Murder at the Bike Shop | Sidebar Q&A

Summary

Proof: A True Crime Podcast
Episode: Murder at the Bike Shop | Sidebar Q&A
Date: March 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special Sidebar Q&A episode, hosted by Susan Simpson with co-hosts Jacinda Davis and Kevin, takes listeners behind the scenes of Season 2's investigation into the murder at the "bike shop." With no new investigation episode releasing this week, the hosts field listener questions about the case, unraveling hidden details and addressing enduring mysteries—ranging from eccentric hoarding habits and forgotten bank bags, to the unresolved fate of crucial DNA evidence. The episode is rich in anecdotes from former bike shop employees and provides key insights into investigative oversights, the fate of the bike shop property, and lingering rumors of hidden cash.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Earl's Hoarding and the Bike Shop Employees

• Question: How did Earl, the bike shop owner, accumulate so many hoards if he rarely left the building?
• Answer: According to Susan, Earl employed teenagers whose main job was collecting junk and items, not necessarily fixing bikes.
  • "Most of them didn't do anything with bikes. Most of them were just, like, sent out to go collect stuff from alleys to bring it back to the bike shop." (Susan, 01:39)
  • Earl was fastidious about collecting "corrugated" (not just "cardboard"). (Susan, 02:08)
• By the 1980s, Earl mostly stayed indoors, sending out kids to scavenge—only rarely venturing out himself, usually to supervise or check on insufficient hauls. (Susan, 02:18)

2. What Happened to the Hoarded Buildings and Valuable Bikes?

• Question: What became of the buildings and collections after Earl’s time?
• Answer: Susan details a saga of city efforts to condemn Earl’s seven buildings.
  • Mysteriously, several went down in arson before demolition—suspicions abounded but were never resolved.
  • The hoard included rare bikes, some from the 1800s, eventually auctioned for significant money due to their historical value. (Susan, 03:08 – 04:25)
• Memorable moment:
  • "They were full of bikes from literally the 1800s, like, wooden bikes...some classics in there that were just you couldn't find anywhere else in the United States." (Susan, 03:55)
• Brief story: James Long, a bike shop worker, once lived in one of the buildings without the owner’s knowledge, scaring other employees who stumbled upon him there. (04:34 – 06:19)

3. The Forgotten Bank Bags

• Question: Were details about the money bag Scott allegedly possessed reported in the media, or were they police holdbacks?
• Answer:
  • Early articles mentioned the bag was found, accounted for, but subsequent reports changed the narrative to the bag being stolen. (Susan, 09:53 – 10:34)
  • The shift appears rooted in investigative sloppiness—details fell through the cracks as officers failed to communicate and document properly.
  • "I think it's just a failure of process. Like they just had too many officers not reporting what was happening and they lost track of shit." (Susan, 11:14)
• The cold case team apparently did not consult early investigators, compounding the confusion over crucial evidence. (Susan & Jacinda, 12:41 – 13:08)
• Notable quote:
  • "Everybody assumes that the bank bags are actually stolen…for the next several decades." (Jacinda, 11:34)

4. Flowers on the Grave—Symbol or Evidence?

• Question: Could flowers placed on a grave indicate involvement in the crime?
• Insight: Scott, the suspect, was thought suspect due to flowers on the victim’s grave, but—
  • The timeline does not support this; many people placed flowers immediately after the burial, and even years later. (Susan, 14:19 – 15:27)
  • "Are we somehow, like, involved in the murder now? Like, it's just a…an idea. I guess it sounds poetical or like he…Fenton makes a big deal of it, but it just…Even from the start, it makes no sense." (Susan, 14:59)
• Kevin points out that many in the community had connections to the shop; flower tributes were not unusual. (15:30)

5. The DNA Mystery

• Question: Would genetic genealogy be able to help identify the real killer, using the DNA found under Earl's fingernails?
• Answer:
  • DNA from both hands belonged to the same, unknown male.
  • But the profile is too partial for genealogical tracing—enough to exclude named suspects but not to build a family tree.
  • "It's a pretty partial profile. It's enough to, you know, exclude people, but it's not going to be enough to get you to, you know, track down family trees." (Susan, 16:49)

6. Rumors of Stashed Cash

• Question: Did Earl really stash large sums of cash at the shop?
• Answer: Teased for the following episode.
  • "That answer may or may not come from Alan Nutter himself. But you'll have to tune in next week for episode 10 to find out." (Susan, 17:36)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Earl’s Hoarding:
  • "Most of them didn't do anything with bikes. Most of them were just, like, sent out to go collect stuff from alleys to bring it back to the bike shop." (Susan, 01:39)
  • "That's just from another time. Wow." (Jacinda, 02:15)
• The Homeless Worker Scare:
  • "He sat up out of bed and looked at us. I was like, jumped out the damn window and started running." (Hank, 05:41)
• On Investigative Oversights:
  • "It's one of those terrible moments in cases like this, and terrible for Scott, where something like this sort of falls through the cracks." (Jacinda, 11:34)
  • "I would think it'd be important [to talk to original investigators]," (Kevin, 13:08)
• On the Flowers-as-Evidence Theory:
  • "Are we somehow, like, involved in the murder now?...it's just a...poetical...Even from the start, it made no sense." (Susan, 14:59)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:23 – 02:47]: Earl’s hoarding methods and role of employees
• [03:08 – 04:34]: Fate of the buildings and rare bikes
• [04:34 – 06:19]: James Long living in the shop—ghost story moment
• [09:31 – 11:46]: The missing (then not missing) bank bag and failed police process
• [14:19 – 15:27]: On flowers placed on grave, significance, and timeline
• [16:09 – 17:13]: DNA evidence limitations and what could be done with it
• [17:36]: Tease about hidden money at the bike shop—stay tuned for next episode

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Tone & Style

The hosts’ tone is conversational and at times wryly humorous, especially when recounting odd anecdotes from bike shop history. The Q&A structure keeps things lively and informal, but the gravitas of wrongful conviction remains ever-present, especially when evidence handling is discussed.

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For listeners and new fans, this sidebar episode provides crucial context, answers open questions, and previews developments to come—balancing quirky community lore with sharp, critical analysis of investigative missteps.

Transcript

[Susan]

Hey, Sal.

[Hank]

Hank.

[Unidentified Advertiser 1]

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[Susan]

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[Jacinda]

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[Hank]

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[Susan]

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[Hank]

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[Susan]

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[Hank]

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[Susan]

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[Hank]

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[Susan]

Hello and welcome to this week's sidebar. You may have noticed there was no episode this week. We are taking a break, but we'll be back Monday, I promise. However, we're still here for a sidebar. Hi, Jacinda in Kevin.

[Kevin]

Hey, Susan.

[Jacinda]

Hey, Susan.

[Susan]

And this week we are here to answer some listener questions.

[Kevin]

So we thought it would be a good opportunity to go back through and answer some listener questions from throughout the season. Here's one that came in from an anonymous person. How did Earl accumulate multiple hoards of things if he did not leave the house?

[Susan]

That is a great question. And the answer is his teenage employees. So the teenage employees that, like, worked at the bike shop, most of them didn't do anything with bikes. Most of them were just, like, sent out to go collect stuff from alleys to bring it back to the bike shop.

[Kevin]

Yeah, even Scott told a story. Scott didn't work there very long, but he told a story that one of his jobs was just to go out and collect cardboard boxes that had been discarded. Corrugated boxes had been discarded.

[Susan]

Earl o' Byrne always called it corrugated, not cardboard. And he was very particular about saving all the corrugated he could.

[Jacinda]

That's just from another time. Wow.

[Susan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

Yeah.

[Susan]

So in times past, Earl did go out. He must have gone out because they had a very large hoard of things beyond, like you wouldn't find in a dumpster. But as by the 80s, he wasn't going anywhere. And most of what he collected came just from, you know, the kids he sent out to to grab things. Most stories I've heard about Earl leaving the shop because he basically never did. It's only when, like, a kid came back with too little stuff from a dumpster, once in a while, he would go out to, like, a dumpster and check it himself. That's about it. Yeah.

[Kevin]

But not towards the end, I don't think.

[Susan]

Not towards the very end, but he

[Jacinda]

had a lot of stuff in there.

[Kevin]

Yeah. Which leads us to the next question from a listener whose handle is Brimonco. Was there any information available about what happened to the buildings full of bikes and hoarder things? Were they torn down? Was it given away at an auction? Just very curious.

[Susan]

Another great question, because I spent way too much time looking into this. It never came up on the show. So he had seven buildings in all in this little area of sort of downtown Kalamazoo off of Harrison and East Michigan. And there was a whole drama, a whole saga where the city was trying to condemn a lot of these buildings because they probably, honestly should have been condemned. And then mysteriously, a lot of them, like, go down in arson right before they get torn down. And that's never fully resolved. I've talked to a couple employees who were actually accused of doing the arson and who did not. But, yeah, so there was. There was a lot of bad feelings in the city, a lot of, like, arguments over the years. In fact, there was a city inspector that was a suspect purely because of this sort of conflict over the other buildings. However, they were full of stuff, and not just junk. They were full of bikes from literally the 1800s, like, wooden bikes, bikes from, like, the very earliest times of bikes. And we did hear from people who were involved in the auctioning off of them, and apparently they made some serious money because there were some collector's items, some classics in there that were just you couldn't find anywhere else in the United States. So this hoard was actually very valuable if you knew who the buyers were.

[Jacinda]

Jacinda, did you have a wooden bike?

[Kevin]

Yeah. Yeah. It's still out in my garage if you want to borrow it. Kevin?

[Susan]

Yes, Max. And there's an interesting story we'll probably not get into on the show, but. So at some point, it's not clear exactly when. It's not when Earl died, but some years, a couple years before that, James Long, one of the bike shop employees, was actually living in one of the buildings, like the ones without heat, without power, no Hookups. For whatever reason, he found himself out of home and was staying in these bike shops, using candles for light. And we talked to an ex employee who had the story of being sent out by Earl to go collect stuff in the old buildings. These two boys walk into this building and see this like ghost zombie, like getting up from like a pallet somewhere and then like screaming, literally jumping out of windows to escape.

[Hank]

The big shocker was, is me and Earl Nix was checking the houses and then the property and we seeing a candle lit in, in one of the houses. I think it was a white one. We went in there and the shocker was he sat up out of bed and looked at us. I was like, jumped out the damn window and started running.

[Susan]

You didn't know he was there?

[Unidentified Advertiser 3]

No.

[Susan]

Did Earl know he was there? No, Earl didn't know he was there?

[Hank]

I don't believe so.

[Susan]

What did Earl say?

[Hank]

I don't. I, I went around with Earl next Nat Earl o'.

[Jacinda]

Byrne.

[Hank]

Oh, we were checking everything and I jump. I, I seriously about my pants and jumped out the window and started running.

[Kevin]

That's so funny. It was James.

[Hank]

Yeah, it was James. Now that you say James Long. Scraggly. Yeah, he. He stayed in the house for a while.

[Susan]

Do you recall what James Long was like at all? He worked there forever. He been there.

[Hank]

He worked there forever. He, he even taught me how to drive a stick.

[Susan]

How'd that happen? He just decided to.

[Hank]

Well, well, I worked there and he said, you wanna go to the store? Well, yeah, I'll go to the store. He goes, I'll show you how to drive. He showed me how to drive the stick.

[Susan]

Why was he taking you to the store?

[Hank]

We were going to Harding so he could get some food.

[Susan]

He had a car. Whose car was.

[Hank]

He had a Honda. That was his boyfriend's car.

[Kevin]

Yeah, they hadn't expected to find anyone up there. And they went up there and there was James. James was staying up there and they had no idea and it scared the out of them. And I think he said he, they don't know if they told Earl, like they didn't know if Earl knew that James was sleeping up there, they just

[Susan]

ran and lost their minds. But apparently Earl did know he was staying there. It's not well documented, but, like, he definitely. We know for a time, anyway, James Long was living one of those outbuildings

[Jacinda]

and they're all gone now. All those buildings?

[Susan]

Yes, they're all, all gone. Including the bike shop.

[Kevin]

We went out there to visit the site where the bike shop Was and walk around. There's nothing there. You know, it's just a grassy field now.

[Susan]

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[Kevin]

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[Susan]

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[Kevin]

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[Susan]

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[Kevin]

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[Susan]

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[Kevin]

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[Kevin]

Okay, we have another question from a listener named Kelly McCalem regarding the money bag Scott had in his possession. Allegedly. Any chance those items were described in media covering the case at the time, or were they a holdback from police? Was any info held back from media that was later substantiated by witnesses.

[Susan]

So for the bank bags, yes, they were mentioned in news articles, but actually, I tend to think Stacy was not aware of that. We can't know for sure, but my sense from the files and from her is that she personally was not aware of that being mentioned in the newspapers. However, they were mentioned, as we touched on in one episode, they actually first reported that the money bag was found. It was checked and, like, it was all accounted for. So that mention was in There and then we're not sure why, but every article after that. So every article after the very first one that went in the paper says that the money bag was stolen. They don't give a color. They don't talk about safari. Safari. The writing. They don't talk about the contents.

[Jacinda]

All the details aren't there. And it certainly wasn't in her first statement.

[Susan]

Yeah. So even though that was public record, I don't think Stacy saw it for real. And her first statement does not mention it.

[Jacinda]

Yeah. Or any of the specifics of it.

[Susan]

Yeah. But it is very strange that again, the very first article in the local paper, the Kalamazoo Gazette, literally explains they found the bank bag and had the exact contents. Should have had. And yet somehow that just is, by the next day in the paper, it's just totally forgotten. And they talk about it being stolen

[Jacinda]

and somehow it seems like nobody involved with the case ever read that first article because, yeah, it was the theory that he stole it and Scott stole it and it was actually there the whole time.

[Susan]

Yeah. It makes no sense. I mean, again, there's notes in the police file where they're clearly like, they found the bag, they're counting out the amount of money in it. There's no typed up report, but there is a, you know, just a handwritten notes about it. So it's. I think it's just a failure of process. Like they just had too many officers not reporting what was happening and they lost track of shit.

[Jacinda]

It's one of those terrible moments in cases like this, and terrible for Scott, where something like this sort of falls through the cracks. And then for the next several decades, everybody assumes that the bank bags are actually stolen.

[Susan]

Yeah. And this gets some stuff we can't really prove. Exactly. But my suspicion or my sense from the files is that it may have been known by some investigators on the cold case team that there were bank bags in the images. Like there's suggestions they knew that happened. I don't think they ever put together two and two and realized those have to be the same bank bags that were supposedly stolen. I don't know. Like we can't read. We don't know for sure. They subjectively knew. But it could just be that such tunnel vision that they assumed that the big bags showing up in those photos were not the ones missing from the

[Jacinda]

bike shop, even though Karen and or Lori had said those were the only ones.

[Susan]

They said that back in 1988. By the time they talked to in 2001, they don't clearly remember what they were. They couldn't identify exactly what the bank bags look like.

[Hank]

No.

[Jacinda]

Right. But they had said back then that they were the only ones.

[Susan]

Yes. However, we do know that this cold case team, for whatever reason, seems to have a history of our pattern of not talking to original investigators. Like, in Jeff Titus's case, the cold case team did not involve the original investigators or, like, fully debriefed from them. They were either not talked to at all or just very dismissively contacted. They were not considered, like, a resource to be used for the investigation, which

[Jacinda]

would seem to be, you know, important.

[Kevin]

Yeah, I. I would think it'd be important.

[Susan]

So if they're not spending a lot of time with the old case file, with the old personnel, they're having these new interviews, and they're assuming that's fact and not realizing these people have forgotten mundane details that are critical and they don't hear them for themselves. Yeah.

[Jacinda]

The picture of the bank bag right there.

[Kevin]

Yeah.

[Hank]

Yeah.

[Jacinda]

That moment still breaks my heart. And this whole story, like, it would

[Susan]

be easy to miss stuff in that shop. I could almost totally see how you could have some bank bags tucked away and maybe visible in a photo, and it'd still be hard to see. No. Even in the hoard, like, these bank bags were front and center.

[Kevin]

It's almost like they were laid out there, displayed just so the crime scene person could take a photo of them, potentially. We have another question from a listener named Kristen who wrote in about the flowers on the grave. She says that my immediate reaction to the few days after the murder suggestion was surely there can have been a grave already. To put flowers on a body in a murder case surely can't be released in time and an arrangement for a burial, all in a few days. So that timeline goes straight out the window in my book.

[Susan]

Yes. Like, he was buried, I think, within five days. However, there were, in fact, flowers on his grave after he was buried. There would have been nothing notable of the flowers then because there were, in fact, a lot of flowers on the grave at that time. So it's only a year later that the flowers being placed there would have even seemed noticeable. But, yeah, when he was freshly buried, there were flowers on the grave, so nothing about that would have stood out. There's nothing about it that would have connected Scott to the case. Unless you say that the flowers were placed a year later, and then you could hypothetically say that no one else could have placed the flowers there.

[Jacinda]

Well, you know, as said in court, the flowers alone are evidence enough for me.

[Susan]

Like there's like, there's flowers on the grave in several photos. Like, I mean, obviously someone was putting flowers on the grave even after Scott's in prison. Like, flowers show up on the grave. So it's just a ridiculous idea to begin with. Yeah, we put flowers on the grave. Are we somehow, like, involved in the murder now? Like, it's. It's just a. It's an idea. I guess it sounds poetical or like he. Fenton makes a big deal of it, but it just. Even from the start, it make no sense. No.

[Jacinda]

Certainly not evidence of a crime.

[Kevin]

Right. There were so many people who had a story about the bike shop, who had worked at the bike shop, or who had bought their first bike or were given their first bike. It doesn't seem that strange to me that someone would just stop by and put flowers on a grave.

[Susan]

And the flowers are placed in the middle. So Johnny and Earl, the brothers, were buried together. And these flowers are placed like, and a little spot between the graves. So it's not even like, necessarily focused at Earl.

[Kevin]

Our next question is from a listener named Paula, who asks what would it take to get genetic genealogy to help identify the killer?

[Susan]

So Paul is asking about the DNA found under Erla Byrne's fingernails. There was DNA under both sets of fingernails, left and right hands, and it belonged to the same unknown male. Unfortunately, it was a partial profile. So there's enough there where you can say, whoever this is, it's not Scott Baldwin, it's not Alan Nutter. But we can't use that to identify someone through genealogy. Like, there's not enough of a profile there to extrapolate beyond that. If you have someone's known profile, you can compare against it and say it's not them or maybe it is them. But that's as far as it goes.

[Jacinda]

Unfortunately, it starts getting into the realm of probabilistic genotyping.

[Susan]

Not even. We're not even there. It's. It's a. It's a pretty partial profile. It's enough to, you know, exclude people, but it's not going to be enough to get you to, you know, track down family trees.

[Jacinda]

It's enough of a profile. You're saying, Susan, though, that if you ran James Long's DNA against it, you

[Susan]

could see if you ran James Long's profile against that, and it was not an exclusion. It would be highly interesting.

[Jacinda]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

Okay. Our final question is from Margaret, who is a librarian and true crime aficionado from Cincinnati, who wrote in and asked, I wanted to know what else you've uncovered about the rumors that Earl stashed a large sum of money in a shop. Has anyone you've talked to so far been able to produce hard evidence that there was a large amount of cash on the premises?

[Susan]

That's a good question. In fact, the question of whether or not there was money hidden in the bike shop. That answer may or may not come from Alan Nutter himself. But you'll have to tune in next week for episode 10 to find out.

[Kevin]

You've been listening to Proof Sidebar A podcast by Red Marble Media in association with Glassbox Media. Send us your questions and [e-mail] follow us everywhere with the handle at Proof Proof Crime Pod and on our website proofcrimepod.com thanks so much for listening.

[Susan]

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[Unidentified Advertiser 2]

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[Susan]

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