Transcript
Ashley Flowers (0:00)
Hi, crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
Britt (0:03)
And I'm Britt.
Ashley Flowers (0:04)
And this is part two of our look into Rees Pocan's story. So if you haven't heard the first part, please go back and listen, because we're picking up right where we left off when our reporter Emily realizes that this case goes way beyond Reese, and she discovers a disturbing pattern of dismemberments turning up all around Wisconsin. This episode will focus on two of those other victims and everything that we could find out about their cases from loved ones, detectives, tribal chiefs, coroners, and police reports. This is the story of Ray Tordalot and Julia Baez. By searching through newspaper archives and public records databases, our reporter Emily started finding more dismemberment victims in Wisconsin. In the years so surrounding Reese's murder, at least 12 people, 11 of them women, were found whose heads or hands had been cut off during or after their murders. Now, a handful of these women are still unidentified, and most of the cases have never been solved.
Britt (1:41)
All in different jurisdictions?
Ashley Flowers (1:42)
For the most part, yes. Which we're thinking is maybe why no one has kind of looked at this holistically before. And, like, when you see this, we haven't come across something like this. Like, who are you supposed to tell? I mean, like, we have the most badass group of women here at Audio Check doing the absolute Lord's work. But, like, try calling up the FBI and saying that you have a podcast and there might be a serial killer.
Britt (2:04)
Right.
Ashley Flowers (2:05)
Honestly, it's going to be a little easier because Crime Junkie actually is pretty well known now. We have a lot of law enforcement fans like, thanks, guys, but other podcasts have made fools of themselves by calling the FBI, and they end up becoming the butt of, like, Internet jokes. So Emily tried reaching out to various FBI field offices in Wisconsin, but, like, only ever got connected with a PIO who then never even returned a call or an email. But undeterred, she, you know, compiles everything that she's found into a document that she sends off to Detective Hatch, who trusts her, and in turn, he sends it to the FBI field office in Milwaukee. And here is what was in that document. Our list begins in 1982, when the partial remains of a Jane Doe are found in Caledonia, which is in southeast Wisconsin. According to the Doe Project, they're still trying to identify her, but the woman was likely between 45 and 60 years old and had given birth at some point in her life. Then in March of 1983 in Racine, which, by the way, is just 11 miles from Caldonia. A woman's arms, hands and legs are found buried in a backyard. She's identified as 51 year old Helen Sebastian. I have truly become obsessed with Helen's case and I hope to bring you a whole episode on her one of these days. But today's not that day. So seven months after that, in October of 1983, dismembered partial remains of a man are found in Petrifying Springs park in Kenosha county, a mere 15 minutes south of where Helen's dismembered body was found. This person is identified as 18 year old Eric Hansen. He's our only male victim. Now, in May 1984, in Vernon county, which is western Wisconsin, a woman is found lying on the side of a gravel road a few miles outside of the town of Westby with her hands cut off and major trauma to her head. She has still never been identified, but she was likely in her 60s and wore dentures. That's what they know about her. And her hands have still never been found. Thirty minutes west of there, in February 1985, 24 year old Terry Dalloway is found decapitated and on fire in a rural part of Vernon County. Now, Terry's case was unsolved, but there actually was a break in the case in the fall of 2024 when charges were brought against a man named Michael Pop. Now, he pleaded not guilty in January of this year actually. So like, developments in her case are actively underway. Unclear if Pop is a suspect in any other cases. If this is like the outlier on all of this, I don't know. It's still actively unfolding. Then in spring of 1987, indigenous woman Rae Tortelotte's dismembered body is found on the Menominee reservation in northern Wisconsin. Then in the summer of 1989, we know Reese vanishes from Milwaukee and then her remains are found in Sheboygan county and then the Vernon Marsh area in Waukesha County. The next comes on Thanksgiving Day, 1990. That's when the clothes and skeletal remains of a Jane Doe are found by deer hunters in Price County. Through dental records, they're identified as belonging to Susan Poopart, who is an indigenous woman who vanished from a reservation in northern Wisconsin six months prior to being found. Now, Susie's story has a lot of twists and turns. Our reporters became really interested in it while researching these cases. So that's the one I'm actually going to be covering on the Deck, which again is the other weekly podcast I Host. So just keep an eye out for that one as well. Also in the fall of 1990, a Jane Doe's dismembered remains are found buried in a number of plastic bags near Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Her torso is buried in one bag. Her limbs are buried in a separate bag. Her head is never found. And this woman is later identified as Julia Baez. And I'm going to tell you about her case in this episode. But after her. In 1991, a woman's body is found with severed hands at the Goose Lake Wildlife Preserve in Dane County, Wisconsin. Her hands had been cut off and are later found in Walworth County. She's laid to rest as a Jane Doe, but later identified as Doris McLeod. A man convicted of sex trafficking has long been suspected in the teenager's murder. Then, in October 2002, Boy Scouts find the skull and lower mandible of a Jane Doe in a ravine in St. Croix county, which is like far western Wisconsin. And authorities have said that they likely belong to a Native American woman between the ages of 35 and 50. And then lastly, in 2021, you heard that, right? 2021, a skull is discovered in Oneida County, Wisconsin, where. Which is found way up north, not far from Viless County. The skull is missing a lower jawbone. And last I heard, investigators are working with anthropologists to determine who it could have belonged to. But a source told us that they thought that this person could have been Native American. And here's the wild part. So that is our list that we're working with. One of the women on that list, the one I said I'm going to be covering. Ray Tortolot. She's Reese Pocan's cousin.