimes available now wherever you get your podcasts. Looking for your next listen? Check out hidden history with Dr. Harini Bhatt every Monday. Dr. Bhatt goes where history gets mysterious vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, and events that science still can't fully explain. Follow Hidden History now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.