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Kelly Dee Wilson (10 of Spades, Ohio)
00:34:42
R&B radio fans in Dayton, Ohio, knew Kelly Dee Wilson as her on air name Nikki Brooks. When Wilson turned up murdered in her apartment after her show in March 2000, the community was shocked.
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- [00:01]
A
Hi, Crime Junkies, it's Britt. If you're like me and you're ready to dive into even more cases, there's another podcast I think you're gonna love. Park Predators. In Park Predators, host Delia d' Ambrett dives into the haunting crimes that happen in some of the most beautiful and unexpected places across the globe. Delia has helped host a couple of episodes of Crime Junkie in the past, and if you've listened to her before, you already know her investigative approach brings the facts of each case and their chilling details to life, making Park Predators the perfect mix of captivating and informative storytelling. So once you're done with this episode of Crime Junkie, go check out Park Predators. New episodes drop every week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:44]
B
Hi crime Junkies. If you listened to Monday's episode on Nikki McCowan, then you already know why I'm dropping in your feed today and what's coming. If you haven't, let me give you the Scoop. Back in 2022, I covered the story of Kelly D. Wilson out of Dayton, Ohio for my other podcast, the Deck. It is a bizarre and unsettling case that still remains unsolved. Well, as we were reinvestigating Nikki McCown's case, guess whose name popped up in the case reports that we got? Kelly D. Wilson. Now, the mention is just a one off that isn't given much attention in the report I have, but it was hard for me to ignore, mostly because the apartment complex where Kelly lived and died is the same one Nikki's missing vehicle was found at the following year. It doesn't mean there is a connection, but I think any investigator, and therefore any crime junkie, would be remiss if you didn't know the facts of both cases. So for those of you who don't listen to the Deck every week, first of all, start. But here you go. I'm dropping Kelly's case right here in the Crime Junkie feed. You can listen before or after you listen to Nikki's case. Doesn't matter. And by the way, if you want to listen ad free, you can find the deck in the Crime Junkie fan club. But when you finish both, come chat with me either in the fan club app or on social and tell me what you think. Could there be a connection? Listen close so you don't miss any of the key details. Our card this week is Kelly d. Wilson, the 10 of spades from Ohio. Kelly D. Wilson was a young woman whose life and career as a rising star on radio was tragically cut short with few clues left behind to piece together the mystery. What happened to Kelly at the start of the new millennium shocked her fans. It horrified her family, and it left detectives baffled to this very day. Telling her story to a wider audience might be the spark investigators need to kickstart their work and to bring whoever took her life to justice. I'm Ashley Flowers and this is the Deck. Monday, March 25, 2000 was the start of a new week at U92 radio, also known as WROU, in Dayton, Ohio, just three months after worldwide Y2K fears had calmed and people in the entertainment and broadcast industry realized the world was not going to end. The vice president of the station, Stan Boston, spent most days buzzing around the office feeling really good about the channel's pretty programming. U92 was known as an R B station, so back then the channel played bands and artists like Boyz II Men, Destiny's Child and Missy Elliott, who were all topping the R B and contemporary music charts. And singers like Mariah Carey and JLo were helping blur the genre lines between pop and R b. And because DJs at Stan Station were also playing those artists all the time, the channel just kept gaining more and more in popularity with listeners across the across Ohio. Stan credited a lot of U92's recent success to one of his biggest disc jockeys, Nikki Brooks. Nikki was just an on air name, though the real woman behind the name was 29 year old Kelly D. Wilson. Kelly hosted a weekday evening show called Jammin ate at 8 and listeners loved her. U92 had scooped up Kelly from a station in her nearby hometown of Cincinnati about a year earlier, and from the moment she hit the airwaves in Dayton, listeners tuned in regularly for any programming she was a part of. People were just drawn to Kelly's on air energy and confident voice. Fans could tell she genuinely loved her job in the music she played. Kelly was dedicated to her work in building the station's branding around her DJ personality, Nikki Brooks. So that's why Stan, her boss, was confused around 7pm on Monday when Kelly hadn't shown up for her shift yet. She was never late and she usually got to the station right at seven to prepare for her show, which went on air at 8. Now Stan didn't panic right away. He figured maybe she was just having car trouble or had gotten stuck in traffic. So he waited. But by 7:20 he really started to worry. Tons of questions were swirling around in his mind. Did Kelly have an unforeseen family emergency? Why Would she be flaking? But no matter what, Stan knew the station would need to be prepared to fill her show's airtime with, you know, a rerun, maybe a syndicated program, or worst case scenario, call in a substitute host last minute to keep their programming going. Stan looked up the phone number for Kelly's apartment landline and gave it a ring, but no one answered. Next, he called Kelly's mom, Charlene, who lived in Cincinnati. He knew that Kelly was super close with her mom and he figured she might know where her daughter was or at least be able to explain why Kelly had just ghosted her shift. But when Charlene answered, she told Stan that she had no clue where Kelly was or why she failed to show up to work. She also said that Stan's call made her very worried because she'd actually been trying to call Kelly the day before on Sunday but hadn't been able to reach her. Stan tried to keep Charlene calm and said, you know what? I'll just go over to Kelly's apartment to check on her. This was actually no big deal for Stan because coincidentally, he lived in the same apartment complex as Kelly and knew exactly where her unit was. The community they lived in was called the Meadows, and it was in a part of the city known as Harrison Township. The Meadows complex is still there today and it's one of those apartment building layouts where there's several residential buildings sprawled around a pool with an office and a clubhouse, which are sort of the hub of everything. And it also has an on site bar and social hub. When Stan drove over to Kelly's place after talking with Charlene, he arrived by like 7:30pm and the first thing he saw was her car parked in its space, which he thought was kind of weird because that seemed to indicate that Kelly was home for some reason and just had not been answering her phone. He went up to the door, jiggled the knob and realized it was locked. So he knocked a few times, but Kelly didn't answer and there weren't any sounds coming from inside that indicated she was making her way to the door or anything. Stan went to the front office, but no one was there working. So he decided that his only other option to try and get someone on staff to help him was to go to the on site bar and see if the bartender could get ahold of someone. The bartender called a maintenance man who agreed to come over, but he said there was no way he was going to be able to just let Stan waltz into Kelly's unit and look around. That would be way against policy. Stan explained to the bartender and maintenance guy that he and Kelly's family were really worried about her because no one had heard from her in two days. So they came to a compromise in order not to break their company policy and just let Stan take a peek. The staff ended up calling the police, who offered to come by and do a welfare check at Kelly's unit. A few minutes later, a Montgomery county sheriff's deputy named Johnny Campbell heard the call come in over his patrol car's radio, and he headed over, just like when Stan had knocked on Kelly's door. When deputy Campbell rapped on it a few times, no one answered. So he used the maintenance man's key to open the door and go inside. To help explain what happened next, our team went to Dayton and interviewed Montgomery county sheriff's detective Melanie Phelps. Detective Phelps is currently in charge of Kelly's case, and sometimes you'll hear her switch between calling Kelly by her real name and her on air name, Nikki. Throughout this episode, he let himself in.
- [08:40]
C
With a key and announced, you know, sheriff's office. You know, is anybody here? Sheriff's office. Is anybody here? It's not a very big apartment. So as he went through, he then located Kelly on the floor, deceased, and made sure that everybody got, you know, stayed out, secured the scene, and called the supervisors and the detectives.
- [08:57]
B
According to what Phelps knows from reading through the case file, Kelly lived in a one bedroom apartment, and her living room, dining room, and kitchen were all in an open floor plan. There weren't walls separating those rooms, but to access the bathroom, you had to actually walk through Kelly's bedroom. And that is where deputy Campbell found Kelly's body, about halfway off the side of her bathtub.
- [09:20]
C
She was laying on her stomach in the bathroom, and she had on just a robe and her bra and a T shirt. She didn't have anything on below the waist.
- [09:31]
B
According to crime scene reports filed at the time, there wasn't much blood on or around Kelly's body, so it wasn't immediately clear to the police how she died. But one detail the investigators noticed right away was fecal matter. It was on Kelly. It was around the bathroom and back in her bedroom on her bed. Now, fecal matter being in the bathroom itself wasn't super strange. I mean, it's a bathroom, after all. But the fact that it was also found on the bed indicated to authorities that they may have been looking at a scenario where Kelly had originally been killed on her bed. Then fecal matter from either her, her or her Killer became present there, and then she was moved to her bathroom. They also had to consider the possibility, too, that the fecal matter may have originated in the bathroom, and then the killer left traces of it in the bedroom. Post crime, the sequence of events couldn't be determined for sure just by where the matter was found, but it gave police the ability to theorize another glaring clue. Police found near Kelly's body were residues from cleaning supplies, which appeared to be an attempt by someone to cover up the crime. During her interview with us, Detective Phelps wouldn't say specifically what kind of cleaning products had been used, but she said it was likely something Kelly had under her sink and not a chemical that the killer had brought with them to the scene.
- [10:47]
C
We just know there was cleanup at the scene or attempted cleanup at the scene.
- [10:51]
B
After discovering Kelly's body, detectives collected some of her clothes and other items from her room and bathroom as well. Evidence and were able to lift fingerprints from surfaces in those areas. One of the big things that puzzled investigators was that there seemed to be no signs of forced entry or like a break in. No broken windows, no damaged locks, nothing. The absence of those things caused police to think two things. Either the killer had a key to get in, or Kelly willingly let them in. And nowhere in the apartment had things been viciously tossed around or turned over. But there were a few little things that authorities had a hard time deciphering the meaning of.
- [11:32]
C
It was definitely not ransacked. There was one cupboard door that was open. Her purse was on the counter in the kitchen, and it looked as though somebody had picked her purse up and kind of shaken it because there were coins that had gone on the counter and on the floor. She had a very tall, like, jewelry armoire, and that was not opened. She still was wearing jewelry. So I don't believe it had anything to do with robbery. Nothing seemed to be missing of value from the apartment.
- [12:02]
B
When Stan and another radio station employee who joined him at the scene were told Kelly was dead, they were shocked by the news. They confirmed for investigators by looking at a photo that it was in fact Kelly who had been found in the apartment. So pretty much from hour one of the investigation, detectives never had a question about who their victim was. But they did have a bizarre mystery to unravel about how she died. While this was all happening, Kelly's mom, Charlene, sent her son Craig up to Dayton from Cincinnati to see what was going on with Kelly. Cincinnati is only about a half hour south of Dayton, so it didn't take Craig long to get there. And when he got to Kelly's apartment building, he saw police everywhere and quickly learned that his sister was gone. He went back to Cincinnati and had to break the heart wrenching news to his family.
- [12:56]
C
I think it was probably hard. Her mom was probably hard for her because her baby now had, you know, wasn't super far away, but her daughter was, you know, had her own place now and had moved up there for a new job. And it was kind of exciting. So, you know, she just wanted to make sure that her baby girl was.
- [13:12]
B
It didn't take long before the news of Kelly's death spread through the community. And people who were avid listeners of her radio program began to publicly mourn her loss alongside her loved ones. Fans in Dayton idolized Kelly. And according to Detective Phelps, the crime affected hundreds, even thousands of people who felt like they had a personal connection with her, even though they maybe just listened to her over the radio for a few hours a day.
- [13:36]
C
So back then, the radio celebrities were actually like a celebrity here in Dayton. And people would. It was like they would see an actress or something if you were out and about and somebody that you.
- [13:49]
B
Oh, it's so and so.
- [13:50]
C
It's so and so. It was like building them up or they were on some kind of pedestal or something. So it was very high end to be that well known on the radio here in Dayton at the time.
- [14:01]
B
The day after Kelly's body was discovered, 92.1 FM got flooded with phone calls from fans who wanted to share their grief. Other show hosts sat in on Kelly's show and dedicated it to her, playing calls from fans and airing songs that they knew Kelly liked. Listeners could hear her co workers choking up on air as they played One Sweet Day by Mariah Carey in honor of Kelly. It would take some time before the coroner in Montgomery county would have the results of Kelly's autopsy. So during the first 24 to 48 hours of the investigation, they couldn't technically call her death a murder. But in their hearts, just due to the certain factors that they'd observed at the crime scene, they knew that they were dealing with a highly suspicious death, which more than likely would end up being a homicide. The first thing detectives started to do to get a better idea of what Kelly had been doing the weekend she died or who'd last seen her, was to check her work records and interview her friends and family. They learned that Kelly had for sure gone to work on Friday, March 24, and she had hosted her R and B show, jammin ate at 8 until midnight. You Tell me loud and proud, what station is your radio on? Always locked on. You got it. Nothing out of the ordinary happened while Kelly was at work on Friday. As for Saturday, according to a man detectives tracked down who'd been casually dating Kelly at the time, he said that he'd been over at her apartment that night to have a few drinks with her and one of his buddies. After drinks, he said the group left Kelly's place and went to a party at a woman named Tammy's house. Tammy was a co worker of Kelly's and people who attended that house party were mostly employees, employees of the radio station and their friends. According to several witnesses who were there and two guys who'd arrived with her. Kelly's fun at the party didn't last long.
- [15:42]
C
She was not there very long. She showed up with two individuals and they kind of hung out at the party. Apparently she had been drinking prior to going to the party. And the two guys went downstairs into the basement and they were watching some football or sports. I'm not sure exactly what they were watching. And then I guess she maybe became a little too intoxicated and so they decided that they were going to take her home. So she didn't want to go home at first, but they were kind of like, you know, we really don't want to be here any longer, so they went ahead and took her on back to her apartment.
- [16:15]
B
According to police reports, it was at about 11pm when the two men said that they left Tammy's and drove Kelly back to her apartment. After that, these two guys told police that they decided to hit up some bars. The bars they wanted to go to were fairly close to Kelly's apartment. So for them it was an easy decision to just drop her off and then head out for more drinks on their own. Back in 2000, the two popular nightclubs nearby were Tiffany's and then another dive called Frogs. Both of these places were known for late night dancing, drinks and music. They first went to Tiffany's and when they arrived, they ran into Tammy, Kelly's co worker who'd thrown the house party. By that time, the house party had moved to the clubs and guests were bouncing between Tiffany's and friends. Frogs. According to Tammy's statement to police, when she saw the two guys who'd been with Kelly, she checked in with them to find out if Kelly had said anything about maybe sobering up some and trying to come back out to join the group.
- [17:07]
C
That was a coincidence when the girl who threw the house party said, oh, is Nikki here with you it was very loud in the club and he was like, she's not here. And then kind of kept walking. They didn't have much interaction other than the fact that he mentioned, no, she was not with them.
- [17:23]
B
Sometime after midnight, after Tammy talked to the guys at the bar, Kelly started blowing up Tammy's pager. Data from Tammy's pager showed that Kelly paged her several times using the landline at her apartment. Tammy told police that she had used a phone at one of the clubs to call Kelly. When Kelly picked up, she insisted that Tammy or one of the men she'd been hanging out with earlier come back to her apartment and get her because she wanted to keep partying. Tammy said she didn't feel super comfortable with sending those guys back to get Kelly because she didn't know them all that well.
- [17:53]
C
She had spoken to Kelly around the same time that she saw those two gentlemen at the club. So she said she had been a little leery of the two individuals because she didn't know who they were. But when she saw them out and talked to Nikki, she felt better because, oh, okay, I know that she's home and I know they're here.
- [18:11]
B
Police were faced with a big gap in their timeline. As far as they knew, the last people to physically see Kelly were the two guys who dropped her off at home at around 11pm but the last person to actually talk to Kelly was Tammy.
- [18:24]
C
The detectives at the time start talking to all of her friends and trying to make a timeline. Who was the last person that saw her? What did she do? How intoxicated was she? Did she see anybody else after she got home from the party? Clearly something else happened. What that something else was, we don't know. It doesn't seem as though anyone knows exactly who stopped by or would have gone to her house or if she let somebody in.
- [18:52]
B
Based on everyone they talked to, detectives learned that Kelly was a welcoming person, especially to people she knew.
- [18:59]
C
Everyone just says that everybody loved her. They don't know why anybody would have hurt her. She was, you know, up and coming and very social and she was friends with everybody, so she wouldn't have been like, no, you can't come over, or something along those lines. She would have probably anyone that she actually knew would have led into the apartment.
- [19:20]
B
When detectives inventoried the evidence they'd processed from the crime scene, they realized they'd never found Kelly's keys in her apartment. That only reinforced investigators theory that whoever killed Kelly had taken her keys with them when they left the crime scene.
- [19:34]
C
The Door was locked. There was no force entry, so that individual somehow relocked the door. Now, her keys were not located, but you couldn't lock it from the inside and pull it shut, so it had to be locked from the outside. That says that she knew who it was. She let them into the apartment.
- [19:53]
B
By late Monday night into Tuesday morning, police had assembled a fairly clear picture of what Kelly's weekend had looked like leading up to Sunday morning. But they still felt like they needed to get more from the two men she'd been with before and after leaving Tammy's house party. Now, police knew from talking with Tammy that the guys had been at Tiffany's Club late into the night, Saturday and I early Sunday morning. And Tammy herself knew that Kelly was alive and well when she talked to her shortly after midnight. So the men clearly had alibis for the hours of 11pm to roughly 12:30am but investigators needed to pin down their whereabouts for after that point in time. According to Detective Phelps, law enforcement's thinking at the time was that when these men dropped Kelly off, either they or Kelly had access to her keys to get inside her apartment. What they had to figure out is if either the men had kept Kelly's keys or perhaps remembered anyone else lurking around the unit where they left her.
- [20:46]
C
She kind of had known everybody from about the same amount of time, but the people from the party had never seen those two individuals before. So they right away were thinking, okay, there's two guys we've never seen before, so this is a little shady. So, of course, they were two that they wanted to talk to right away.
- [21:05]
B
Both men, one of which, again, was someone Kelly was sort of dating at the time, agreed to cooperate with the authorities and answer whatever questions they could. They both admitted once again that they were with Kelly before, during, and after the house party. But they insisted that when they dropped Kelly off at her apartment shortly after 11pm on Saturday, she was very much alive. The guy who had kind of been dating Kelly at the time, who we're going to call Joe, said that earlier on Saturday, he and Kelly had consensual sex before being joined by his friend to hang out to police. Joe seemed genuinely distraught when he learned Kelly had been killed, and he even reached out to Kelly's mom saying how sorry he was for her loss. He said even though he'd only gotten to know Kelly for a short period of time, he really liked her. Joe and his buddy were both able to provide police with solid alibis for early Sunday morning. They told detectives that after they dropped Kelly off and went back out to the clubs. They each ended up going home with other girls. When investigators interviewed those women to corroborate the men's stories, the women vouched for them. So that was kind of the end of that as far as looking at them as suspects. With not much else to go on, when the results of Kelly's autopsy came in, it was a welcome bit of information for investigators. In order to keep the case from stalling, the Montgomery county coroner had examined Kelly's body and found some critical clues that allowed detectives to finally label Kelly's death a homicide.
- [22:27]
C
And they noticed several blunt force trauma injuries. Now, it was not anything horrific. It wasn't any kind of bloody scene or anything along those lines, but they make note of every little mark that is on her, all of the different cuts or whatever inside her mouth. She had bitten the inside of her cheek and had some injuries on her face, like the side of her mouth. She had a little bruise on the side of her temple, and you could see on the back of her. Her neck. There were some red marks and a little bit of bruising on her neck as well.
- [23:03]
B
The consensus between the pathologist and police was that more than likely, Kelly's killer had strangled her to death sometime Sunday morning. But as far as what time, they weren't exactly sure. Investigators believe the killer used his bare hands because there was no bruising or ligature marks on Kelly's neck that indicated a rope or any kind of binding had been used. Something particularly frustrating was that the coroner was unable to determine if Kelly had been sexually assaulted before she was murdered. Now, authorities knew, based on what Joe had told them, that he and Kelly had had sex at some point in the 24 hours before she was killed. But based on the autopsy findings, there was no way to tell for sure if she'd been sexually assaulted at the time of her murder. And Detective Phelps said she couldn't provide any information about that to protect the integrity of the active attempt investigation. In the end, the coroner listed Kelly's official manner of death as homicide, with a cause of death as asphyxiation. When officials confirmed Kelly's death was, in fact, a murder, it sent another ripple of shock and fear through the Dayton community. It also ratcheted up the pressure on police to identify and arrest whoever was responsible, because people in the area were terrified that a monster was out there on the loose, able to strike again if they wanted.
- [24:18]
A
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- [25:35]
B
On Saturday, April 1, six days after Kelly was killed, her friends and family held a memorial service for her at Omega Baptist Church in Dayton. One hundred and fifty people showed up to share stories and memories of Kelly, according to an article in the Dayton Daily News. The radio station president was there and talked about how Kelly had a natural ability to connect with listeners. You could hear her smile through the radio, she said. Another co worker told a story about how when she'd first started, Kelly had to tape the name Nikki Brooks near her microphone in the studio to so she would remember her tagout. She had gone by a different on air name in Cincinnati, so she didn't want to slip up and accidentally use her old moniker. Detectives spent the rest of that year collecting DNA samples from people who were with Kelly prior to her death, most of which consented to giving swabs for investigative purposes. They wanted to compare those individuals genetic profiles to items of evidence from the crime scene, specifically Kelly's robe, T shirt and the bra she was wearing. Detective Phelps said the results from the comparison testing on DNA samples taken at the time didn't point to anyone they didn't already know had been in Kelly's apartment. In other words, there were no unknown DNA Profiles found on the items. There were also no DNA profiles of known suspects whose DNA was in a place it shouldn't have been, like in blood, for example. Phelps couldn't provide our team with additional information she had regarding the DNA, like if the fecal matter came back to someone else other than Kelly. And you can spiral on this one all day. I did. I went around and around thinking about what it would mean if it were Kelly's, or more, what it would mean if it wasn't, since no unknown DNA was found. But the truth is, only the investigators know. In order to keep things moving at the time, without much forensic evidence to work off of, police had to rely on tips from the community. They worked. A handful of leads that came in from people calling, saying stuff like so and so was acting, like, weird when someone brought up Kelly's murder, and just other general community rumors. But by the start of 2001, nothing had materialized. Police couldn't find anyone who disliked her or had any problems with her. So without suspects or a motive, the case stalled. The Montgomery County Sheriff's office preserved evidence in storage, and detectives continued to investigate. But not much happened with the case until 2004. That year, a tip led police to get a search warrant for a man's DNA in Georgia. Sheriff's detectives had never publicly said what information specifically led them to pursue this warrant or even who the man was. But in the end, investigators compared his profile to their evidence and didn't get a match. After that fizzled out, a lot of the people in Dayton who were still hoping the case would regain traction began speculating that perhaps Kelly had fallen victim to someone who had been a little too big of a fan of her on her radio show. Essentially a stalker.
- [28:28]
C
Some of her co workers said, you know, she was very friendly, and there were people that flirted with her a lot because she's absolutely beautiful. So nothing that seemed out of the ordinary or extreme. So she hadn't made any, like, complaints.
- [28:41]
A
To police about any particular person?
- [28:42]
C
No, she had not.
- [28:44]
B
The stalker theory never really took hold with investigators because they felt strongly that whoever had attacked and killed Kelly actually knew her or at the very least, had been familiar enough to her that she would have let them into her apartment dressed only in her robe, a bra, and a T shirt. She didn't have anything on below the waist when she was found. But we don't know, based on what police have shared with us, whether or not they think that's because Kelly had been partially undressed by her killer or if she'd been in that state prior to her murder. But the fact remained she was clearly in a comfortable state of dress when whoever killed her got in inside her apartment. The next update in the case didn't come until 2006, when a sheriff's office detective told the Dayton Daily News that there was a, quote, real big lead in the case, but he wouldn't provide specifics. Kelly's mom, Charlene, was interviewed for that same story and told the reporter that she just wanted to know who killed her daughter and why. According to Detective Phelps, despite the hype around that announcement, nothing significant developed in the case over the next several years. It was in 2012 that Detective Phelps decided to start investigating Kelly's murder in her spare time, and she immediately felt a sense of burden to take it on full time.
- [29:59]
C
One of our other detectives had been talking about the case, and it. And I was like, oh, that's very interesting. When I was a beat cop just in Harrison, that was in my beat, and then that was my beat when I was a detective. So it was my area. I'm very familiar with it. And I just think you can't give up on these kinds of cases. Families need closure. So whenever I could sneak one of the cases out and start looking into it and taking some notes and becoming more involved, I would anytime I could. Sometimes I love to go through and look at pictures over and over again. There's been several other cases that I've worked that after looking at the Pictures for the 50th time, I'll notice something that I never noticed before before. Then I'll go, oh, oh, I'm going to have that sent to the lab. So then I'll get back out, you know, and have evidence technicians send that over to the lab. So I go over them and over them and over them until I really get every last little speck of the picture in my head.
- [30:55]
B
In recent years, Detective Phelps has sent old DNA samples to undergo newer, more targeted testing with the hopes that her department can get a match on some DNA found on Kelly's clothing. If a DNA match doesn't come back, Detective Phelps said it will take a tip from someone who saw something noteworthy in Kelly's apartment complex the night of the crime to help law enforcement solve the case. Even though a long shot like that seems like a pipe dream, Phelps hasn't lost hope that just one small detail could change everything, even 22 years later.
- [31:28]
C
That's why we're hoping maybe somebody saw something in the parking lot. Lot or. I mean, they're Big buildings over there. You know, maybe a neighbor thought, oh, I heard something, and I looked out, and I saw, you know, somebody, you know, get into a blue car or something. Along those lines, just a little bit of something more is kind of what we're looking for. Any valuable suspects there are, however, I think that we need to rely on some more technology because we didn't have it as well back in 2000. There's always new technology coming out, so I'm always resending things to the lab to try to be tested, you know, again and again and again, or try a different method or something along those lines to just try to spark a new lead. But it's totally solvable. I have every faith in this one, and I think it's coming. I really do. I think that somebody somewhere is going to say, you know what? Remember, she used to live next door to me, or she used to live, you know, here. And I remember when that happened, and this guy was being weird or something, you know?
- [32:30]
B
Though they can't say for sure, police lean toward believing that the suspect is a man because the case lacks any other strong motive, meaning it was likely sexual. The hardest thing for Phelps is knowing that year after year, Kelly's family has endured continual heartbreak over losing Kelly and has never had any answers surrounding the circumstances that led to her murder. In 2017, Dayton TV station WHIO interviewed Kelly's sister, Jamie Powell. Here's a clip of what she had to say regarding what a hole Kelly's absence has left in her life, thinking.
- [33:03]
D
What may have become of her. You know, she would have saw my children grow up and how much she would have adored them. And the new grandbaby. I mean, that's when it really hits home that nothing's been solved. Nothing. It's still like an open wound.
- [33:18]
B
That's why Detective Phelps keeps pushing, keeps trying, keeps turning over every loser belief in the case. She realizes the deafening silence and dead ends that surround Kelly's case is just too much to bear for her family.
- [33:33]
C
I mean, if that was my daughter, if that was my sister, then I would want somebody to keep trying. So I just kind of always look at it that way. Somebody's crying, somebody's upset, somebody lost a loved one. How can you just go, eh, oh, well, it seems hard. So, I mean, you just got to keep trying. What's it gonna hurt to keep trying?
- [33:53]
B
One thing Phelps and the other investigators who have worked this case continually grapple with is the fact that Kelly was home alone. It was late. She'd been drinking and was in her bathrobe. All of those things tell police that Kelly was comfortable when her killer came over. The fact that the door was locked meant whoever had killed her took the time to manually lock the door as they were leaving. Because Detective Phelps says that Kelly had one of those locks that you can't just easily lock from the inside before leaving. Like you couldn't lock it before shutting it and then leave. You had to shut it and then put a key in the knob and turn the lock once you were outside. So was her killer someone she knew? Someone she felt so comfortable around that she would let them into her apartment after midnight while wearing her bathrobe? Or did someone have a key to her apartment? Police said they cleared the maintenance employees of the apartment complex early on in the investigation, so it's unlikely the killer was a worker at the Meadows. Police believe that whoever killed Kelly took her keys, locked her apartment door on their way out, and that person still has her keys. Or they could have disposed of them after the murder. The tough thing about this case is that finding the answers to all of those questions hasn't been easy. And it may never be easy, especially because challenges always present themselves as more and more time passes. For example, when our team was on the ground reporting in Dayton for this episode, our reporter had a hard time even finding clips of Kelly's old radio shows. We wanted to share more of her voice with you, but the station that she worked for was purchased by a different media company in 2004, and executives there told us that shows prior to 2004 were wiped from the archive. That little bit of audio that we could get of her was from an archived news package for WHIO that just happened to have a snippet of Kelly's voice as a DJ in it. Despite Kelly having one of the most popular voices on radio in Dayton at one time, it's sad there's nothing out there commemorating her legacy as a budding radio star and a beloved young woman in the Dayton community. Please if you know any about Kelly D. Wilson's murder in Dayton, Ohio, in March 2000, call the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office at 937-225-6479, or you can email Detective Phelps directly at phelpsmcohiriff.org. The Deck is an audio track production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com so what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Hi, crime junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers.
- [36:44]
A
And I'm Britt okay, so you know.
- [36:45]
B
How we always say question everything?
- [36:47]
A
Literally everything?
- [36:49]
B
Well, 13th Der is built for that energy. Brandi Churchwell tackles some seriously controversial trials and breaks them down piece by piece. Prosecution, defense, and the evidence the jury didn't get to hear.
- [37:01]
A
And those missing pieces could just be the answer we've all been looking for.
- [37:05]
B
So if you're the kind of crime junkie who is not afraid to rethink a verdict or challenge the narrative, then 13th juror is your next listen, like, immediately. You guys can find 13th juror now, wherever you get your podcasts.