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A
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Crimly Obsessed. I'm Ann Emerson. St. Patrick's Day is coming up, and it's supposed to be the luckiest day of the year, but for a young mom in Ohio, it was her last. Casey Pitzer was born in a tiny rural town in Ohio, and on St. Patrick's Day, 13 years ago, she put on her new cowboy boots and headed out to the local bars, ready to blow off a little steam with her girlfriends. But Casey never made it back home. And the only clue to what really happened to the young mom was her teal green cowboy boots found by a retention pond not far from her body. The investigation into her death left her father cold. I'm here today with Greg Pitzer, Casey's dad, and Daryl Petrie, who is the Pitzer family advocate. Beyond local news coverage, no one's really delved into this case until now. Our criminally obsessed documentary, Dead Silence, the Casey Pitzer Investigation, is coming out March 6th. So let's get into it. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. The documentary was incredibly powerful, and you both speak so eloquently about Casey and what happened. Greg, you're Casey's father. Tell me what kind of girl she was.
B
My daughter was a very good daughter. She was a very good kid. Never cried, always real good. Straight student, worked, raised two kids by herself, bought her house by herself, and just everything was working out good for her.
A
Tell me about where you live a little bit. Where.
B
Where.
A
Where your family hails from?
C
We.
B
We live there in Wilmington. Port William. Port William. Little town out of Wilmington.
A
How long have you lived in Wilmington in that area?
B
57 years.
C
Oh.
A
So I guess in a small town that you've been in for 57 years, everybody sort of knows everybody, right?
B
I do.
C
It seems that way, yeah.
B
Yeah.
C
It's. You run into a lot of people that you know, and. Yep. Casey. She didn't have any type of, like, troubled past or any type of criminal convictions. No, he was. She was a responsible person, and it was just another responsible evening. I mean, I know she's portrayed as, like, this stumbling drunk, but the. The video contradicts that.
B
Right.
A
Well, Daryl, how did you get involved in this case?
C
I heard about Greg's daughter's case, and I reached out to Greg, and he met with me, and he provided me with this. This evidence here, and I started looking at it, and it didn't take me long to realize, like, this is a big problem. Greg looked at me and he said, what would you do if this was your daughter? Darrell. And, and I told him, I said, you know, I'll. I will treat this like it was my own child's case. And I have, for the last four years, I've. I've treated this like it was my own. And I think that would be. It would be very helpful if people could just jump in this man's shoes and say, what if this was my child? What. What extent would I go to get to the truth? And, you know, lawfully get to the truth? And that, and that's why I jumped into this and that's why I've kept my nose to the ground on this, is because I promised them I would treat it like it was my own child's case.
A
Yeah, I mean, you would go to the ends of the earth, right?
C
You wouldn't.
A
It's like you have too, Greg. You've gone. I would do the same thing as a mom.
C
Like, I felt terrible for him because he was telling me the stories about how he would fight him and how he would challenge it and how he'd question. And then they kept calling him crazy. And he was telling me a story about one time where he was creating this big post on social media and he, and he, and he spent how long. You spent about an hour and a half, an hour and a half typing it up, and then it just disappeared because he deleted. He's got one hand. So, you know, once he told me that, I was like, you know, he's just. He's basically got one arm tied behind his back trying to solve this. So I promised him he could use my right hand. I can type a lot faster than, than his and can now.
A
So, um, you've turned into his right hand man. Literally.
C
Literally his right hand man.
B
We work together.
A
That's wonderful, Greg. It's so good to have an advocate like that. You know, I just kind of want to jump into it so that our viewers can. Can understand what, what occurred. So can you take me back to St Patrick's Day 2013 and tell me Darrell and Greg just can't. If you could tell me what happened. There was surveillance video of this that she had been out sort of partying with her friends. And then what happened after she left the bar? For those of you watching on YouTube right now, you'll see that surveillance footage right here.
C
Well, what we, what we can see from the, the video is it appears that she was taken off walking down the road, and there's a Walmart surveillance video that captures like, like a silhouette of a person you can't identify. It to be Casey, but you can see, like someone moving across the road and appears she's headed towards her home in Savina. But you know, when she left the bar, there's some questions of why she left the bar because she just called her ex boyfriend. But they were in the process of reconciling, and there was an incident caught on that outside patio where appears maybe a bouncer and Casey had some type of physical altercation. And Casey appeared to be passive from what we can see, and she backed up when the. When the bouncer approached her. She sat down after the incident occurred. In the video, you can see that after that altercation with the bouncer, she clearly walked out of the bar on her own and away from confrontation. So we're still wondering why she would leave the bar when she just called her boyfriend on the phone to come pick her up.
A
She's never seen after that surveillance video, is she. She's never. She's never seen again until. Until much later. Tell me, after the surveillance video, what happens as far as Casey's disappearance? When are the police called in to. To help find Casey? When do you realize that Casey's not where she's supposed to be?
C
The police were called when her ex boyfriend, Eric Hag, showed up at the bar and realized that she was missing. Like, so I know they were trying to point the finger at him, but he's the one that called the police. Her ex boyfriend, Eric Hag, did everything he could to try to find her that night.
A
So the ex boyfriend calls the police, reports her missing. And the police, what do they do next?
C
Well, they started, like, they started a search and they. They set off a perimeter around the pond.
A
How did we get to the pond?
C
No idea how that happened. And I think it was just. It had a perimeter, it had a fence. So it's a good area to point at for them if they wanted to contain something. And we believe that's what happened.
A
The location and layout of this pond is really, really important. We'll throw up a photo here. It's really about what was not found at this scene at the pond.
C
The police actually pushed everybody off around the pond and said that it was. They sealed it off and then they just, they. They said that the area was contaminated. So they didn't even process the pond? No. No footprints leading into the end of the pond, into that area. Nothing was found that would lead her into that pond. And the only evidence that was connecting Casey to the pond was a pair of boots that they said that they found in the Pond. But there's no pictures of these, this evidence, there's no in. The problem with that is when the family received the boots from the police, the boots had no mud on them. And in order to get to that pond, in order to get across that highway into that pond, you had to track across a very deep and soggy muddy ditch.
A
For those of you watching, I would love to show you a picture of Casey's boots, but that's the frustrating thing. We don't have photos. We just have to rely on what we're hearing about them. We do have a recreated image used in the documentary of what the boots might have looked like. She had a very unique pair of boots, right, and what did they look like? Why were they so unique?
B
They were like a cowboy boot that the girls were wearing at the time. I don't know the name of them, but she just got them, they were brand new. And them girls that had them all and said you, they were shaking them and you couldn't even shake them off. They said they were really hard to get off. Now she went across that ditch, she would have lost her boots in that ditch. Plus she had a five foot fence to climb with barbed wire. Now she's so drunk. How she's five foot tall. How does she climb that fence and not have her shoes or pants, not have anything torn or tore up? Now when she gets across this fence now what does she do? Does she stop and take her boots off? Because that's where they found her boots. Her body was clear. On the other side of the pond is where they found her body.
C
Well, something interesting, Greg, you, you said that the detective showed you a picture of those boots at the time, right? Where, what does it look like? Were the boots in the pond when, when they showed them to you?
B
He just took a picture of a boot and boot and said, is that the kind she wore? And I didn't know. So I took it over to my daughter and then she broke down.
C
Was it, was it in the grass or was it in the mud or.
B
I do remember.
C
So. So at the time the detective showed Greg a picture of these boots and they wanted to connect her to that pond. And that's the only bridge from Casey into that pond is this picture of these boots. But the picture of the boots is no. They admit to having them, but they're gone. And you know, the picture is the picture of the boots, the Justin cowgirl boots that were supposedly in this pond. There is no picture of that evidence. They have none. They won't provide Them, but they showed them to him back in 2013. I had to take him on his phone.
B
Yeah.
C
And that's as, that's as close as he's ever got to getting copies of those photos. When investigators set up their, their, their, their area for their investigative area, they had to put boards over that ditch in order to get across that ditch. So there would obviously be imprints from a boot and mud on the boot if she walked across that ditch. And if you look at the Google Earth image of that pond, there's no way around getting into that pond without crossing that ditch.
A
From the time that she went missing to the time that you got the call that she had been found at this pond, what was that like?
B
I went and got a guy who works for the state that has a dog, tracking dog. Okay. He, he brought his dog in and his dog hit right on her boots, right? Susie got across the fence, he got her boots, okay. Then he ran around the pond where they found her body and he hit on that. He jumped in the water biting it show that there was a body there, okay. And it took him eight days to get her out of this pond. That was a brand new pond. Nothing in it, no debris, nothing. You could see the tracks on the bottom of the pond. Now you're going to tell me it took eight days to find my daughter in that pond?
A
Well, and then when they did find her, and this was just so disturbing when, when I heard this, that she actually had this grass in her hand. She had like a, she was holding on to grass when they found her body. I'll warn you, it's disturbing. I'm going to throw up this picture right now on the screen so you can really see what we're talking about here. And if you're listening, it's Casey's fist, right, Gripping this grass. It really is so upsetting a circumstance
C
about that is when Casey was said to fall in this pond, it was on the highway side of that pond. That's where the dogs hit on the, on her boots. Her boots was on the highway side of the pond. Now, she was found in open water on the other side of the pond. So my question is, how does she have grass in her hand if she fell in this pond?
A
And how far away is this pond in relation in this small town from the bar that she had been at the night before and where she was supposedly heading, which was supposed to be home? You'll see a map on the screen here to give you an idea of the proximity. It really is such a Small town.
C
Yeah, about a mile. And, you know, we feel like she was. It was about a mile. The pond was a mile away from the bar, and she was walking towards Sabina, and I think she was forced off the property. Now, if you look in the reports, one of the bouncers says that they had to get physical with Katie Casey and prior incidents. But for some reason, none of the detectives ever delved into that and found out these prior incidents where they had to get physical with her. They literally said that they had to physically put her in a car to get her to leave. And what's wild about the video is Ms. Alleged Best Friend.
A
I'll throw that video on the screen for you all here.
C
Again, she wasn't interacting in the video with Casey like they were best friends. They weren't even. Didn't even look like they were communicating. So Casey was supposedly leaving with this girl, but she was dancing with another girl, came to the bar with another person, and just none of it's. None of the stories have made any sense along the whole way.
A
And it's also because you're seeing one thing and hearing another, Right?
C
Like, she's so drunk, she's staggering, but then you can see that she leaves fluidly and looks like someone that didn't have that much to drink.
B
She danced. She was up her dancing for a half hour.
C
Yeah. And. And I don't know if you saw the coroner's report, but the corner there was only like a death intake form that was filled out on her. There was never by any corner. By any investigative. Investigative agency. There was never an official corner investigative report, and that is mandatory to state of Ohio when there's suspicious circumstances around the death. And there still isn't one to this day. So technically, the investigation is incomplete.
A
And so there was no investigative report. Was it labeled as suspicious death or what did the autopsy say?
C
Yes, if it's labeled a suspicious death. The investigation from day one, according to the chief at the time, he told the newspaper that it was treated like a criminal investigation since day one. And in the subpoenaed records, it said. In the subpoenaed phone records, it says that it was a criminal investigation.
A
Okay, well, in the autopsy, it said that she had drowned. Now, was she drowned or did she drown? I guess that's also part of the interpretation.
C
Yeah. Was she drowned or did she drown on her own? And it says without. With alcohol intoxication contributing. But the fact is, for someone to be drinking, to have an alcohol test provided to him seven days later while they've been submerged in water is not even feasible.
B
Nope.
C
I mean it's not an accurate test. So for them to base alcohol intoxication seven days later when her body was in a pond is it shouldn't even have been used.
B
You have 48 hours to do that test. And then they done it, what, seven, eight days later.
A
So, Greg, you had someone you knew who had a dog that could track go out there and pinpoint these where. Where. Where we believe the boots. Where we, where we believe Casey was found. But why did it take for them to find the body?
C
So it took eight days. But what's wild about that, about taking eight days is that there's a picture of a sonar image that they provided to the family. Only one.
A
I had not seen this before, but I'll get it up on the screen for you now.
C
And it shows a body, clearly a human body. It lists. The investigators listed a rope and a milk crate in the photo. Like they pointed out it, they labeled it. And that was never mentioned again anywhere in the case file. Nowhere. Just the picture image. Sonar, milk crate and rope never recovered. And so after they found that, that bought that image on the 18th is when that target hit, they claim happened. The chief detective told the newspaper that they found a target hit.
A
When you say target hit, they'll tell me what you're talking about.
C
So the sonar image lists that. They're literally lists the depth at 8.9ft. And it shows that they were like literally it could have got it with a pole from a boat at 8.9ft away from, from the body. And what was wild about that was they had Boone County Water Rescue, very renowned water rescue come through. They had their rov, they went through the pond, they did several laps, didn't find anything. But then just a day or two later, her body just, just there she is in open water where they've. Where they went right over the passage. Never could relocate the body after they found picked it up on sonar. Now when her body was picked up on sonar, instead of doing the rescue right then and there, the chief detective said that the. To send everybody home and that it was. They were going to shut it down for reasons out of his control is what he said.
A
Wow, there's just so many questions. So it's understandable why we're still looking at this case as if it, it almost feels like it was like yesterday that, you know, with the way you're able to kind of go through this information.
B
Also can I say that when she went walking towards her house, the Girls that come to pick her up had her purse, her phone, and her keys to her house.
A
They had all that in the car.
B
In the car. And they turned the opposite way.
C
Designated driver. And it went the opposite way.
B
And knowing they had her purse and keys and phone, that's so awful.
A
This was when she had left the bar. When they had all left the bar. They had all of that in the car and they had that.
B
Yeah.
A
So Casey really had no way to communicate with anyone to get home. She was. She wasn't close either from that bar. She would not have been very close.
C
Was she like 8, 9 miles away? So what I think happened was she was hoping her boyfriend would come down and pick her up. And it wasn't her boyfriend that found her. It was those two guys. Right.
A
Well, talk to me about these two men. They. They admitted they were the last people with Casey the night she died. What do we know about them? I want to play some of the footage we have of these two men here.
C
We know that they failed two polygraphs now back in 2013. They failed on the 19th and 20th. They failed the polygraphs. Now, one was deceptive and the other was inconclusive. But if you go to the video of the polygraph, that polygrapher tells him in the inconclusive test, like, you failed. So he didn't. He didn't act like it was even close to being a path.
A
I mean, there's a reason why that polygraph test was given to the police department. Right. To do the test. They wanted to know whether or not these guys were telling the truth.
C
Yeah.
A
Why else could he do it?
C
So with the polygraph test. So on the 20th, when the second failed his polygraph test, Wilmington kind of backed off and they. They let the Clinton County Sheriff's office get involved and do all the investigation with witnesses. And in the sheriff's office policy, it says to do a follow up investigation.
A
So what do you think happened?
C
Don't know. We would. We don't understand how the sheriff's office could get involved after failed polygraph tests and then not ask a single question. And even to this day, even after the failed polygraph last March, the prosecutor even said. He wrote like a big spiel out and said that this polygraph is too hard to. It's. It's too much to ignore. This is the same one they use in FBI investigations. And, you know, he even went to Dave Winter, the. The investigative reporter, and told him, he said if polygraphs were failed, that he would expect further investigation. And that never occurred.
A
Well, do we know that she. That she had jumped out of the car when she got her? Whatever happened with these two men? They. The. The story that. That I've heard so far is that they were. They said that they were sort of giving her a ride home that got muddled with going somewhere else, and lo and behold, she ends up jumping out of the car according to their take. What part of that story jives with what you're talking about?
C
The. The chief detective in the newspaper referred to those two as Good Samaritans. Good Samaritans. But he failed. He failed to. To. To acknowledge that they both failed polygraph tests.
A
So they were Good Samaritans. Why? In.
C
In his words, because they were trying to pick her up and find her and take her home.
A
Was there any relationship before this?
C
One of them knew her, met her a couple times, he said, and the other one never met her as far as he might have seen her around that. He said that they never. He referred to Casey as that girl and that crazy bitch is what he called her.
A
Were they ever named as a suspect? Were these men ever named publicly as suspect in the case?
C
Yeah, they. They were listed as Good Samaritans. Yet they had a failed polygraph test. Yes. Yet the. The. The chief in the case said it was best criminal investigation since day one. So they were treated like suspects, but they weren't labeled suspects, if that makes any sense.
A
According to reports, Casey left the bar on foot and started her long walk home. Two men picked her up. Casey only knew one of them. It's also been reported that she jumped out of the car at some point. We don't know why or where that was exactly for our purposes. Just so we understand where, like, if we looked at the investigative file right now, they were not ever named as people of interest or as suspects, but they were asked to do a polygraph test when they found out that. That they had been in contact with Casey. Right?
C
Yes.
A
Okay. That's what I was just trying to kind of get that straight. I'd love to talk about a moment that I got to watch in the documentary that was just. Literally was so heartbreaking. And that, of course, is. When you go to the memorial to Casey, and I think it's near that retention pond, it just really punches you in the gut. It really. It really shows how long this struggle has been over the years. Can you tell me what. What kind of toll this has taken from you?
B
It's just. It's hard every time I go out there. I mean, she was my Firstborn daughter and she was a very good kid. And just, it's hard. I mean, you know, if you lose the kid, that's the worst thing that ever happened to a parent, especially under these circumstances.
C
And he's expressed to me like his hard time to sleeping and I can't sleep. And it's just been an ongoing thing for 13 years now.
A
I mean, as far as, like, financially, I would think for you to stay dedicated to this course of action to try and get to the truth, get some justice for Casey to. Has it been a burden?
B
Yes, it has been a very heavy burden. Money wise. We're having trouble with the money.
C
Yeah, we've put a lot of money. I mean, it's. Gosh, I put a lot of my own money into it. I bought him an attorney a few times and we've had some mild success with, with getting some records. But, you know, even the courts haven't treated us fairly. I mean, they, they seem to skip past all the exhibits that we put in front of them and then don't force them to provide these records. Don't double check like. So the court deemed that Wilmington provided all these records in a case. But. But he hasn't been provided one. One chain of custody record showing that any of the evidence was handled properly. So it just blows me away that a judge can see the case and, and think that the records were produced when there is no chain of custody records. And one of the, the main thing, these records, they. They probably still exist somewhere. But in 2013, there was subpoenas that were issued for seven phone records in the case, but the family's only been provided with Casey's phone record. That's it. Phone records would show the gps, the geofencing data that would pinpoint locations at the time. But we've never been provided that.
A
Is it too late now?
C
You would think that when an investigator puts in an evidence preservation letter to a phone company like Verizon and AT&T that they would store those records permanently. Right. And so those evidence preservation letters were sent to AT&T and Verizon. Oddly, you know, we don't have any records that cooperate with those subpoenas.
A
Well, you know, you bring up the cellular records. The cellular records are a big one. What are some of the other pieces of evidence that we're going to learn, this documentary that are very strange that may have been destroyed in the Ohio
C
Biological Evidence Preservation laws under section 2933.82. It says that these agencies, these government retention agencies are to hold these and store biological evidence such as clothing, so that DNA can be taken from new clothing or shirt. So when the coroner's office in Dayton did the autopsy, they released the clothes not to the police department, but to the funeral home who destroyed these clothes
B
because they smelled bad, smell like pond, he said.
C
And they were untested, never tested, and it was, they were destroyed actively during an investigation.
B
Right.
C
Which was according to the county prosecutor, who I have recorded. The county prosecutor in this case says that that evidence being destroyed was a violation of that law.
B
It is a violation.
C
And also he said that the rape kit that was destroyed, the I guess sexual assault examination kit, I guess sake, or sake is what they would call it. So that rape kit was destroyed just six years after her investigation. And there was never any reason given. We, you know, records were withheld regarding that. And it wasn't till like a change of administration, till we got new records that showed that her ca, her rape kit was destroyed unlawfully.
A
I just want to bring up the discoloration around her neck. I'm going to put up another incredibly difficult but incredibly important photo so you can see what we're talking about here. It's just so unnerving. I mean, these beads that normally symbolize a party, carefree, fun, everything that St. Patrick's Day she should have been for Casey. Another point within this evidence that seems to be difficult for them to obtain or look at or, you know, I, I, I was hearing about like how there were blurry photos from, from the autopsy. What did you, you know, you're saying it may be an exhumation, is, is in order to understand what was going on around her neck. Can you explain what that was that they found around her neck on her body?
C
So in the autopsy report, if you look at the autopsy report, it says it was unremarkable. Like we could clearly see the, this, this abnormal, it looked like an abnormal mark. Something that you would expect an explanation for, at least a clinical explanation. But we never got that. The autopsy photos that we were provided have only, like up in Dayton only show Casey's neck cramped down like this, where you can't even see the mark. It's like they were trying to hide it at the coroner's office. Now we can see the mark in the on scene photos when they took pictures of her body on scene. But not one time in the autopsy report nor any autopsy photos is that mark explained or revealed.
B
And when the first autopsy photos that I got, they blurred her head out.
C
Yeah, they were blacked out in that yeah. And I'll tell you something else that's really wild. Is so. Back in 2013, Greg requested records from the. The Dayton coroner's office that performed the autopsy. He was provided a partial of those records. He had receipts. Well, we still. We have the receipts. We have the envelope that they sent to him. So then when we went back up there, Clinton county directed us to go back to Dayton to get these records. Well, we showed up there to Dayton, and they denied him, turned him down and got really aggressive with us when we showed up there in Dayton, called
B
the police and had his escort out of the building, which the police jurisdiction ended at the sidewalk. That's the sheriff's office. Sheriff looked out the door and closed it and went on.
A
Well, Darryl, you're. You're Greg's. Marcy's Law advocate, is that correct?
C
It's a Marcy's Law victim representative that. A designated Marcy's Law victim representative.
A
Tell me what that means for us that are not in Ohio so we understand what that means.
C
Okay, so Marcy's Law was passed in Ohio at like a. It was such a huge amount of voters passed it under, like, it was like 80 plus percent of voters voted it in. And what Marcy's Law does, it gives victims. It gives victims a voice, a right to be heard, a right to be treated fairly, a right to be treated with dignity. So the county prosecutor designated Greg as a Marshall's Law victim. He acknowledged me as a Marshall victim representative, which I have the right to speak for him. I have the right to advocate for him and to, you know, to help him in any which way I can. And I'm also his legal power of attorney because he's missing his writing hand. And like I said, he's leveraging my right hand through that power of attorney.
A
Greg, if Casey were able to hear us right now talking about this case, about the fact that you fought and that you've brought Daryl on to fight with you, um, what do you think. What do you think she's thinking right now? As. As she looks down on you and sees the kind of work you're doing?
B
I think she's smiling down on me. And she's got her hand on my shoulder, guiding me slowly, but she's there. She's there with me all the time.
A
I mean, Greg, I believe that. And, you know, as she helps you and guides you through this as well. I mean, I feel like this is going to mean a lot for other families, what you're doing.
C
Right. It needs to. And you Know, every family should have the same rights to records. Every family should have the same type of investigation, thorough. Every family should have access to information and be able to question these investigators when they don't feel like things are being done properly. Right. And that's what. Pitzer's law, what I've developed, I think that addresses all that. And. And, you know, the. One of the biggest problems with Greg's cases, with Casey's case, is that it's so fragmented. You know, there's all these different agencies that were involved, and you have to do a separate records request for every one of these agencies, and then they'll point you at the other agency. There should be, like, a universal prosecutorial file where our county prosecutor must sign off on that. So somebody has to be held accountable, because with the way they have it set up now, you could never hold anybody accountable. They can always point the finger at the other agency, or it's like pointing you this way. You don't know which way to go, and they give you the runaround. And what they do, they try to wear you out to where you'll just quit pursuing them. Like, Greg in 2013 fought for years, but then eventually he got tired and he fizzled out. So I was able to kind of help him, like a. Like a tag team wrestler. He just smacked my hand, and I joined in because I was already really aggravated and directing my attention towards him. When I found his daughter's case, I was like, this is the one that'll get them all. This is the one that'll take all of them out, and it'll restore integrity in law enforcement in our community, because, you know, making things look like it's not and reframing and that's not the way it's supposed to work.
A
I mean, the persistence, the relentlessness. I, you know, I talk about it a lot in these kind of cases where we have not found the truth yet and our viewers know that the most important thing to do is to keep the awareness alive. Right. To keep that voice for your loved one there so people know that this is still going on. Do you think we will get to a place of truth on Casey's case? Do you still have hope?
B
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We'll get to it. We're going to get to the bottom of one way or the other.
C
Yeah. And. And what we're hoping to do is raise some money so we can get some investigators, like independent investigators involved. We've seen that there was, like, former FBI agents set up, like, an investigative site where you can, you know, you can reach out to them and hire them to come do independent investigations. Greg has been openly, he's been open about the, want to have her exhumed, but honestly, with the evidence that I see and that I've went through, I don't think that she'll have to be exhumed to get a conviction in this case. I think it's just a matter of getting a neutral, a neutral prosecutor.
B
Right. Get in prosecutor now and a judge.
C
So let, if you don't mind, I'd like to talk about what, what's occurred in 2025. So in April of 2025, Greg was designated a Marcy's Law victim representative. They released all the evidence, polygraphs and everything to him. And this prosecutor, our county prosecutor, told us that he was going to get the FBI involved, that he was going to get the Warren County Sheriff's Office involved, who conducted the last polygraph test because they did the largest, the most recent investigative lead. And so he was trying to say that he was going to hand this case off to them. Well, when it got time to do that, instead of giving it to Warren county or the FBI, he gave it to a civil litigation firm out of Columbus and hired insurance attorneys that were masquerading as special prosecutors. And so they come down June 23rd, they were appointed to the case, Casey's case. There has not been one single question asked in over six months, seven months, nothing. And so, and then they finally withdrew from the case. And so now Greg's left without a prosecutor to even confer with. And in Marcy's Law, it says that he has the right to confer with the prosecutor. But when there's no prosecutor to confer with, who do you confer with?
B
Right?
A
What's he supposed to do?
C
Yeah, I mean the, the Marcy's Law, it's under Article 1, Section 10A of the, the Ohio Constitution, which is in the Ohio Victim Bill of Rights, it says that he has the right to confer with the prosecutor. There is no prosecutor that will confer with him.
A
There's a lot of work that needs to be done on this case and I, I'm glad to see that. Daryl, you can stay with Greg. As, as you guys navigate this, he needs a right hand man like you and it gives me a lot of hope for other victims out there and victims families that, that deserve a light on their cases as well. And hopefully this will give them hope by watching this documentary which is so remarkable and beautifully done to give a voice to the Voiceless in this case. So I, I thank you so much for sharing your story with me today. And I hope everybody watches this documentary and I want my viewers out there to, to please drop a comment and let Greg know what you're thinking. Daryl, what you're thinking. If you've been through a situation like this or have information that may help the Casey Pitzer story finally come to, to the truth, you, closure to your wonderful family.
C
Yeah. What we would ask is that, you know, if you could ask your viewers to dive into this with us because we haven't caught everything. Right. There's, there's a lot of things out there. If, if there's a bunch of eyes on this case, we may learn new things that we didn't know. This is the book that I'm, I've written written that dives into this whole case. It's called the Citizens Arrest of Clinton County, Ohio. And it's the true stories of Casey Pitzer and Andy Napier. And it tells about our investigation and how, what's gone on in the last four years.
A
Oh, I would love to share it with our viewers and. Absolutely. We have a lot of very dedicated armchair detectives and Internet sleuths out there that are very talented and have come to me with incredible information. So 100%. Like, if there's, if there's anyone that wants to dive into the Casey pictures story and case and investigation, this is the time to do it.
C
Yeah. And so, so this book, it should be live on Amazon within the week. And I have an interactive website that has all the exhibits that's also going to be launched within the week. And it's, it's under we help others.com or you can find it under the citizens arrest.com as well.
A
That's, that's wonderful to hear. Thank you so much. And thank you for doing the work that you do as well. So I'll end this for now, but thank you. We'll hear if there's any updates. My God, like, please let us know. We certainly want to be a part of, you know, finding the truth in these cases. We don't stop either.
B
Yeah.
C
I was looking at your work and you're an incredible person, Anne, and I wanted to thank you for reaching out
B
to us and donations to very much.
C
Thank you for helping all the victims that you've helped break.
A
Well, thank you so much. You know, it means a lot to me because, you know, we, we go down these rabbit holes as we do. Right. And we never really know what we're going to pull out of the rabbit hole. And sometimes it's, it's something that can make a difference and sometimes it, it'll just get us one step closer. You know, as my, my granny always said, you know, you just don't know what all the pieces of the puzzle are until they get put together. So somebody may have a piece of that puzzle that's going to just finish the picture for you.
C
Yep.
B
Right?
C
We're close. We're very close.
B
Very close.
A
I'm so glad they could join us for this conversation today. And be sure to drop a comment below and tell me what you think about this, this case, how it was handled and what should have been done differently. I'd love to hear your thoughts and be sure to, like, subscribe and follow us at Criminally Obsessed for more important conversations like this one. And of course, be sure to watch Dead Silence, the Casey Pitzer Investigation. I want to hear what you think of the documentary and leave your comments below. Thanks.
Podcast: Criminally Obsessed
Host: Anne Emerson
Date: March 5, 2026
In this emotionally charged episode, Anne Emerson investigates the haunting case of Casey Pitzer, a young mother from rural Ohio who mysteriously disappeared on St. Patrick’s Day 2013. Thirteen years later, her death remains unresolved, straddling the line between horrific accident and potential foul play. Anne is joined by Casey’s father, Greg Pitzer, and the family’s tireless advocate, Daryl Petrie, who share personal insight, overlooked evidence, and their relentless quest for answers. The episode sheds new light ahead of their forthcoming documentary Dead Silence: The Casey Pitzer Investigation.
Timeline
Immediate Aftermath
The Boots and the Pond
Body Discovery and Forensics
"Good Samaritans"
Contradictory Testimony and Gaps
Chain of Custody and Records
Autopsy Photographs and Medical Records
Personal and Legal Obstacles
Marcy’s Law Advocacy
Hopes and Next Steps
Call to Action
On the peculiar state of the boots:
"When the family received the boots from the police, the boots had no mud on them. And in order to get to that pond... you had to track across a very deep and soggy muddy ditch." — Daryl Petrie [07:13]
On systemic investigative failure:
"There is no chain of custody records... Phone records would show the gps, the geofencing data that would pinpoint locations at the time. But we've never been provided that." — Daryl Petrie [23:38—24:48]
On the toll of the investigation:
"It's hard every time I go out there. I mean, she was my Firstborn daughter and she was a very good kid. And just, it's hard... That's the worst thing that ever happened to a parent, especially under these circumstances." — Greg Pitzer [22:53]
On the destruction of key evidence:
"So when the coroner's office in Dayton did the autopsy, they released the clothes not to the police department, but to the funeral home who destroyed these clothes because they smelled bad, smell like pond." — Daryl Petrie & Greg Pitzer [25:27—25:58]
On the family’s determination:
"If you lose the kid, that's the worst thing that ever happened to a parent, especially under these circumstances." — Greg Pitzer [22:53]
"I think she's smiling down on me. And she's got her hand on my shoulder, guiding me slowly..." — Greg Pitzer [30:39]
The episode exposes the many layers of mystery, bureaucratic obstacles, and overlooked leads still clouding the Casey Pitzer case. Through Greg’s grief and Daryl’s relentless advocacy, the podcast sheds light on deep fractures in the investigative process, raises critical questions about the actions of law enforcement, and invites listeners to be part of seeking overdue justice—with the hope that more voices and fresh scrutiny can finally illuminate the truth.
Useful Links:
“We're close. We're very close.” — Daryl Petrie [39:06]