The Murder of Everett Armstrong: A Conversation with Indiana State Police Captain Kevin Smith and Former Adams County Prosecutor Daniel Sigler

Summary

The Murder of Everett Armstrong: A Conversation with Indiana State Police Captain Kevin Smith and Former Adams County Prosecutor Daniel Sigler

Murder Sheet Podcast
Release Date: August 19, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of Murder Sheet centers on the 1977 murder of 84-year-old Everett Armstrong in rural Adams County, Indiana—a cold case that puzzled authorities for decades. Hosts Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee conduct an in-depth interview with Indiana State Police Captain Kevin Smith, leader of the ISP’s cold case team, and Daniel Sigler, former Adams County Prosecutor, who both have been directly involved in the investigation across its long history. The episode explores who Everett Armstrong was, why solving his case took nearly 50 years, and the ultimate resolution in naming a prime suspect posthumously.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Victim: Everett Armstrong

• Everett Armstrong was a World War I veteran and a noted banjo player, known as a "loner" living in a remote trailer in Adams County.
  • “He had lived by himself out in the country. He's a World War I veteran. Had a great family history in music.” (Kevin Smith, 08:37)
• Armstrong's quiet life and lack of enemies made his violent death particularly shocking.
  • “He was a loner in the sense that he didn't have a housemate... most of his friends... were sort of loners like him.” (Daniel Sigler, 09:07)

2. Discovery of the Crime (03:21 - 14:16)

• Armstrong's body was found on August 19, 1977, by a local fuel oil delivery man, who initially did not realize it was a homicide. Because rural emergency protocols were less defined, the funeral home was contacted first.
  • “He didn’t realize this was a violent death…assumed Everett has passed away from some other natural cause…” (Kevin Smith, 11:24)
• Autopsy revealed Armstrong suffered a fatal shotgun wound through the screen door.

3. Early Investigation Hurdles (14:19 - 24:13)

• Few leads emerged at first. Gunshots were commonly heard in the area due to hunting season, making it difficult to tie any reports directly to the crime.
  • “Out in the country…August 15th in Indiana is a big day… for squirrel season… not unusual to hear a gunshot.” (Kevin Smith, 14:33)
• Inter-agency tension between county police and state police hampered early collaboration.
  • “There was not a great relationship between the Adams County Sheriff's Department…and the Indiana State Police.” (Daniel Sigler, 16:21)
• Some early witnesses identified a promising suspect, but this information may have been disregarded or not relayed properly.

4. Three Wrongful Arrests (24:14 - 41:52)

• Years after the murder, three juveniles were arrested based on a confession that was later deemed coerced and false, following aggressive polygraph and interviewing tactics.
  • “I felt very strongly from my experience as an investigator that that was an absolute false confession…too much information being fed to him.” (Kevin Smith, 30:45)
  • “Everybody asks…‘Why would you confess to something you didn't do?’ Well, this case is the study for that.” (Daniel Sigler, 31:15)
• A jailhouse informant, motivated by self-interest, falsely implicated the accused, complicating the case further.
• Polygraph results conflicted, eventually leading charges to be dropped with significant community confusion and no closure.

5. The Cold Case Resurgence (43:03 - 65:11)

• In 2013, Captain Kevin Smith took over the case. He described in detail the painstaking and methodical process of cold case review, including triple readings of all files and the use of modern forensic techniques.
  • "I'll read every stitch of paperwork... I want to get my head wrapped around here... by the third time I go through it, I have a pretty good handle." (Kevin Smith, 43:11)
• Modern forensics, including forensic genetic genealogy, have revolutionized the solving of such cases.
  • “Forensic genealogy has changed the world in cold cases.” (Kevin Smith, 48:01)
• Personal motivation for Smith: Several unsolved murders from his early career, and the lasting impact of cold cases on victims’ families and communities.
  • “These things absolutely obsess me... A violent death of somebody decimates a family for decades.” (Kevin Smith, 48:49)

6. The Real Suspect: James McBride II (59:01 - 65:36)

• Early on, witness statements pointed to James McBride II, but he was dismissed by original investigators as unreliable.
• Upon reopening, Smith tracked down both McBride (recently released from prison for another violent crime) and the original witnesses. All corroborated the same details they gave decades prior.
  • “He confided in [a witness] that he had just shot an old man… described very specifically… matched all the evidence exactly how he did it…” (Kevin Smith, 60:17)
• When confronted, McBride did not confess but said he didn’t recall, citing heavy PCP use at the time.
  • “He indicated…he was on PCP…and does not recall.” (Kevin Smith, 62:26)
• McBride died before charges could be filed, but police and prosecutors agreed the evidence would have been sufficient for prosecution.

7. The Aftermath and Closure (65:36 - 74:59)

• Armstrong’s surviving relatives were finally informed and expressed appreciation for answers, albeit decades late.
  • “She just thanked me several times for continuing to work on the case and at least getting some resolution.” (Kevin Smith, 68:29)
• Captain Smith reflected on the satisfaction—distinct but real—of resolving a case even when an arrest is not possible.
  • “It's so gratifying to sit in a room with the family and tell them… we got it.” (Kevin Smith, 69:18)
• Sigler emphasized that, beyond victim’s families, resolution also vindicates those previously charged and wrongly suspected.
  • “…finding a murder cold case, but he's clearing some people that were wrongfully charged. And that's almost as good a news, right?” (Daniel Sigler, 72:29)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Inter-Agency Conflict:
  • "Stay out of our backyard, okay? It's a typical thing...you don't want the big guys to come in and take a case away from you." (Daniel Sigler, 17:51)
• On False Confessions:
  • “Everybody asks…‘Why would you confess to something you didn't do?’ Well, this case is the study for that.” (Daniel Sigler, 31:15)
• On Cold Case Motivation:
  • “A violent death of somebody decimates a family for decades…it's so important. As important as you can get in law enforcement.” (Kevin Smith, 48:49)
• On Advances in Forensics:
  • “There's no greater time to be in this business… The possibilities are unbelievable now.” (Kevin Smith, 74:14)
• On Professional Integrity:
  • “You have to be honest with yourself and honest with the public. If you're not, you're not doing the job.” (Daniel Sigler, 42:56)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:21 – Case introduction and initial discovery
• 08:37 – Armstrong’s background and life
• 14:19 – Early investigation challenges; rural context
• 24:14 – Wrongful arrests, false confessions, and investigation missteps
• 43:03 – Captain Smith’s cold case methodology and team operating procedures
• 48:01 – The role of forensic genealogy in solving cold cases today
• 59:01 – Focus shifts to James McBride II as suspect
• 60:17 – Detailed witness accounts and corroboration
• 62:26 – McBride’s interview and implicit non-denial
• 65:36 – Contact and collaboration between Smith and Sigler
• 68:29 – Armstrong family reaction, impact of resolution
• 69:18 – The feelings of closure for detectives and prosecutors
• 72:29 – Importance of exonerating the innocent

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Concluding Thoughts

Captain Kevin Smith and Daniel Sigler's conversation with the Murder Sheet underscores the complexity and human cost of unsolved crimes—its impact on families, communities, and even law enforcement. While the suspect in Everett Armstrong’s case will never see trial, the episode highlights how persistence, evolving investigative methods, and the determination to bring dignity to victims and fairness to communities can finally bring long-awaited answers. The hosts, as well as their guests, convey the sense of hope and vindication that comes with breakthroughs—however late—in seemingly impossible cases.

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For listeners seeking thorough, balanced coverage of true crime—with an emphasis on justice, investigative process, and the importance of truth—this episode is both insightful and resonant.

Transcript

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[B]

Episode contains discussion of violence and murder as well as the rape and murder of a teenage girl and a child.

[A]

On August 19, 1977, sometime in the afternoon, a fuel oil delivery driver made a disturbing discovery at a residence in Geneva, Indiana. A dead body lay in a mobile home located just off County Road 300 west just north of State Road 116 in a remote part of Adams county which is located in the northeastern part of the Hoosier State bordering Ohio. The body was 84 year old Everett Armstrong. He had been murdered. His case went cold and remained so for decades. Suspects came and went. Arrest warrants and charges were filed and then later dropped and the mystery endured.

[B]

Then in 2013 the Indiana State Police reopened the case. Captain Kevin Smith took it on. Now if you're like us and you follow cold cases in Indiana, you know the name of Kevin Smith.

[A]

Captain Smith was part of the team that solved the 1988 rape and murder of eight year old April Marie Tinsley in Fort Wayne. He he was also the key investigator in the recently solved 1975 case of 17 year old Laurel Jean Mitchell, a North Webster teenager who was abducted, raped, murdered and dumped in Noble County. We covered that case extensively on the murder sheet.

[B]

We also noted with interest that recently the Indiana State Police announced a long awaited answer in the Everett Armstrong murder. Unlike the Mitchell case, there's no arrest and there's no conviction. The suspect is now dead. But police and prosecutors feel confident enough to explain what very likely happened, which is a very big deal indeed when we're talking about a cold case.

[A]

So we asked to talk to Captain Smith about his findings and about the ISP's cold case team he was kind enough to agree to talk to us, and he even suggested that we also speak to a seasoned prosecutor as well, former Adams county prosecutor Daniel Sigler, who served his county from 1979 to 1999 and has also worked in private practice and as a special prosecutor. Sigler has direct experience in this case.

[B]

We met with Captain Smith and Mr. Sigler at the ISP's Fort Wayne post. Captain Smith hauled out a bunch of cardboard boxes that contained the case files to have them handy. Together, the cold case detective and the former prosecutor were able to give us a comprehensive account of the case they represented, the past and the present, the law enforcement investigative side and the prosecutorial side.

[A]

We spoke with them about who killed Everett Armstrong, why the case went unsolved for so long, and why cold cases haunt us. So my name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.

[B]

And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.

[A]

And this is the Murder Sheet.

[B]

We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet.

[A]

And this is the murder of Everett Armstrong. A conversation with Indiana State Police Captain Kevin Smith and former Adams county prosecutor Daniel Sigler. All right, thank you both so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

[E]

You're welcome.

[F]

Sure.

[A]

I guess to start off with, can you just each tell us a little bit about yourselves and your sort of professional background?

[E]

Kevin Smith with Indiana State Police. I'm a captain. I run the cold case team and a couple other detective groups. I've been with the State Police for 38 years. Started in 1987. Pretty much my whole working career has been with Indiana State Police and within that 38, about 25 of it in the investigative side, whether it's CSI or detective bureau, and spent a lot of time specializing in cold cases over the last 20 years.

[F]

My name is Dan Sigler. I was the elected prosecutor in Adams county from January 1979 till December of 1978. I took office about a year and a half after Everett Armstrong was murdered.

[A]

Absolutely. And yes. So we're here to speak about the homicide of 84 year old Everett Armstrong. Before we talk about what happened to him, can you both, I guess, tell me a bit about who he was as a person and what you were able to sort of learn about the victim in this homicide?

[E]

Well, my exposure to him and his family, there wasn't much. I couldn't find. Harleen family around when I started working on the case in basically 2013. But from what I saw from Newspaper articles. He had lived by himself out in the country. He's a World War I veteran. Had a great family history in music. Had lived in the Adams county area for many, many, many years. Lived out in a very rural area, kind of isolated and looked like I say, lived by himself. So a pretty quiet life.

[F]

He was a loner in the sense that he didn't have a housemate or anything like that. He lived in a tiny trailer, ramshackle trailer. I don't know how much contact he had with his family. He had a couple pals. He was a banjo player. He was sort of well known for that in his community. But most of his friends, the few friends he had were sort of loners like him. And all rather strange characters, I think.

[A]

Sounds like an interesting person for sure.

[B]

Were there a lot of violent crimes in Adams county back in the day?

[F]

No, no, it was very rare, particularly in that part of the county was not very populated and it was rural. And this was something a crime was a violent crime would be unexpected. There was.

[B]

What can you tell us about the details of this murder?

[F]

Well, the details, there are very few, actually. He was discovered laying in his trailer, shot to death. The physical evidence was a shotgun blast through the screen door and Everett's body.

[E]

Actually, I think Dan will remember, the fuel oil delivery guy actually was stopping by to check if you need a fuel oil for the winter because it was August and he had stopped and he knew, of course, those. Most of those guys back then were local. He knew Everett like he did know everybody else and he stopped by to see if need fuel oil filled for the winter and found Everett.

[F]

Yeah, oddly. And I think people would be interested in this. You know, why don't I remember all these details? I was a prosecutor on the original filing the case. But how many years ago was that? Kevin's always fresher because he's had his nose in it. So I. If you want specific facts, Kevin probably knows them better than me. I have a general kind of people recollection for the feel of it, so I apologize for that.

[A]

You're fine. It's only been like, what, like many, many decades of years.

[E]

Yeah, I mean, I. I've got Raymond E C H R O T E with the Burn Oil Company was the person that stopped by to check to see if he needed fuel oil and found ever.

[A]

Wow. And so he was shot through a screen door. Like through the door. Wow. Was there any sense if he died immediately or.

[E]

Don't know what the sense was back then, obviously, but kind of a Unique situation with how it proceeded after that. And now Understand this is 1977, completely different world back then. Law enforcement hasn't changed a whole lot in some regards, but in some regards it has for the better. A lot more training, et cetera from folks. But in this particular case, obviously Raymond is a fuel oil delivery person. He's not a medical person or not a first responder as we would refer to today. So he obviously, if you read the report, he didn't realized this was a violent death. Understandably. This is an elderly gentleman lives by himself who's got some medical problems. He obviously has talked to him before. I think it's probably fair to understand from his point of view that he assumes that Everett has passed away from some other natural cause or some issue because late in his life and contacted the local funeral home, he actually drove in there to meet with them and reported to Mr. Downing, Downing Funeral, Downing funeral George Downing that Everett had passed away. And they went back out to the house to the trailer to check on him and get him. And that's what they did. They not realizing that this was a violent death. Now in today's world that we, you know, this generally wouldn't happen. You're going to have. The coroner's going to show up and I don't recall. Dan, do you, was George the coroner? I can't remember. Off top of the.

[F]

He's a deputy coroner, I believe. Kevin? Yeah, I mean this is all how you would expect something to go in the 1970s in a very rural county of Indiana. It just wasn't high tech, it wasn't where it wasn't like Kevin says, there was no such thing as first responder, at least in name then. So everything moved kind of slowly and sedately and people just weren't keyed into potential crime scenes. And that's what happened here.

[A]

That makes sense. And you're not necessarily expecting an 84 year old to be a murder victim. Not like a high risk lifestyle there, especially in a rural area where he doesn't, you know, seem to have enemies. I'm curious with, with I guess like in terms of what we know about the crime scene, did it not look especially suspicious or bloody? Necessarily like.

[F]

Well, I. Not at first, not with the bot the body was covering, I think most of the blood. So I don't think there was a lot evident but frankly it should have been, they should have been aware of it. So it's not like it was a secret, but they just weren't trained to recognize what they had of Course, a fuel guy. He's just a fuel guy.

[A]

Yeah, he's just doing his job.

[F]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm wondering, you know, if we can go from, from this discovery to some of the early leads in this case. What were some of the first things that, I guess, you know, either you were aware of or that you uncovered in reading the cold case file?

[E]

Well, I, I can tell you there was not a tremendous number of early leads. Obviously, they, they did what you would normally do. They did a neighborhood canvas, even though out there there was very few neighbors, but they went around to all the houses and asked. There was some information that was available from witnesses that they had heard a gunshot from that area. But once again, we're out in the country. It's rural, it's 1970s. I grew up in a hunting and hunting world, and still a minute. And if you know anything about hunting in Indiana, August 15th in Indiana is a big day if you hunt at least when you're a kid. When I was like back in 1977, because August 15th is a squirrel season opening day. So before, we didn't used to have a dove season. We now have a dove season that starts before that. But in 1977, that was the first season that came in. In the fall, hunting season was squirrel season. And like, for me as a kid, I. We couldn't wait. So having people out in the woods on August 18th, 19th would not be unusual to hear a gunshot because cross season is in. So it. You got to put all that in perspective. And also the other thing about 1977 is it's not nearly as common today, is the rural properties were not broken up like they are today. People own much larger swaths. Farmers own big swaths of property, and they didn't usually mind if you. You could just walk from place to place and they kind of knew who you were and you could hunt. Nobody really cared. It wasn't that big of a deal. Now everything's chopped up. 5 acres, 10 acres here and there. A lot more focus on property rights. So it would not have been unusual to hear a gunshot out in the country in August in squirrel season back then. But they went out and checked and they did get some information on that, but it didn't necessarily lead them to anybody.

[B]

I was going to say, you mentioned this was a rural area, not much violence. What was the mood and what was the reaction when this became clear that it was a murder?

[F]

Well, I think the reaction would be fear, and I think that generated then some. Some decisions that were made that probably took the investigation maybe a little bit of the wrong direction. I think another thing, and I don't even know if Kevin is quite aware of this. So I came in again. It was a cold case. By the time I came in, just a year and a half later, they had no apparent leads and I was briefed on the case. But there was not a great relationship between the Adams County Sheriff's Department, which had the jurisdiction in the case. It was real Adams county and the Indiana State Police. Just something that happened in small counties from time to time. And so the only reason for me to bring that up is the communication wasn't the greatest. So the state police, to my knowledge, shipped a detective down. But he really wasn't getting there, wasn't dovetailing with his, his efforts. He was trying, but it, it wasn't a smooth investigation to begin with. Almost like a headless horseman. There was. It was hard figure out who really was in control of what decisions were being made and who to talk to and how to pursue the future investigation. Were you aware of that?

[E]

Not really, no.

[F]

He would, Kevin wouldn't be because he came along so much later.

[A]

What was the drama, or for lack of a better term, between the two agencies?

[F]

Well, it's. Stay out of our backyard, okay? It's a typical thing, you know, it would be the same thing maybe in Fort Wayne with the FBI at some times, you know, you don't want the big guys to come in and take a case away from you. You feel competent to handle it yourself. And so there was just a simple jurisdictional reluctance to share everything you knew and to ask for help.

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[A]

I'm just curious. When you started out in the Adams County Prosecutor's office, were there other big cases going on at the same time or was this kind of one where it was like we should prioritize this?

[F]

Well, to my recollection, in the eight years before I took office, there were two homicides. That's all. So it was. Yeah, it was sort of fading by the time I came in, but it was the only, it was the only game in town, which is good.

[A]

That's a good problem.

[F]

It's a good thing. It's a very law abiding community.

[A]

I I my understanding and correct me if I of this wrong, but there may have been some witnesses early on, you know, identifying a suspect. I think I read four witnesses sort of pointing in someone's direction. Can you speak to that or kind of where that went?

[E]

Yeah, fairly early on in the investigation there's a report indicating that four people came forward with some information on who potentially could have done this because he had made some statements to them that were they could corroborate that information is in the case. I, having not been there, I do not know if that information got transferred to the prosecutor's office. We still don't. Everybody that was there is not really around anymore to even ask. So we don't and I don't want to guess too much, but it's in there. But one of two things either didn't get taken as if it was serious, didn't believe it, or it just didn't get to where it needed to get. I don't know. I could not begin to tell you which one it was. But there when I got the case in 2013, that report is in there that it pointed directly at a pretty good suspect. That's the road I went down.

[A]

It's interesting. You're like kind of like an archaeologist. You're sort of piecing together and excavating like what may have happened. But you can't know everything because everybody in most people in the situation would be gone who could explain what happened.

[E]

Yeah, I mean this one is particularly old.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

There's varying degrees on how old something is. And I've got several cold cases that I worked at. Most of the detectives are still around and I can talk to them and they remember it and they can tell us what it was like and what conversations they had that aren't written down, that were just between the investigators and what the opinion was. I always interview our, the previous detectives on cases if I can, because they have great insight on these things. They were there at the scene and they looked at things with their own two eyes. But when you get one that is this particularly old and there's almost nobody around alive to even talk to. Sometimes you read things, you're not sure what context it goes into or how, how it got there. What does it mean? You can't recreate that. You can just work with it.

[F]

I, I, I find that fascinating because I'm sitting here listening to Kevin and he sort of looked at that report in the same position many years earlier I did when I took office and when I was briefed on the case and I looked at that report and I thought, why is it wasn't this man brought in for questioning? He was never brought in for questioning. The prime initial suspect. And I can assure you that report did get to the prior prosecutor and it was known. But I was actively, and this is not an excuse, I was a young prosecutor, I was trying to figure out why it was a cold case when you had a suspect. And I was thrown off that trail specifically by an investigator, said, no, that's not who it was, that's not who it was. That guy's crazy. That guy's, he's not reliable. He's just trying to get attention. We've disposed of him as a potential suspect. So they specifically rejected. And again, this is not accusatory, it's just a fact. That's how it got all these years later to Kevin Smith.

[A]

Yeah, I feel like when you do look at, sometimes cases that go unsolved, there can be, and I'm not sure if this is what happened here, I'm not even saying that, but maybe like people have their favorite suspect, they're not really looking at other things. Maybe a bit of blinders on a little bit, which can happen to anybody, I imagine.

[F]

Well, a good example is if you're, if you're in a strange city and if you're, you're trying to find a destination and if you've, we've all done this at one point in time, you take a wrong exit and how long does it take? I mean, and that's what happened in this investigation, an exit was taken. In my opinion, an exit was taken without thought. And here we are.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. And I want to talk about that wrong exit a little bit more. You know, and I think. I think what we're referring to here is the sort of the three arrests that ultimately went nowhere. What can you both tell me about that situation and how that unfolded then?

[E]

You were there.

[F]

Come on, Kevin.

[E]

I will. I. I will not. I will take some of this. I'll explain what I. Yeah, no, I want to hear.

[F]

I really want to hear his perspective on it. I have the greatest respect for Kevin, so I want you to know that. But. Okay, so move forward. Probably another two years after I took office, somewhere in there and we had a new sheriff and a new detective in the county. The new detective in the county was very aggressive, very ambitious, and he would have told anybody I talked to him. And he's a nice man. His goal was to be sheriff. And he told me directly he thought if he could solve the Armstrong case, that that would vault him up in public opinion and make him elected. And so that's. As a detective, that's what he set out to do. And so he. Anybody he questioned on any minor crime, drug offense, burglary, whatever, he would bring up the Armstrong case, and particularly those people in the south part of the county, because kind of Adams county is more populous in the north, and it's somewhat separate from the south. You know, different school districts, different business centers and everything, and much more rural in the south. So anybody he talked to in the south, potentially who was a defendant or somebody he was interviewing, he would ask about it. And one day he got a hold of a young man on a burglary. I think it was a burglary investigation. I don't know if he'd pinned the burglary on this young man. He might have. But the young man started to give some squirrely answers about the Armstrong case. And so that led to, at some point, within a week or two weeks at the most, I think he was asked if he'd be willing to give a polygraph, a lie detector test. He agreed, but Adams county didn't have any polygraph examiners, so they used an Allen County Sheriff's Department expert. They put him through two or three series of questions about relevant things about the case, and the examiner felt he failed. So then they interrogated him, and they held him for probably, I don't know, 10 or 12 hours, something like that. I think Kevin might know the answer to how long that was, but in the end, he confessed, and his story was that he and two friends were out, and they were. These were all juveniles, and they were messing around, and they had a shotgun, and they were. I don't know if they were squirrel hunting, but they were perhaps somewhat intoxicated. And they came up on the trailer, and one of the young men went up and Everett came to the front door and he shot them. And then they ran. That was his story. Based upon that, I'm trying to make this fast for you. Based upon that, we issued arrest warrants for them and took them into custody. And it was more than just arresting them because we had to go through a waiver process for June Dolls. But we started with the waiver process, and that led to these three young men being incarcerated while awaiting trial. I'll let you fill in the blanks.

[E]

Well, that kind of leads to how I got the case to start with. Oh, really? In 2013. I mean, I know most. I've been specializing in cold cases for a long time, so I know most of the cold cases that we have worked here at the Fort Wayne Post because I worked on almost all of them. But I had not heard of this one until I was down here at the Post one day. And my supervisor, Mark Crenshaw, being the one guy who worked cold cases here, he got me and said, hey, I found this file upstairs. It's got these original fingerprint cards from the jail where three suspects were arrested in this Edward Armstrong case that I had not heard of. And it was even before Mark had started on the department, it had occurred. And he said, can. It's got three fingerprint cards which have the disposition spot on there for them to be filled out, for criminal history to be done, but shows they were arrested for murder, but it doesn't show a disposition. And he said, I made a couple of phone calls. I think one of them may have been to Dan early on and said, were we out on this? Did these. Did they get convicted? Did they plead, let's figure this out so we can put the correct disposition in there. I think there was some conversation about maybe there potentially was another suspect at the time that that was deceased even now. So there wasn't any place to go with it. So my boss, Mark Crunchy, gave that to me, just gave me the packet and said, just look into it and see what we have. And I made a. Didn't take long. I made a couple of phone calls. I went and saw Dan in person shortly after and had a discussion with him about back then. But Very quickly found out that the. The other person who had been named early on in the investigation was not deceased, that he had been in prison in Michigan for a lengthy prison sentence, but had since gotten out and was living in Adams County. He was back in the county that this homicide occurred in in 2013 from 1977. And after also discussing with Dan, I. It became pretty clear to me, because I wasn't there back then. He was. And I. I think I kind of confirmed this from further investigation, that the three individuals that were charged on this in this case had nothing to do with it. They did not. In my opinion, after reviewing several things in the case, including the actual video, which is unusual for 1977 to have a videotaped interview. That's rare. I'm glad we did, because back then, technology was sometimes reel to reel, which is not easy to transfer over anymore. There is a video of that interview of the young man who confessed. I was able to watch that. And I felt very strongly from my experience as an investigator that that was a absolute false confession that involved too much information being fed to him. And he was in a very difficult spot because he had another issue that started this, and he felt like he had no other option but to say what they wanted to hear. That's what I saw when I watched the interview. And then when I looked at the other side of it, at this other person and how strong that information was, it was pretty clear to me this, we need to go down this other road, and that those three were not involved.

[F]

Where were you in 1999? No, I tell people a story who have nothing to do with law enforcement or anything. I just tell them as sort of one of Dan's war stories. And everybody asks the same question. Why would you confess to something you didn't do? Well, this case is the study for that. This is the explanation for why it happens and why you.

[E]

You.

[F]

You can't. You have to be professional about how you approach what you do in an investigation. And you have to.

[B]

You.

[F]

You have to make good judgments and good decisions and not go off f. God. This is. This is the case study and how not to do something, unfortunately.

[A]

Absolutely. And I want to talk with you, Dan, about how this all sort of unraveled in real time. But I'm curious, Kevin. I wanted to unpack something that you said before that, and that's just, you know, when you say information sort of being fed to somebody in an interview, can you explain why that is so inherently problematic? And, you know, for an investigator to do well, It.

[E]

And it's been the rule in our business for way before I got here, and it still is, and it will always be, but it's much harder now to keep it contained. Although back then it was still difficult. The news media was different back then. If you read newspaper articles from homicides in the 1960s and 70s, the graphic detail is unbelievable.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[E]

You will not see that in today's world for good reason. But in today's world, we have significant number of more media outlets that want to cover and aren't calling people and asking questions. So that's why we keep information confidential, number one, because of all the news media that's available to people, if a potential person in the area sees somewhere in an outlet too detailed of information that should have not been released, and then they get themselves in a difficult spot, they can regurgitate that information as if it's real to them and they were there. So that's why it's so critical that we keep some things in confidence. And if you watch the interview that I've watched on this case, there's significant body language keys with the young man who's being interviewed. Even the way. Even the way it's set up, the physical setup of the interview is very, very unique that I have not seen before. And you add all those pieces up together, it. It's very clear to me that's how this occurred. I don't think anybody meant to. I do not believe that they were trying to frame anybody. I believe they thought he's given us some unusual answers about this and it led down this road and information was available to him. Here's what happened. And if you listen to the words he used, they are very generic. His description of the events is quite generic and not extremely specific, which is what you need to corroborate physical. With the physical evidence to. To confirm that he. He was actually there. That. That's. That's not the case in this one.

[F]

Yeah, I mean, I. I agree 100% with Kevin. I mean, this is. You have people who were trying to solve a crime and do the right thing, but didn't know how. The polygraph examiner, he was probably not present in some of the interviews. He had no way of knowing some of what had already been told to this defendant. But I completely believe that he showed deception on the polygraph test because of how it was set up and what position the young man was at. So again, it's not that somebody was trying to set somebody up. It's that the circumstances just took it in that direction. And once it's like I say, once they hit the exit, man, look out. And that's. And it only got worse from there from the arrest. Let me tell you, in that case.

[A]

Against the three, you can't turn the car around at that point, so to speak. And you know, and I think what you said is really important, what both of you said. It doesn't have to be some frame job or anyone intentionally doing anything bad. It's just sometimes bad technique or technique that's not, you know, the appropriate, you know, situation like with this is, is just gonna lead to a bad outcome regardless of anyone's intent. Can you talk us through what happened from there with these initial suspect and then these two additional suspects and sort of how the case proceeded back in the. It was back in the 80s, right?

[B]

Right.

[F]

So they all were ultimately bound over to adult corn. I'll skip all of that. And they were charged, they lawyered up. Everybody fortunately got a quality lawyer. There were none of these street front guys that were just asking for big retainers and not doing anything. These were really good lawyers on this case. Of course that worried me as much as my facts because I didn't hardly have any physical evidence and I knew that and I was a young prosecutor and I probably, I didn't assert myself with this detective. If I had it to do over again, I would have not filed a charge as soon as I did. But I was present. Kevin will recognize this with the age old police argument to a prosecutor when they want to get a warrant. Well, if we don't arrest him now, they're going to flee and they're going to disappear. And so remember, a prosecutor is a political animal, a sheriff is a political animal. The public is out there wanting to know why this crime isn't solved. So all the impetus is on getting a suspect into custody. Never mind the fact that they missed the easy one two years earlier. So there's all of this pressure, kind of unseen pressure that's going on in interplay between agencies and personalities. And so if Dan Sigler as a 12 year prosecutor or a 20 year prosecutor had been presented with this, the charges I won't positively say, but they might not have in file. So that's where I feel like I missed the ball, is not saying whoa. Because everything that Kevin says he saw in that tape, Dan Sigler saw that tape back in 1999 and what, what.

[A]

Ended up happening in terms of like, because obviously they weren't convicted. So where did things go from there?

[F]

Well, two things Happen. Which make it almost comical. Okay, the first is, what do you do if you're. You're the police and you don't have. And I'm just speaking in general, if you're a. You don't have. Your evidence is thin. We won't call it weak. We'll call it thin. There was some evidence, but it was thin. And of course, a confession is huge. Well, I'm telling my investigator, my detective, look, we got. We can't walk in a courtroom with. With just this confession and nothing else to tie these guys in the crime. So they find somebody, a guy from Ohio who had committed some chest kiting in Adams county, and he was wanted on Lawrence in Ohio, and they arrested him. And at that time, the Adams county jail, they were gang cells. They weren't individual cells. So there was only, like, two different groupings of cells you could put people in. So what do they do? They put. This con man, basically, is who. He was in a cell with a couple of these defendants, and he, of course, miraculously comes forward, and they've told him details. So then we go through this process of trying to verify the jailhouse informants. Information was, oh, he knew where they. They tossed the. They tossed the weapon in the pond. So then we get divers out, and they're diving in every farm pond in the southern Adams county and a couple in Ohio. And of course, nothing is ever found. And then finally, the. The snitch says, well, if you just let me out, I know I can find it. We let him out in recognizance, but he still had a whole warrant from Ohio, which was a big no, no. So somehow, as soon as he gets out in the country, he skedaddles and they lose him. So now we're in trouble with the Ohio authorities because we've let the jailhouse nist out on recognizance when we should have bound him over to Ohio to face his charges there. So that was another mess. Okay, so we get through that, and. And. And the lawyers for the defendants are all telling me who I have good relationships with. All these guys. We fight each other every day, but we respect each other. And they're saying, dan, Dan, there's nothing here. I'm pounded because I'm off. I'm saying, we'll. We'll find a way to get this case result. We want it. We want the truth. Nothing. Nothing. And they're trying. They're. They know how to do it. So finally, the lawyers. The defense lawyers and I agree on a polygraph Polygraphs for each of these guys. They agreed to them, and we have certain restrictions on. They can't be used in court. And we're trying to elucidate in order to come to resolution of the case. Well, I'm laughing because it's sad, but every. It would make you, as a prosecutor, never want to give a polygraph again because they all had conflicting results. The guy we thought was going to pass, failed. The guy we were sure was going to fail passed. Bizarre results. And so, in the end, to make this long story short, I just did the only thing I could do. I dismissed the cases. Because as a prosecutor, if you don't believe that you have cause to take somebody to trial or even charge somebody for that. I did believe I had caused it to take charges, guys. But once into the. Once into the case, I knew I couldn't ethically go forward with it. So I just messaged her.

[A]

Did you get any blowback for doing that?

[F]

I had to explain it to the family. And, of course, I anticipated their problems with it. And they didn't like it. They believed. They asked me the same question everybody asked me today. Why would somebody confess to something they didn't do? It's the same question. And I explained it. I'm not sure they believe me. I think they did. They let it go. They kept looking for some way to find out who killed her father and grandfather. So the public accepted, though, because I try to be transparent about it, it's a mistake. We're not letting them go because there's a technicality. We're letting them go because we don't have evidence that they did what we originally charged. And so that's. That. That's kind of where I walk out the door.

[A]

Yeah, but it's. It's such an important, you know, reminder that that's, you know, the prosecutor's discretion. And it's important to exercise not just, you know, going to trial with people, but when not to go to trial.

[F]

You have to be honest with yourself and honest with the public. If you're not, you're not doing the job. But basically what it is, and then.

[B]

You walk in the door, decades later, is part of the cold case team. So obvious question. What is the cold case team? How does it accept cases?

[E]

Well, in 2013, we didn't have one. We do now. We had one years and years and years ago. It kind of went away through attrition. Then we went many, many years without one. 2013, we didn't have one. I was just the cold case Guy who liked to work them around here. So they, they asked me to do them and funneled them to me. But now we do have one. We started one in April last year. A full time cold case team. It consists of basically six of us, five detectives and myself to oversee them. So nowadays we get a case like this, let's say it's, let's say this be unusual, say it's one like this that's completely unknown to me or us where I'm gonna now. Back then I was generally working by myself, but now there's gonna be a couple of us probably we're gonna sit down, we're gonna take the file and my investigative process that I use on these is always the same. Usually there's volumes of word documents, some are way more involved than others. But I'm gonna read every stitch of paperwork on the case. It may take me several days. I want to make some very general notes identifying suspect victims, witnesses, other people potentially involved. Just get the very basics on a handwritten, potential motives, just some very simple stuff. I'm going to take a couple days away from it, let my mind clear, I'm going to come back, I'm going to do that again, I'm actually going to do that usually a third time. And between the second and the third time I generally will start to get the evidence list out that shows everything we have and see how it fits into what I'm starting to get my head wrapped around here on because I'm by this time I'm kind of starting to be able to, I can recite the names off the top of my head. I know I can picture where we're at. I've looked at crime scene pics. So I got an idea what we have here because I probably was not at the scene and by the third time I go through it, I'm going to have a pretty good handle myself as best I can without being there as to who's who and who did what and then where do we need to go? Once I get to that point, I've got the evidence list. I'm going to sit down with our lab folks because we have with the full case cold case team, we now have some lab folks that are dedicated to our cold case team that specialize in fig forensic genetic genealogy because we have so many more tools. Now I'm going to sit down with one of those experts and I'm going to go through, we're going to discuss this case. I'm going to show them crime scene pics because that's really important for them to see. This T shirt that we've taken came from right here. And it kind of helps them understand. Okay, that makes sense. Now where should I be looking on the shirt for potential forensic material? And then we're going to. So we're going to go through and carefully identify what piece of evidence need tested or retested. Because technology is so much better. We're going to go through and bring very careful study of that. And I'm going to submit those pieces of evidence to the lab to be. They're already in the lab and I'm going to submit the paperwork for them to test them. A laboratory examination form. Now that's going to take some time for them to do the examination. So now I've got a couple months here. I've got my witness list and I've kind of gone through it when I'm going through this case and I've made a list of who needs to be talked to or retalked to, who I need to find. Oftentimes in a case like this that's decades old, first thing I do is just find who's live, how many of these witnesses are alive. Now, in today's world, it's easy with the databases that we have access to because we're law enforcement, we can find people very quickly, usually so. And I can find out if they're alive or dead so that I can narrow that down pretty quickly and then try to make some contact. Here's who I am. Do you remember this? And we'll start. Start doing work out in the field while we're waiting on the lab testing to be done. And then hopefully by the time we start getting some lab test results back, I have pretty much vetted all this, find out. You know, I've had more than one case where witnesses, when I interviewed them or they were interviewed back in the day, and a very clear memory of what happened. You talk to somebody 40 years later, it's a little different world. It is for all of us. So I get. And if they potentially have to testify, if I got to bring them to the prosecutor, we. Their memory now is important. If they can't remember the same or remember very little, that's kind of a big deal because they have to get up on stand. So that's kind of my process of how we investigate these things.

[B]

I find that really fascinating. But I want to jump back for a second. And one of the first things you said was that you were the guy that was interested in cold cases. What Is it about cold cases that grab you?

[E]

Probably the same thing that grabs 95% of this country in the world. Because everybody is fascinated by these things now. As if, as you guys know, the business you're in. There's never been more attention to these ever, partly because of what we can do. Forensic genealogy has changed the world in cold cases. When we did. When 4 Wing City and US did Tinsley in 2018 and the first one ever in the country in Phoenix, the Canal killer case in 2014-15, that was done. That has changed the world for cold cases because we now can solve cases we never dreamed we could have because of forensic genealogy.

[F]

But can I ask a question? I got a question for Kevin.

[A]

Do it.

[F]

But there's more to it. There was sort of a personal angle for you to really want to get involved in cold cases too, wasn't there for. Or something like that?

[E]

There was, there was. Well, there's a couple, but more than one. So I don't lose track here. Kevin, I'm gonna stay with you for a second, then I'll kind of add on here. I think just generally we're fascinated by mysteries. Human beings are. I am fascinated by them. I just happen to be in the law enforcement business and love doing investigations. So these things absolutely obsess me. And I'm not kidding. I don't use that word lightly. You can ask my wife. They obsess me. And some regards. I wouldn't say there's a negative to it because it's so important. There's a man got murdered here and a family didn't have any answers for a long time or got the wrong answers for a while, thought they had ups and downs. I mean, a violent death of somebody decimates a family for decades. I've sat in a room with many, many of these families. It decimates them for decades, forever. Even the ones that are solved right away. I can't imagine going through life and not knowing what happened to grandpa or your child. So for me, it's. It's really important. As important as you can get in long for, it can't get any higher crime than murder. And it's just absolutely fascinating to try to figure out something that everybody that's worked on it before you and most of them worked very, very hard and tried their best, couldn't figure it out. That's just. It's just fascinating to me to be able to try. I want to figure something out that nobody else could. It's really interesting. But the personal side of it There's a couple things. I had a couple of homicides that occurred in the. I was, I got sent in 1987 up to Subang county area as a young trooper to work on the tow road. So I'm there starting in December of 87. In the next two years there are two homicides that occur up there. One is the murder of Fremont Town Marshal Bobby Moore that's still unsolved. That occurred in I believe June of 88 when I was a rookie 10 miles from where I was living. He's a policeman that got murdered at his home and then shortly after that there was a murder in Subin County. Todd Kelly was murdered that our department was heavily involved again in working most all these. And that case, while it was technically solved, there was a murder warrant issued for Mahfouz Huq, the suspect in that case. Within 10 days of the murder occurring, Mahfous had fled the country, he was from Bangladesh. So we had a cold case fugitive that had been on Unsolved Mysteries which was really the original unsolved case that Robert Stack posted. Those two happened when I was very young trooper in the county I lived in. I wasn't involved in them because I was a trooper and not a detective. But to Dan's point, when I was 10 years old in 1975 when Laura Mitchell got killed and was left dumped in Noble County, I mean she, she was abducted in northwestern Indiana which is six miles from where I lived. She was a student at high school. My dad was a principal out and in school with both my brothers. That case went unsolved for 47 years and six months until we arrested two people in 2023. That was a big deal at my house. My dad was in the education business for almost 40 years. He had two students murdered in 40 years, both of them from North Webster, Indiana, both girls. First one was Laura Mitchell and I was fortunate enough to solve that case with some help with some guys and thank God, with help of DNA science and the lab and our people that did a fantastic job. So that's very personal to me.

[A]

Wow, thank you. And thank you for asking that question. Yeah, we, we covered the Laurel Mitchell case and that's just awful I guess. You know I do want to ask you one thing that I think you touched upon but in terms of you mentioned like sometimes detectives don't really. Cold cases can be a challenge I guess for some people. What are the differences between tackling a cold case? I mean in this case like a 48 year old cold case versus your standard homicide that you're dealing with that just happened.

[E]

The ch. There's two. Two answers to that. The challenge for the case itself is witnesses are oftentimes gone or deceased. Memories fade in a few occasions. Not many. Their evidence isn't available, but most times it is. Evidence deteriorates over years because if we're talking about biological evidence, it potentially can deteriorate to a point where it's not usable. But that's the normal challenges you have. Investigators are gone and you can't get. You can't interview them to find out what it looked like. You hopefully you've got a technology. Way back, they took. Oftentimes they took less photographs than we would now, today, and way back. Oftentimes they didn't take videotapes of crime scenes. We do now all the time on those. So sometimes those are challenges you have just with cold cases. But primarily it's the age. The witnesses are much older, their memories are faded. You can't read between the lines in a report. You've. You're not sure why this something didn't get done. You just don't know. Nobody here to ask. So that's the challenges. The other side of that is, from a little bit different angle is there are a limited number, in my experience, a limited number of investigators that I think will be very successful at these type of cases because these are hard. These things were hard. That's why they're not solved.

[F]

Hmm.

[E]

Cold cases are cold because they were hard, generally. So it takes a specific personality trait in an investigator to be good at these. And it's a very unusual combination because I've been with state police for 38 years. I've been investigations for a long time. I've worked cases all over the place with a ton of detectives. Policemen are wired one way. Generally, they're all almost always type A personalities. They have an investigative mindset, the detectives do. But that's not enough in cold cases, because a state trooper out on the road and I worked the road for 14 years in uniform, that's an immediate gratification job. You stop people speeding, you have some effect immediately and you move on. You get a drunk driver, you put them in jail that night to get immediate gratification for what you're doing. Detectives still get some of that because you usually within a few months or even right away, get it, make an arrest, maybe it might even be a year, but you still get the gratification. I worked it, I got to the end and I made the arrest. Cold cases, whole different deal. Most policemen want to get to the end of this somewhere. There aren't many detectives that literally can stand it to go 10, 15, 20 years without an answer. They can't do it, so they quit working on it. They lose focus because there's no end in sight. So I have to have somebody that has a. When I pick. We pick the five people for my team. I want a guy who has a motor that runs 1,000 miles an hour every day. He gets out of bed, and he cannot wait to go to work. I describe it to him. If you can get out of bed every morning and beat your head against a brick wall till it's bleeding, until it hurts. I tell this every one of them. I want the guy that gets out of bed and beats his head against a brick wall, and he cannot wait to get out of bed and do it, even though it's sore from the day before. Do it again. Do it all day, every day. Go back to bed, but have the patience to stay on it and not let up. That's the unique quality, is the patience to keep doing that every day for 10 years, and you still might not figure it out. But I can't. I'm obsessed with it, so I can't stop. That's who I need. That's a unique quality in a detective, and that's why it's hard to. Some of these sit, because there, you give me ten detectives, I might. Might find you one in that group that might be really good at this. I might. So it's a very low percentage of people, I think, can be successful. And no offense to anybody else, it's just a difference of how you're wired.

[F]

Can you say Harry Bosch? I was thinking that. Yeah, no, that's what it is. He's right. I mean, that is what it is. It is not ever being willing to let go.

[A]

I actually wanted to ask you a question, Dan, about this. We kind of got the law enforcement side of dealing with cold cases. I'm not sure if in Adams county, you ever had cold cases that you had to prosecute, but what are the challenges coming in from it, from the prosecutorial angle when you're dealing with some of these cold cases?

[F]

Well, if you sort of read between the lines of what Kevin said and how he has to develop a case and how long it takes, it also requires patience on the part of the prosecutor and an understanding. And this is very, very important, a mind for justice, because the understanding is this case that you walk in the courthouse, in a courtroom, and try isn't Going to be like the average run of the mill case where you put witness A, B, C and D and a couple of them are detectives, a couple of them are eyewitness. Almost all of your live witnesses are going to be compromised and you're going to have to explain, explain, explain, explain in that courtroom to the jury. So it takes a different kind of advocacy, I think, and along similar lines of the type of detective it takes to investigate. You have to want to do justice and you have to be willing to maybe not get to the finish line with it if there may be an acquittal, because maybe you just don't have that last ounce that a jury wants to see or hear. So I really wasn't in the business when that cold case phenomenon started. Thank God it has it started to move or. So that's the best I could do for you.

[A]

Absolutely. I guess. Can we jump into James McBride II and what you were able to sort of find out about him? I guess to start out with, yeah.

[E]

James was the person who was identified early on in the case as a very strong suspect. So when I got the case in 2013 and found out, you know, it's much easier in 2013 to find out whether somebody's around or not. Easily in less than a minute on Google, you can figure out if somebody's alive or dead and where they're at. And I did. And he was living in Adams County. He'd been in prison in Michigan for a long time for another very violent crime up there. He had a history of that, found that out very quickly. And he had gotten out of prison and moved back to where he was from, basically. So now I've got a really potentially good suspect who's alive and living in the same county this occurred in. And the report I had of the witnesses came forward. As I contacted those witnesses, all of them were still alive. I went and interviewed them all personally and they all still had very detailed memories of what he had told them and what had occurred that the night or two that they interacted with him, that were in fact, their stories were identical to the same what they had told the detectives way back.

[A]

What had they told the detectives way back? What was their story?

[E]

They basically said that, I mean, they, they were family members of his through marriage, etc. And that he had showed tremendously erratic behavior on a particular evening that lined up with the date that Everett Armstrong was killed. Such unique behavior that he was going to flee the state that night and take somebody with him against their will. And that because of that he was confronted by a male in the group that. No, you're not doing that. Somewhat of a physical altercation occurred between the two of them and eventually they got calmed down and he confided in that individual that he had just shot an old man. He described very specifically, which matched all the evidence exactly how he did it and what it looked like at the scene and showed that person the weapon, according to this witness. Guns right here in the back seat. You want to see it scared the daylights out of the person involved that was with them. Basically immediately after he sees this report in the news media that this person has been killed, which confirms what he was told. And then Mr. McBride then went on to tell a couple other people the exact same story that he told these people exactly how he did this, how he approached the trailer, where he waited, et cetera, how he shot, etc. So it just. Everything just lined up. And this is corrupt. Their statements were the same as they were before, so it all lined up very well. I had living witnesses that had very good memories that described these details 30 years later exactly the way they did before. And it lines up with the physical evidence.

[A]

Did McBride give any sense of a motive of why he did this?

[E]

He did not. When I interviewed him, he. He did not. He did not confess. James indicated what he told me when I asked him if he was involved in this was that he was on PCP back in those days and he does not recall.

[A]

Oh, geez.

[E]

If you do any study on pcp, you will know that that's probably an accurate statement. It is a mind altering drug to the nth degree. He indicated to me that he simply did not recall.

[A]

So he didn't deny it?

[E]

He just did not deny it.

[A]

Wow. What was that like interviewing him?

[E]

It was fine. He was very, very calm person when I talked to him. Very soft spoken, not the slightest bit aggressive. Completely opposite than all the previous reports about him and his previous behavior, which was extremely violent. I had interviewed his ex wife, his daughters, other family members. He was known even in the Adams county area when he was a juvenile as a very violent person with very erratic behavior. And when I interviewed him in 2013, he was just the opposite. He was extremely calm and subdued and very soft spoken. So it wasn't a difficult person to talk to. And I believe he was telling me the truth that he did. He literally does not recall.

[A]

And then, Dan, I wanted to ask you, were you aware of McBride's reputation or anything like that in the area as being, you know, violent or like what he was doing, I guess.

[F]

No, no, I did. I did not know of him. I relied on the police, you know, to. To give me what they knew, and they didn't give me much. I. I do recall that. So it was just a dead end. They did not want to move forward on him because they had already made a conclusion.

[A]

Right. And that conclusion was just. These witnesses aren't reliable. We don't need to.

[F]

Yeah, they based it. Two of the witnesses, I think, were husband and wife. And the husband had been in criminal problems. In fact, I had prosecuted him. And so I guess in that sense, it wasn't hard to convince me that he wasn't a reliable witness because I had had him in court and he was. He was. In fact, this is all of the characters in this case. All of the witnesses, even the kids we had charged were. Had sketchy backgrounds. They had been in and out of trouble. Nobody was what you would call a blue ribbon citizen. Okay. Everybody had their problems. So you had to sort through all this, and that's why it took somebody that we didn't have. Then again, I had great detectives and everything, but our resources were so limited, and the experience base of these guys were nothing like the man you're talking to right now. So it. It was. It was just sort of a grab bag, and we. We weren't grabbing the right. The right information.

[A]

Yeah, that makes sense. It's hard to know who to believe in a situation like that.

[F]

I. Well said yes.

[A]

And then, Kevin, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, it took, you know, you mentioned, like, kind of almost beating your head against a brick wall for 10 years, you know, over 10 years over this case. Can you just tell us, like, how things progressed? Actually, maybe start off by telling us how you got in contact with Dan and sort of what those conversations look like as you're trying to piece all of this together.

[E]

Yeah. I had been told by my supervisor when I got the case that Dan was. He had done enough research, found out that Dan was involved in this early on in those arrests. So I went right to him. I knew Dan from before. We'd been in the same business generally for a long time. So I knew him, know his son real well. So I actually went and just met with him in person and discussed with him a little bit about the case. And so that's how I got in contact with him. But obviously he was not in the prosecution business at that time. We had a different prosecutor, so that kind of took me to that point.

[A]

Dan, what was that like for you to hear suddenly about this, like, really old case, back from your early days as a prosecutor.

[F]

You know, there's some things, there's some bad experiences that never go away. And it was honestly was a little bit surprising, but really not at all. I was just glad that somebody was on it because it always bothered me. Because when you dismiss a charge, that doesn't mean that nothing happened. Everett Armstrong was still dead. And we had no answers. At least I thought we had no answers.

[A]

And then, Kevin, how did things develop? I know McBride has since passed away, but sort of, as you piece this together, I guess at what point did you feel we can sort of make an announcement that this is effectively closed?

[E]

When I. When I found out he had passed away, I got a call from his daughter who advised that her dad had passed away. She was not close, obviously was not close with him because of the violence as a child, but. So I reached out to the prosecutor in the case, the sitting prosecutor in Adams county, and said, you comfortable with us doing for the families, Everett's family, that's still around. Would you be comfortable doing news release on this? And he was more than willing to do that.

[A]

Absolutely. Do you feel like Mr. McBride could have been charged today, potentially based on the evidence against him?

[E]

I absolutely do. Obviously that, that's not my. I don't get to make that decision. Yeah, I. I don't think there's any question. The witnesses. Now, let me make a caveat there. These witnesses now are 12 years older than when I interviewed him from an incident they saw in 1977. So I haven't talked to them personally for several years. So I should say I would have to re. Interview them to see. But if their memories have faded completely, that's a different story. It changes things. So I don't know that I understand.

[A]

Mr. Armstrong had five children. Were you able to speak to any of the surviving family members of his.

[E]

I spoke to a granddaughter, just the one that reached out to me when we did the news release about this. I haven't spoken to the others. She was kind of speaking to the rest of the family.

[A]

What did she say?

[E]

She was thankful, appreciative of the work involved and to get an answer finally. And as you would expect, you know, indicated it was. It was a difficult situation for their family for a long, long time with no answers. So she was just. She just thanked me several times for continuing to work on the case and at least getting some resolution to it.

[B]

You talked earlier about banging your head against a wall every day for Years and years. How does it feel for you to do that every day and then finally break through and bring resolution and closure to a case like this that was unsolved for 48 years.

[E]

I've been directly involved in five of them, where we actually got it to where it needed to be, and we made an arrest and got conviction and every one of those. It's indescribable. It's not easy. It's goosebumps. And you're like, man, we figured it out. This one's different because we didn't make an arrest arrest. This is still very satisfying. But when you have one where you make the arrest, it's amazing. It's so satisfying to finally get somewhere. It allows your mind to be at peace for a little bit. Because if you're working a whole bunch of these, which we are, this is all we're doing. My group, and we've got 10 now, we've got a lot more of them in the hopper because there's six of us. Your mind is never at peace because most of them are unsolved. So it gives you a little bit of peace for a bit, which is probably important psychologically in this business. I'll take that. But it's so. It's so gratifying to sit in a room with the family and tell them, if you're. If Musli's in person, tell them we got it.

[A]

I know that you had that in the Mitchell case with Bandy and Lehman's arrest, which was incredible when that happened, I guess. Dan, how does it feel for you to sort of, like, see. Get out in the news? Like, maybe answers, even if there was an arrest or a trial, answers, potentially in this case?

[F]

Well, it's. It's awesome, and thanks to Kevin. But it happened much earlier for me, because, Kevin, this is, I think, a weird, in a lot of ways, a weird cold case, because as soon as Kevin picked it up, he pretty quickly figured out who did it. He really. I think he'll have to answer that himself, but. And when we talked in 2013, and the more we talked about what happened here, you know, it is McBride. And so that was very, very good for me. Because, remember. And the focus, your questions are, I think, exactly on point of height. Everything you're talking to Kevin about, everything that's discussed has been so far. But remember some other people, the families, the parents of those boys who were arrested, the boys themselves, because when these charges were dismissed, nobody went to them and apologized. This wasn't DNA closure, this was the Prosecutor saying, we don't have the evidence to go forward. So at that point, these guys get turned back into the community and everybody's still going, did you really do it? Are you out on the technicality? So I just want to say they suffered too. And again, it's a sad thing, but hopefully. And that's why cold case is so important, because, yeah, Kevin's finding a murder cold case, but he's clearing some people that were wrongfully charged. And that's almost even. Almost as good a news, right?

[A]

Absolutely. And that's for so many cold cases. There's people that come up that maybe are charged, maybe are just rumored to be involved. And I imagine it's a huge relief for them and their families. I think we've run to the end of our questions. I wanted to ask you both, is there something, I guess Dan first and then Kevin, did we not ask you about that you wanted to mention.

[F]

No, I think you've covered everything. I think you know how I feel. I think you know how Kevin feels about it. And it was a tragedy in all aspects. But to take it around full circle, there is some relief and there is some, I won't call it joy, but satisfaction that answers have been found. Thank you, Kevin.

[E]

Sure. And it's in the world's different place now with our forensic genealogy and things like that, because now it's almost daily you're seeing a news story somewhere in this country, even in other countries where they're solving cases from a long time ago, some all the way back into the 60s. We just did the Phyllis Baylor case here recently. Similar situation, Suspects dead, did a news release through the Prosecutor. It was 1972. It's a long time ago, but we figured it out through forensic genealogy. While the community is fascinated by these, there's so many of them that come out in the news now that it's people getting a little bit numb to them because there used to be one once, and it was a big deal to solve one, and it still is. But now there's. We got tremendous number of news media outlets and the Internet then, now the forensic ability to solve cases that we never dreamed we'd be able to because of forensic genealogy, which is fascinating study in itself. I've told or I presented some groups about dean analysts and detectives about this forensic genealogy. And I've told them there is no greater time to be in this business. If you're interested in cold cases, now's the time to be in it. The possibilities are unbelievable now. And we got the momentum too. Community supports us. People want us to do this, use this technology. This is a great time to be where we're at. I'm very lucky that I'm still here doing it because I could have been retired. But I'm fortunate. At near the end of my career, I've gotten to be involved in this work. Very satisfying because you can work on a lot of these for a long time and not get anywhere. But we're getting somewhere now.

[A]

That's wonderful. Well, thank you so much, both of you for taking the time to speak with us about this case.

[E]

You're welcome.

[B]

We want to thank Captain Smith and Mr. Zigler for the terrific conversation. We really enjoyed talking with them.

[A]

Yes. And we very much appreciate them taking the time. I want to note that stories like this, stories about answers in cases like Everett Armstrong's really give us hope for the future of crime solving in Indiana. And we are so excited that the cold case team is back at the Indiana State Police.

[B]

Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email [e-mail]. if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[A]

If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www.buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.

[B]

Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the web@Kevin TG.com if you're looking to talk.

[A]

With other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening. We're obsessed with our quince pieces. Is that fair to say?

[B]

That's fair to say.

[A]

What is quince?

[B]

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[A]

They do that because they basically cut out the middleman. You're just getting cut him right out. Yeah, they're getting it from the artisans. They're giving it to you. It's wonderful. It's going to be 50 to 80% less than those of their competitors and you're just Going to get some wonderful things. We recently went shopping to get some summer styles. We'd previously gotten some winter styles but we wanted to update. So we went on quints and we both got something. Let's talk about what we got. I got this wonderful 100% European linen dress. It's a button front dress and it's in blue chambray stripe. I love this dress. I'm picky about dresses because like I feel like I'm have a weird shaped body and sometimes they cut me off in a weird way. This one just fits like a dream. I love the way it fits. It is very much a classic sort of style. So I'm not worried about it going out of style in like two minutes and then I'm looking foolish. It just looks like something I can wear for years and years. I know I'm going to be wearing this dress a lot this summer.

[B]

I got a great shirt. I can't paint word pictures like you do, but I'm very happy with the shirt. I've gotten compliments on the shirt is a comfortable shirt.

[A]

For anyone who is interested in learning more about the, the products that we purchased, he got a hundred percent European linen utility shirt in martini olive. So I think it looks really cute. I think that you look very cute in it. So I love it.

[B]

And keep watching our Facebook page because we will probably, if I convince her. Take a picture of Anya wearing her dress and her beret.

[A]

Oh, I got a beret too because Kevin insists on me buying new hats. So I got a little blue beret. And yeah, I, I just really. Quint is one of those brands. I just love working with them because it's just stuff that I love to kind of come back to and keep buying because I love what they're doing, I love how ethical they are and I know that they're going to get me quality pieces fast. And with their wonderful return policy, you can try on different things. Make sure the sizing's right for you. And it's just a great deal for Murder sheet listeners. So give your summer closet an upgrade with quince. Go to quince.commsheet for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Quinc to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.commsheet you know, Anya, we are in.

[B]

This true crime space. It's such a difficult place to be in sometimes. And one of the reasons is because you're talking about cases that people have a real emotional involvement in. And so if you reach a conclusion that some people don't, like online, they're going to, like, start attacking you and even threatening you.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

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[A]

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