Ep. 787: True Crime in the Outdoors

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast

Episode 787: True Crime in the Outdoors
Date: November 3, 2025
Host: Steven Rinella
Guest: Dr. Jordan Sillers

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Steven Rinella and Dr. Jordan Sillers introduce and discuss the new MeatEater true crime series "Blood Trails," which delves into unsolved murders, disappearances, and crimes deeply rooted in the outdoor world—hunters, anglers, hikers, and public land users. The conversation is an in-depth, nuanced look at how complex, gritty, and personal these cases can be, with firsthand reporting, insights into investigative techniques, and respect for the victims and their families.

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Key Themes and Discussions

1. Origins and Purpose of Blood Trails

• Blood Trails grew from a test episode about an unsolved murder of a hunter in Virginia (David Stack) and has expanded into a series focusing on true crime within the outdoor recreation community (03:39).
• Unlike many true crime podcasts, Blood Trails features direct conversations with families, investigators, and professionals involved, adding nuance and depth (09:00).

"I really wanted to make a point of talking with the people who were involved, whether that's the family of the victim, law enforcement ... what you're getting adds to the story." – Jordan Sillers (09:09)

2. Notable Cases Discussed

a. David Stack: The Unsolved Turkey Hunter (04:04)

• Went missing on private land in Virginia; no suspects ever identified despite tight suspect pool.
• Investigative challenges: large crime scenes, limited physical evidence, private property access.
• The case exemplifies how evidence, not suspicion, is required for conviction (06:43).

b. Bob Christian: Vanished Bowhunter in Wisconsin (15:01)

• Disappeared in 1977; found car with missing wheels, bow and hunting gear gone.
• Unusual details: a nun reports her cabin lived in, a "young man" in a car matching Bob’s vehicle.
• County line issues hampered communication between police jurisdictions, illustrating the impact of systemic problems on cases (26:08).

“If he'd been abducted, why would the abductor take his bow? ... It's kind of a weird thing to do.” – Steven Rinella (20:15)

c. Danielle Houchens: The Montana River Access Murder (34:29)

• 15-year-old went missing from a river access site after a minor argument; found drowned, sexually assaulted.
• Investigators originally classified her death as "undetermined," keeping vital information from her family (38:26).
• Decades-later investigation led to identification of the killer, a fisheries biologist active in the local hunting and fishing community (41:03).

“Turns out this guy—the murderer—hiding in plain sight, man. He doesn’t go far. Stays local.” – Steven Rinella (40:55)

d. Terry Brisk: Killed with His Own Gun (56:23)

• Shot on family land in Minnesota during deer season (2016); his own gun, later found far from his body, used as the murder weapon.
• Police withheld key details (such as wound location) to protect the investigation (61:35).

e. Ludger Belanger: Disappearance in Maine’s Big Woods (63:40)

• 1975 disappearance with substantial clues pointing to two suspects (never named), but no conviction or closure for the family.
• Investigative leads sharpened by detailed snow/track analysis and found evidence (receipt), but family seeks only proper burial now (72:23).

f. Chong Moua Yang: 2018 Michigan Hmong Hunter Homicide (75:04)

• Explored in the episode with a focus on the Hmong immigrant experience and racial tensions around outdoor access.
• Investigation hindered by prevalence of racially charged comments and “too many suspects.”
• Suspects found due to digital evidence (cell phone pings, texts), but one’s charges were later dropped; ongoing appeals (88:54).

“They go back there and hunt years later... and one of the guys texts with the photo: 'a couple of cold-blooded killers revisiting the crime scene.'” – Steven Rinella (92:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “A lot of true crime podcasts... are just working off Wikipedia pages. This series is not that.” – Steven Rinella (08:46)
• “There are plenty, I think, for us to cover.” – Jordan Sillers, on outdoor-related disappearances (11:51)
• “There’s always a million theories ... whenever anyone goes missing.” – Jordan Sillers (31:14)
• “People close to the murderer ... don't want the story out there. I don’t feel that it’s taboo to talk about something like this.” – Steven Rinella (52:19)
• “I always want to center the fact that there are real people involved ... These are real humans who have gone through the worst imaginable pain.” – Jordan Sillers (55:13)
• “America’s the greatest document of governance … but, good lord, did we make it sometimes a little easy … you want to imagine a world where you can put the screws to people a little better.” – Steven Rinella (95:27)

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Investigation Methods & Law Enforcement Challenges

• Evidence Withholding: Police often purposely don’t release all crime scene details to catch suspects in lies or preserve the integrity of future confessions (62:01).
• Cold Case Difficulties: Reinvestigations, lack of forensic evidence (especially in older cases), and jurisdictional issues play a major part in cases going unsolved.
• Cultural and Racial Dynamics: Episodes like Chong Moua Yang’s companion broader social context—immigration struggles, integration of stateless people, and the scapegoating that occurs.

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Empathy for Victims’ Families

Sillers emphasizes the importance of centering victims and their families, and giving them a voice—contrasting with true crime that treats cases as abstract puzzles. The human impact, desire for closure, and the open wound of not knowing are recurring themes across all discussed stories.

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Critical Timestamps

• [04:04] – David Stack murder: series origin
• [15:01] – Bob Christian’s disappearance + the nun’s story
• [34:29] – Danielle Houchens case: river access murder
• [56:23] – Terry Brisk shooting
• [63:40] – Ludger Belanger’s disappearance in Maine
• [75:04] – Chong Moua Yang homicide, Hmong community context
• [88:54] – Olson and Rodway case details
• [92:27] – Text evidence in Michigan murder
• [95:27] – U.S. legal challenges for investigators

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Launch Details & Call to Action

• Blood Trails launches October 30, 2025.
• Episodes will be available on major platforms; listeners encouraged to subscribe/follow and send in tips to [e-mail] (98:26).

"Please subscribe to the feed or ... hit the plus button or the follow button ... so you can follow along on Blood Trails." – Corinne (98:14)

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Tone & Style

Throughout, Rinella and Sillers maintain a conversational, irreverent yet deeply empathetic tone—balancing dark subject matter with insight, humor, and respect for those affected. The storytelling is immersive, thoughtful, and sometimes laced with personal outdoor anecdotes that lend authenticity and immediacy to the cases discussed.

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This episode is a must-listen for true crime and outdoor enthusiasts alike, offering a rare, richly reported intersection of mystery, wilderness, and the enduring human desire for truth and closure.

Transcript

[Jordan Sillers]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Steven Rinella]

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[Jordan Sillers]

That's good. Yeah, it's a good start.

[Steven Rinella]

Gonna follow some serious blood trails. You guys listen to the show? Some time ago, on our. On our. On the Meat Eater podcast feed, we ran a thing called Blood Trails, and it was put together and hosted by Dr. Jordan Sillers, who's sitting with me right now. Not a medical doctor.

[Jordan Sillers]

No, not a medical doctor.

[Steven Rinella]

Of English.

[Jordan Sillers]

English, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He specializes in speaking in this language.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. I can only help.

[Steven Rinella]

You studied this language.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. I can only help you medically if you're, you know, going to die of bad grammar. Something along those lines.

[Steven Rinella]

Are you trying to explain something to the doctor? You can't get your point across there. You might come to a doctor like this.

[Jordan Sillers]

There you go.

[Steven Rinella]

Who help you put it into clear English.

[Jordan Sillers]

Concise, powerful prose.

[Steven Rinella]

So in that way, he's a medical professional. He ran. We ran blood trails. And the blood trails, that was kind of like. It was like a. I don't know how to put it. It was a. It was an inaugural. It was a test episode where we told a story of an unsolved. Of an unsolved murder. We recap that murder real quick. It's kind of the who. The who. What? Where? Why?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, sure. So it was a hunter in Virginia named David Stack, and he went out hunting with his son and his brother. And it was, you know, opening day of turkey season. He went out and his son and brother came back to their cabin, and he didn't show up. So they went out searching for him. They searched and searched. Eventually they found him. He'd been shot with a.22 caliber rifle projectile, and they never figured out who did it. The. The Virginia Wildlife Agency was in charge of the murder investigation, and they were never able to name a suspect. The. The friend of the family who I spoke with has some, you know, ideas about some of. Perhaps the neighbors maybe knew something or. Or were involved.

[Steven Rinella]

This is just me as a dude.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yes, sure, sure. But for whatever reason, they were never. They were never able to collect the evidence they needed.

[Steven Rinella]

Private land. How many people could be there?

[Jordan Sillers]

Well, so this is part of the thing is that one. One of the neighboring landowners was allegedly guiding, you know, turkey hunters, which he was not supposed to do. So it's possible that there were some people in those woods who were not neighbors, who were strangers to the area. That's one of the things.

[Steven Rinella]

By his private land. Meaning, okay, how many possible people were running around the woods? I listened to the Episode, mind you, it blows my mind.

[Jordan Sillers]

I know, I know. And I talked with, like, you could.

[Steven Rinella]

Fit the people that did it. It's like, you know, and you could fit them around this table.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And it'd be like, you'd call them in. I'd be like, with my kids, I'd be like, we're all staying here until someone admits till you say you shot the guy.

[Jordan Sillers]

That may be unconstitutional. I'm not. I'm not sure. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think that's allow. But, yeah, you know, it really is. It's like, what can we find evidence for and if there's no evidence? And I talked with our buddy Brent Reeves, who was in law enforcement for a long time, and he explained to me the difficulty of investigating a crime scene like this because you don't know how large it is. It's very difficult to find physical evidence because, you know, the leaves hide things and, you know, it's just tough. So they were never able to name a suspect. I'm sure investigators have suspicions. Oh, yeah, yeah. But if you're an investigator, you can't. You know, you got one shot. Right. And this is something that's been, as I've reported these other cases, investigators, you know, they. They tell me this. You get one shot at. At a conviction, and if you don't have what you need, he walks.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, but they need to bring in one of those cold case specialists, those real crack commando investigators.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Come on.

[Jordan Sillers]

I'm sure. I'm sure the family would welcome that. And I know that there have been. I don't know about crack commandos, but people assigned specifically to this case over the years, and they haven't made any headway that they're able to share with the public. I don't know that they haven't made headway. Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That they're open about.

[Jordan Sillers]

Exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

So, anyways, we do a piece on this. We did a piece on this. It's great, Jordan. Like I said, researched it, hosted it. It was great. People were very enthusiastic about it. So we've. We're launching this series, Blood Trails, and doing a whole bunch of these stories about these, like, murders and events that involve hunters.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right? Hunters.

[Steven Rinella]

Hunters, anglers, outdoorsmen.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

So it's like. It's like these kind of crime stories that are very outdoor focused.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yes. Yep. They're. They're very outdoor focused. I really want to stick to that. You know, it's hunters, anglers, campers, hikers, public land users, people who are in the out of doors doing the things that we all love to do, and something terrible happens. And sometimes, you know, the hunter is the victim. We do have a pretty serious story in this first season where the hunter is the perpetrator of the. The crime. And so it's. It's related to hunters and anglers in some way. All of these stories are. And, you know, I think that that gives us a. A perspective on these cases that, you know, your run of the mill true crime podcast is not going to have. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, a lot of times my kids, like, some of the. My kids listen to. My older one especially, he listens to some, like, crime stuff, and they're just kind of working off Wikipedia pages.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you know what I mean? Like, they're not doing. And I tried to explain him all the time. Like, you realize these dudes, like, read a couple books, right, and they're just horking people's material.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep, yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, a lot of, like, they're not doing anything.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. Yeah. And that is, you know, a lot of true crime podcasts. Not all. Some. Some of them do a really great job. There's lots of original reporting, but a lot of true crime podcasts, the format is they read news articles, they read a book, they read Wikipedia, they explain to you what happened, and then usually there's two people and they kind of react to that. This series is not that I really wanted to make a point of talking with the people who were involved, whether that's the family of the victim, law enforcement who investigated the case, outside people who have professionals who have looked at the case. So, so what you're getting adds to the story. Right. It's not just, you know, what you already know about the story. It's. It's information that you didn't know from the people who were involved. So, you know, I record the interviews and we put them together, just like in that first episode about the turkey hunter.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So how deep is the. How deep is the. Well, like, when you start looking at. When you go back and you have to explain how far back in time you went?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

When you start looking, like, how many cases like this, murder cases, disappearance cases, involve the outdoor community, do you find that it winds up being that it's dozens, that it's hard to find? 10.

[Jordan Sillers]

There are quite a few. You know, the, the, the example of a hunter who's killed in the woods, there's going to be a fairly limited number of those. But if we're talking about campers and hikers who disappear on public land There are, you know, potentially thousands. There was actually a bill, I believe it was called the TRACE act in the U.S. congress was introduced, and basically the idea was to start recording and putting together a database of people who disappear on public land.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, wow.

[Jordan Sillers]

And one of the statistics they cited was 1600 people have disappeared. And I forget the timeframe of that, but, you know, nearly 2,000 people have disappeared on public land in the last, whatever, 10 or 20 years. And obviously the majority of those are not going to be like a criminal case. Right. It's not going to be like foul play, won't be suspected. It will be just someone, you know, got lost and couldn't find their way out. But, you know, a certain number of those. There were other people who they were with. We have a case in this first season of a hunter who went out with his two friends and disappeared. And those two friends came back. And the question is, you know. Right. Like, so. So there are. There are those types of cases. And, you know, there are plenty, I think, for us to cover.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, watching you work on this and helping on a couple of them a little bit, A thing that I kept thinking of is I used to. Where I grew up, I used to trap muskrats on a piece of the Manistee National Forest. And I remember it was into. I was trapping this marsh on the firearm opener. Okay.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And this guy. There's a missing guy, and they eventually find him. And he had shot himself leaning against a tree. Shot himself in the head leaning against tree during gunses.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. And where he was. I mean, I had muskrat traps 75 yards from there.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And I thought. And I was, like, waiting. When I was in high school, I was waiting for someone to come and put the screws to me a little bit.

[Jordan Sillers]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, never heard a word, dude. Never heard a word. And I eventually started thinking, I guess no one's gonna come talk to me.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But I was, like, kind of paranoid.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Yeah. That someone would come talk to you.

[Steven Rinella]

Did. I'd have to explain how I, like, I don't know.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't know any more than you guys do. I mean, I got trapped. Strung all along that whole. He was like, right up in the oaks, like, come out of the cattails, and he was just sitting right up there. I didn't know he was there.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But I just always was, like, how come no one ever came and asked me if I heard something, saw something, did something?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. I mean, maybe it was very clear from the scene. Could have Been that it was. It was a suicide.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. I talked to an investigator one time that did. A guy killed himself at a campfire. And the investigator came in and he's like, I looked and knew what happened.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But of course, I couldn't take that mindset.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

So I initially.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm like, oh, he shot himself, but don't touch anything. Treat it like a crime scene.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep, yep. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I think until he got. Until they got to a point where, like, the obvious was true.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But just ruling out the idea that it was. That it was staged to look that way.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right, right. Because that's always possible. And that is one thing law enforcement, you know, says is always assume it's a homicide if someone has died. Right. Assume it's a homicide until you have evidence proving otherwise.

[Steven Rinella]

Let's talk about this Wisconsin. Let's talk about this Wisconsin. This Wisconsin hunter in the Baraboo Hills there.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

The reason that one strikes me.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That story really strikes me from the 70s. Right.

[Jordan Sillers]

1977. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. I just knew all the place names.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Because every year, once or twice a year, you know, I fly into Madison, see the Baraboo Hills. Right. Go to my buddy Doug's. My buddy Doug tells me this. That the other thing. And so familiar with the roads. Been on the roads.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And so I don't know, it just struck me because I was like, oh, I know that spot. I know.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right?

[Steven Rinella]

You know, I know those places.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But talk about that guy a little bit, because here's another one. Like, dudes, they were. Well, they were very early bow hunters.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. 1977.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Like 1978 bow hunters.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And so that paints a picture in your head immediately, because bow hunting culture was very, very small.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

In 78.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. Yeah. So this. This happened again in 1977.

[Steven Rinella]

I keep saying. 78. Sorry. 77.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Yes, 77. You know, in that. That it was opening day of bowseason in Wisconsin. The. The guy's name was Robert Christian. He went by Bob. And he had. He had a plan with his friend Randy. He lived in Madison. Bob did. Randy lived up in Baraboo. And so they were planning on hunting some land north of Baraboo on that Saturday. And so Bob took his mom's car. He had a motorcycle that he usually drove, but it was in the shop for some reason.

[Steven Rinella]

But he wouldn't have taken that. I know that's a part of it, but he wouldn't have taken his motorbike out to go. I mean.

[Jordan Sillers]

I mean, I think he Wouldn't have.

[Steven Rinella]

Like strung his bow over his back.

[Jordan Sillers]

Well, I mean, this is according, this is according to his sister. His sister, kind of who I spoke with, made a point of mentioning he had a motorbike. It was in the shop and his, his mom let him drive her brand new AMC Hornet.

[Steven Rinella]

So maybe he would have taken that bike.

[Jordan Sillers]

Maybe. I mean it seemed like something he, he drove around a lot. And, and this, this piece is interesting because it kind of speaks to Bob's character that his mom, he was 18, so, you know, not, not very old. His mom let him take her brand. Like this is a brand new car. Right. She just bought it. And so he was a, he was a good kid. He had just started at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was going to be a computer science major. You know, good grades, you know, he had lots of friends.

[Steven Rinella]

So he's an early adopter on Archery season.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And he's an early adopter on computer science.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. He probably would have been a millionaire by now because he was, he was right there at the beginning. So he's supposed to meet Randy at 6 o' clock at his house. They're going to spend the night and then get up early the next morning. Six o' clock rolls around, Bob hasn't shown up. And like everyone I talked with about Bob really emphasized like this was unusual for him because again, he's a good kid, he's there on time. If he says he's going to be there, he's not going to, you know, make Randy's mom wait to start dinner.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. One of his relatives said if he says he's going to do something, he does it.

[Jordan Sillers]

Exactly, exactly. So they're kind of immediately concerned. They don't, you know, they don't think like, oh, he's been abducted. Right. Their first thought is he's been in some kind of car accident. And so Randy's last name is Griffith. So the Griffiths call the Christians and they kind of call back and forth like, where's Bob? We don't know where he went. And so they start calling like hospitals. They do call law enforcement, I think, just to see if there'd been a road accident, you know, if he'd gotten into some kind of accident on the way. And they don't, there's, there's no sign of him. And so they spend the next day on Saturday, I think like again, calling around some of, you know, Bob's friends, other family members, like, has anyone seen him? Did he go somewhere else for some reason that, that, you know, he didn't say he would. And still no sign of him. So on Sunday, they go out to. To look for him. They're just driving the roads, and they find the car. They find Bob's mom's car. It's parked up kind of on this. Like, it's. The. The road's name is Tower Road. I think there was, like, some kind of radio tower. It's, like, up in a very rural, kind of remote area. Just like, a side road up there. And the car doesn't have any wheels or tires. It's just, like, sitting on the ground for some reason. Bob's. His. His hunting stuff is gone. His letterman jacket is in the car. And then I think Bob's mom was a nurse, and so her nursing kit is in the car.

[Steven Rinella]

Kia just bought some Swisher sweets.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, that's right. So. So we do Swisher Sweets in the car. I don't.

[Steven Rinella]

That really put me in a certain place in time.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Because he went and got 25 bucks from the bank and then went and bought Swisher Sweets.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I was like, dude, like, I know this guy.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

From that, you know, his.

[Jordan Sillers]

His sister said he loved hanging out with his friends, smoking, you know, playing cards. And so. Yeah, so that's. That's. We know that. The last thing we know that he did was he made two stops in Madison. One was at the bank. The other was at a convenience store. And from there, he drove up. And we don't know what happened after that.

[Steven Rinella]

And so there's so many details to.

[Jordan Sillers]

It, but, like, there's. There's a lot. There's a lot you know, but the kind of bottom line is, to this day, we don't know what happened to him. There are theories, but.

[Steven Rinella]

And none of that archery equipment, none of that stuff ever.

[Jordan Sillers]

Ever turned up. Yeah, none of it ever turned up. A really important piece of this is that the. The area his car was found was an area that he grew up hunting in. So it wasn't. And that's kind of why they were up there looking, because they thought, well, maybe he went up here. Right. For some reason, even though it wasn't on the way to Randy's house, it was a detour that would have made him late, but he was familiar with that area. His sister said where the car was found was not where they usually parked in that area. So it was kind of odd that he would have parked up that little side road. But you. You wonder, maybe he just went up to do some scouting, took his bow went in the woods. They conducted, obviously, an extensive search of the area. They brought in, you know, dogs. They brought in a helicopter. They didn't have drones at the time, but, you know, they did do an aerial search. The detective who's in charge of this investigation told me that the family, you know, still goes up there. Right. And, like, looks around. Maybe he. We just never found him. Maybe he had some kind of medical emergency, and we just never found him in these woods. But the. The detective I talked with, he didn't, because I sort of asked him, like, could he have just, like, gotten hurt or lost in the woods? And he doesn't. He doesn't think that's likely. He thinks they would have found him. But it is a weird piece that his hunting stuff. His bow was not in the car. Yeah, right. Because if he'd been abducted, why would the abductor take his bow? Yeah, right. That's kind of a weird thing to do. Oh, yeah. There's. There's. There's also that whole wrinkle about that nun who sees. I don't know how much you.

[Steven Rinella]

You want to, like, give away on the podcast, but there are so many.

[Jordan Sillers]

Like, wrinkles to it that are so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So. So a few days into the investigation, you take.

[Steven Rinella]

You're taking the bait on that.

[Jordan Sillers]

Oh, yeah, you got to. Phil brings up the nun. You got to talk about the nun film.

[Steven Rinella]

I have a little thing.

[Jordan Sillers]

You saying I'm a part of this case, Steve?

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, no. I thought maybe. Maybe he's interested in nuns. I gave you all the clues. Yes.

[Jordan Sillers]

So they. They found. They find out that just about a mile down the road from where Bob's car was found, a nun. There was. There was a convent. Now it's like a retreat center, but at the time, it was. It was a convent.

[Steven Rinella]

A mile from the car.

[Jordan Sillers]

About a mile. Yep. Just down the road. And they realized that. That there was a nun who lived in a cabin, and she'd been gone for a few days. She came back to her house and realized someone had been living in her house. They hadn't, like, ransacked it and stolen stuff. It seemed like they'd actually been, like, living in her cabin. And so this obviously freaks her out. She calls her friend, whose name is Mary, to come, like, drive over and just, like, be with her, because she doesn't know if whoever this is gonna come back. Right. He. He wasn't there at the time. And so Mary drives over, and when she pulls up into this driveway, she sees a car That's. That's running, but in the driveway. And she makes a note, which is, like, pretty incredible. She makes a note of the license plate number. She writes it down, and she walks up to this car, and the driver rolls down the window, and he says, either I'm looking for my friend, or at other times she said, he said, I'm looking for my friend Bob. And her description of him matches Bob. She said he was a young guy, brown hair, glasses. But then later, according to the reports, she. She saw a picture of Bob and was like, ah, maybe it wasn't him. I don't know. So that's also a little bit unclear. So. So she. She wrote down the license plate number, which is how we know that was Bob's car. So whoever. Whoever was driving it, whether it was Bob or someone else, it was Bob's car. And this was, I think, like 9, 9 or maybe like 9pm, 10pm at night. So this was at night after, you know, people had been worried about him.

[Steven Rinella]

This was that Friday night before his tires got stripped.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, this was that Friday night. And so. And so Mary said that the car drove back down the driveway and then turned away from where the car was eventually found. So for some reason, it turned the opposite direction and then eventually made its way back to where it was found, after which time the wheels and tires were stripped. For some reason, those hubcaps were eventually found at a rock quarry, which is another piece of this. But it's just a really creepy interaction.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, man.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. And Amy, Bob's sister, thinks that. And I think Randy said this as well, who I also spoke with. They think it's possible that Bob. That someone else was in the car. It was dark, and so Mary doesn't know whether anyone else was in the car. They think someone else could have been in the car, maybe holding Bob at gunpoint. And he was kind of trying to drop a hint, like, I'm looking for my friend Bob. He didn't want to say anything that would, like, upset this person, but she thinks maybe he was trying to send a message. And, you know, we don't know whether that person who was with Bob maybe could have been the same person who had been staying in the nun's house. We don't know. We don't even know that those two things are connected. Yeah. And part of the problem, I think they are. It's possible. But part of the problem, it was never like, investigated super closely, at least right away, is because there's a county line that separates where Bob's Car was found from the nun's house.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, because, well, because if he was in there, if he was in there for 10 minutes, well, they wouldn't have known it, they wouldn't have done it at the time. If he was in there for 10 minutes, there's hair, there's.

[Jordan Sillers]

Oh yeah, right.

[Steven Rinella]

But at that time they wouldn't have known.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. So at the time, you know, the one law enforcement, the, you know, the county sheriff investigated Bob's car and Bob's disappearance. But then across the county line, another sheriff's department was investigating the nuns, you know, break in and they didn't think they were related because according to Amy, those two departments just didn't like interact, didn't like each other, didn't communicate well. And so like all the evidence was cleaned up from the nun's house because they just thought someone broke in. Not a big deal. They didn't connect it. And you know, who knows if that evidence would have been preserved. Now we have that ability to analyze DNA, we could have maybe made some headway there, but it just doesn't exist. The evidence isn't there.

[Steven Rinella]

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[Jordan Sillers]

Every hunter knows that the wilderness is full of surprises. But sometimes what you find out there isn't an elk or a bear. It's something darker.

[Steven Rinella]

It never made sense what law enforcement was saying to us. How could there have been no marks on her?

[Jordan Sillers]

This season on Blood Trails, we're following the trail of seven cases that start with in the field and end in the shadows. Each story begins with a hunter stepping into the wild. But not all of them come back. All theories are out there. You know, everything from murder to UFOs to Bigfoot. I'm Jordan Sillers, a journalist with over a decade of experience investigating stories about hunting, fishing, guns and crime. Join me as we track the truth through tangled cover and cold case files where every trail tells a story and every story leaves its own trail of blood. Blood trails. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Steven Rinella]

Years ago, we did an episode like there's parts of the story that, that remind me of this. We did an episode with, with Pat Durkin.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And there was a story of a couple guys that went missing, a couple ice fishermen that went missing for many, many years. And there's just little snippets of what they had done, what might have happened to them. They vanished a winter night. Some of the people felt that maybe they. There was even this idea emerged that they ran off and like started new lives somewhere.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

The last sighting of them, which seemed like it would have been them is they had gone to a guy that sold live bait and woke him up like 1 or 2 in the morning to buy minnows.

[Jordan Sillers]

They're dedicated. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Dedicated.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And there was questions about who was in the car, what they had done that night, what their relationship was like.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

But anyways, all these years later, a dude, a walleye fisherman, who get a guy that was real interested in side scan sonar and stuff, you know?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He went, he's out putzing around one time and finds a car.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Dives down, pulls the license plate. Dudes are still sitting in the car, pulls the license plate, knows the car. The whole time. It was just right there.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

All this, like, mystery. And what happened was just sitting on the bottom of a lake.

[Jordan Sillers]

Whenever anyone goes missing, there are always a million theories and, and the same thing I didn't point out.

[Steven Rinella]

They drove out just to make for non ice fishermen.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

For southerners. They bought bait and drove out on the ice.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. And Just sunk.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Car went through the ice, probably refro. Snowed, whatever. Just.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

30 years. Wonder what happened with those guys.

[Jordan Sillers]

I can't imagine. But. Yeah. One of the theories with Bob is that he. He ran off for some reason.

[Steven Rinella]

It's all. It's always a thing.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

When we, you know, we did a. We did one about a guy that. In one of our campfire stories. Volumes, we had one about a guy was hunting elk.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

No, it was. It was a mountain goat hunter. Either way, he finds a body.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That had been missing for. Forever.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

In that family, the family, the missing man, they do the same thing. Always in the back of your head when someone, like, goes missing.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

There's primarily the primary thing is, like, that they're dead, but in the back, your head is that they ran off and started a new life. And so with this family that I think for 50 years, their father had been missing.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And there was a. Did he maybe run off and start a new life? And meanwhile he was right where everybody knew he'd gone hunting.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But they searched and searched and searched and searched.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

And it seems he had pulled a boulder over on himself.

[Jordan Sillers]

Oh, man.

[Steven Rinella]

He was going through. He's going through a rocky area, and it seems like grabbed the wrong boulder at the wrong time and just.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. It's so, like, gone. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

It's hundreds of people searching in the right spot.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. Never found him. Yeah. Yeah. And it's. It's so hard for the families, you know, speaking with the people who are still here. They just struggle so much. And like. Like with. With, you know, Bob's case, speaking with his sister, you know, she. She doesn't. She isn't holding out hope that he's still alive somewhere.

[Steven Rinella]

Sure.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. And the same thing. There's another case of a hunter who went missing in 1975 up in Maine that we're going to cover. Same thing with his wife. Like, she knows he's not alive, but they just want that closure. Yeah. You know, and that's really important to them. So they're still. And that's why they talk to me. That's why they keep. You know, they want people to know about the case so they can figure it out, figure out what happened.

[Steven Rinella]

Let's jump to another one. This is one both you and I worked on together a little bit, where I provide a little assistance here and there. On it. The case of a family right here in. Right here in our area, right here in Gallatin Valley in Montana back in 1996, a young girl, Danielle Hutch. This gets confusing because there's names that are very similar. How does her family pronounce that last name?

[Jordan Sillers]

Houchens.

[Steven Rinella]

It does. Go Houches.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. Houchens.

[Steven Rinella]

There's a victim, Daniel Houchens. Okay, don't get confused, because then we have a murderer named Paul Hutchinson. But a victim, Danielle Houchens, goes to a river access site. So in Montana, you have a lot of. You have a lot of state river access sites. We have. The state has a phenomenal stream access law, where as long as you can legally get into a river, you can then travel below high water mark.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

And so these state access sites are real focal points of activity because it gives you illegal access into a river, and then you can go up and down the river.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

In 1996, this. This young woman, she was 18, 15. Oh, geez. Yeah, sorry, I forget that.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

This young woman who's 15, lives down the road from a river access site, goes down to the river access site after having a minor argument with her. With her mother, I believe.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Her parents doesn't come home. They eventually search and they find her body. She had been raped. She had drowned or been drowned in muck.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right? Yeah. Been drowned. Yeah. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, when I say, when I point this out, this discrepancy is. It was not immediately openly treated as a murder.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Was a mess. The. The sheriff at the time, according to the sister of the victim, Stephanie, who was very kind to speak with me, she says the sheriff at the time told the family it's possible that Danny could have drowned accidentally.

[Steven Rinella]

So got raped.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And then coincidentally drowned in shallow muck.

[Jordan Sillers]

Well, he didn't tell the family. He didn't tell the family, allegedly that she had been raped. That was news to the family when this came out more recently, but. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But that she was found with her. With her bra up, her underwear down.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

With biological material from someone else.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

15 years of age.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. No, they knew she had been raped. And to kind of give the sheriff credit, he told the media, like, just about a year after this happened, he said, we've always treated this as a homicide.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Jordan Sillers]

So he acknowledged publicly that they were treating this case as a homicide. The problem came because the coroner, when he listed the. The, like the manner of death or like the reason for death, he listed it rather than homicide. He listed it as undetermined. And, you know, we know now based on speaking with the kind of the most recent investigator on this case and the case file, it was pretty clear that she had been that it was a homicide. She had bruising on the back of her neck. Her lungs were. They had mud in them. Right. So she'd been held underwater. There was obviously this horrible struggle. And so. But the family's kind of kept in the dark about this. And the sheriff says he never lied to the family, but obviously he didn't tell the family everything, which is pretty standard practice. You know, even the family can't have access to all the information because investigators are concerned that they'll speak to the media or that things will get out and it will compromise the investigation. So I'm not.

[Steven Rinella]

I have zero. Like, I don't know anything about law enforcement. That feels just sitting here.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Having a daughter, that feels like way off to me.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, it feels way off to me.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. And, you know, those decisions were made back in 96. We don't know exactly why.

[Steven Rinella]

But put yourself in that situation.

[Jordan Sillers]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You have kids.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

One of your kids is killed, and then years later, you're like, home. It. You. You didn't tell me what happened to my daughter.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You kept parts of what happened to my kid for me.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's.

[Steven Rinella]

It's like I wasn't allowed to know.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's tough. And, you know, the. The reason that the family found out was because Stephanie, her sister in 2019, really started.

[Steven Rinella]

Over 20 years later.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, over 20 years later. But she applied. And in Montana, they have a law that allows the victim's family. Excuse me. Allows a victim's family to have access to the case file. You have to. There's a process. There's a procedure. I think a judge has to, like, grant access. But Stephanie worked through that process with the help of the Gallatin county, you know, sheriff's office and the county attorney, I believe. So she was finally able to see that whole case file, which is obviously a horrible experience to have to look because at crime scene photos, everything's in there.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, man.

[Jordan Sillers]

But, you know, eventually the family was given access to all the information, but it took. It took a long time. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Sitting down here. The series is incredible. I want people to listen to the series. All the episodes are incredible. I don't wanna. We're kind of talking high level impressions of some of this stuff. I just want to skip ahead for people.

[Jordan Sillers]

But yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

When you listen, you'll understand how they eventually determine a suspect 30 years after the fact.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

It's incredible.

[Jordan Sillers]

It's a great story.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

They determine a suspect.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Turns out this guy the murderer hiding in plain sight, man.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. He. He.

[Steven Rinella]

Doesn'T go far. Stays local.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Becomes a fisheries biologist.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. With the blm. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Becomes a BLM fisheries biologist. He's real active on, like, hunt talk and active on forums.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

He kind of runs this little program where he does these somewhat formalized hunt swaps.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Where he kind of does this thing, like, to guys like, hey, if you want to come hunt Montana, like, I'll line you out on spots and then in exchange, you'll kind of line me out on how to hunt your area. Raises a family, two kids, hunts turkeys. Here's kind of a weird one. Winds up, I think, by his own count, hunts turkeys in 25 states.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

In the years following this.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So this guy is all over the place.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

This guy is all over the country.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Hanging out in rural, secluded areas.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

It's insane what happens, but these investigators come and they don't want it. It's an old, old case, and they don't want to come in and read him as his rights.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

For fear that he's just going to shut up.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. Yep. Exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

It's a tough case. It's 30 years old.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. And. And initially. Initially not listed as a homicide. That was officially changed at some point, but for 20 years, not listed as a homicide. So, you know, a defense attorney is going to really hammer that. So they had to be very careful with how they approached it.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. We have this footage and this audio that, that Jordan uses. A couple investigators come with a hidden camera.

[Jordan Sillers]

I don't know that it was hidden, but, you know.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, it sure seems like it.

[Jordan Sillers]

I think.

[Steven Rinella]

Not set up on a tripod.

[Jordan Sillers]

No, I. I think it was like a. But I think it was like a body cam. That's what I've assumed. It was like a body cam. And so it's not like.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Jordan Sillers]

It's not like it was hidden exactly. But it wasn't like they said, you know, we want to interview you for some documentary. Right. It was just law enforcement.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. I, I only. Just for clarity, I only said that because I realized it was like on a person when. Or it was somehow moving around. So. Yeah. I shouldn't say hidden.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But, yeah, they film an interview and Jordan, if you can explain, like, how do they explain the pretext of the interview?

[Jordan Sillers]

Sure. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So the thinking behind it and the pretext of how they approach him to begin asking about this day.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. So like you said, they're worried he's going to lawyer up, and so they Determine that it's legal for them to conduct an interview with him as long as it's a public place and he's always free to go. So they approach him in the parking lot of the BLM office in Dillon. You know, they walk up to him, they say, hey, you know, we're. We're looking into cases of women who have been killed along rivers in Montana. And they say, as a fisheries biologist who's always on the rivers, we're hoping that you can provide some insight into some of these cases. So they don't just talk about Danny's case. They have, I think, four cases.

[Steven Rinella]

That was one of the most sickening things about it, is they're like, here's a woman from a river in Livingston. Here's a woman from a river here. Here's a woman from a river here. I was like, how many of these people are there?

[Jordan Sillers]

Right, right. Yeah. So they. They did, unfortunately, have some, you know, other cases that they could bring up. And I've looked into a few of those others, and they weren't all, you know, under suspicious circumstances, necessarily, but they are real cases. They didn't just make them up. They are real cases.

[Steven Rinella]

And I figured they had to have been. Yeah, because I think that, like you said, like, legally. I think that if you came with a completely phony. If you came in with, like, completely phony information, I imagine it would somehow tarnish what you're doing.

[Jordan Sillers]

It might. I think, you know, they want it to be as realistic as possible to not tip Paul off that this is some, like, you know, sting operation. So I'm sure they were worried that if they tried to use fake cases, that he would become suspicious. Right. If, for whatever reason he knew it was fake, he could figure it out. So they run through these cases. They say, you know, they have pictures of each of the victims. They put them in front of Paul. They say, have you heard of this person? You know, she was killed on such and such river. Do you know anyone who might be able to help us? Any fishing guides? You know, guys who own tackle shops? Like, anyone. We can talk to you about these. They do this one at a time, and then the last one is. Is Danny. And they. They. They push the picture in front of him, and he, you know, this is not like an explosive moment where he just, like, breaks down. Right. But you can tell he's uncomfortable. Like, he doesn't know exactly whether to, like, look the picture or, like, look back and be kind of nonchalant about it.

[Steven Rinella]

He goes into a mega chill. Affectation.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, that's kind of how it came about.

[Steven Rinella]

He's doing a very dramatic. He's kicking back. He's got his arms behind his head.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He gets really reclined.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

He tries to, like, go into this real, like, breezy.

[Jordan Sillers]

He keeps asking, what was her name again? Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jordan Sillers]

What was her name? Danielle.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, that's a good. That's a good one. I got no. I. Boy, I don't know. Yeah, he has to be excused for a minute.

[Jordan Sillers]

He does. Multiple times. Yeah. Throughout. Throughout the interview, I think it's three or four times he has to be excused. He says that one of his texts is texting him. One of his, you know, subordinates is texting him and has a problem with something. That's the pretext he uses. I don't know if that was true or not, but he does leave multiple times. Yeah, it's. It's tough to watch. I mean, it really is just knowing what. What happened. And the investigators are not, like, they. They play it pretty cool, but they definitely are there to get information. Right. They're there to ask him, where Were you in 1996? Are you familiar with this fishing access? Were you trapping in that area? Were you fishing in that area? And so that's really what they're there for. They want him on tape admitting to being in the area around that time. And, you know, again, he plays it pretty cool. Like, he keeps asking, what year again? I don't know. It was either. I was either there in 95 or 96. I can't. You know, so he kind of dissembles a little bit, but again, like, plays it fairly cool, considering.

[Steven Rinella]

Sure.

[Jordan Sillers]

What they're asking. Sure. You know, and considering this may be the first time he's ever been approached or asked about this. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I. To be fair, man, like, no. When you watch it, knowing what you know.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You see that. Like, he's doing an overblown, relaxed.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Because knowing what you know. But. But to be fair, it wasn't. He didn't. There was no, like, infallible tell.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

But knowing what you know, there's like, buddy, there's no way you're relaxed right now.

[Jordan Sillers]

No way.

[Steven Rinella]

But you're doing a way that you're kicked back and chatty.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Trying to be helpful, but I don't know. Yeah, that's his attitude exactly. I'd love to help, but if I don't know, I'm just. I'm just chilled out down here at the end of the table.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. One of the, one of the kind of unbelievable things he says is like, I don't, I don't know, like, I've never fished these rivers. Like, I, I just fished, you know, the, the little streams or like, I don't know any fishing guides who can help you. I don't know anyone who can. It's like you're a fisheries biologist who is like, he, he seemed to be primarily into hunting, but of course, you know, I'm sure he also did fish. He had a fishing boat. Like, I'm sure he did some fishing. And just like, the idea that he didn't know any, anyone who could help them is kind of unbelievable.

[Steven Rinella]

This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Now, winter's coming along. Days are getting short. There's a lot less daylight. There's a lot less going on outside at night. People kind of tend to, you know, button up in their home. It's time of year when you ought to start checking on people you love to make sure they're not alone, that they're feeling good about things. Okay? And as seasons change, right, and these days grow darker and darker, it can be a tough time for many. This November, Better Help was encouraging everyone to reach out, check in on friends, reconnect with loved ones, and remind the people in your life that you're there. Just as it can take a little courage to send that message or grab coffee with someone you haven't seen in a while, reaching out for therapy can feel difficult, too. But it's worth it. And it almost always leaves people wondering, why didn't I do this sooner? BetterHelp does the initial matching with a therapist for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences. And better helps. 12 years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, you switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. This month, don't wait to reach out. Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist yourself, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. Our listeners get 10% off their first [e-mail] Meater that's better. H E L P.com Meater Every hunter.

[Jordan Sillers]

Knows that the wilderness is full of surprises. But sometimes what you find out there isn't an elk or a bear. It's something darker.

[Steven Rinella]

It never made sense what law enforcement was saying to us. How could there have been no marks on her?

[Jordan Sillers]

This Season on Blood Trails. We're following the trail of seven cases that start in the field and end in the shadows. Each story begins with a hunter stepping into the wild, but not all of them come back. All theories are out there. You know, everything from murder to UFOs to Bigfoot. I'm Jordan Sillers, a journalist with over a decade of experience investigating stories about hunting, fishing, guns, crime. Join me as we track the truth through tangled cover and cold case files, where every trail tells a story, and every story leaves its own trail of blood. Blood trails. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Steven Rinella]

You know the thing that surprised me during, during. As you were working on this, and I'm curious to see if you, if you ran into this in other cases, too. People that were close. There was a lot of people that were close to him or not a lot. There was people that were close to him that, that don't want the story talked about. They don't want the story out there.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Out of concern for the murderer's family. They just want it to go away. Right.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Which you look at be like, I, I, I, I, I, I see why you think that, but I don't think that. I don't feel that way. Like, I don't feel that it's taboo.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't feel that it's taboo to talk about something like this.

[Jordan Sillers]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

But I see why you feel that way. But did you find that in other instances, did you, did you find that people are like, I don't. Let's just leave it be. Let's just not talk about it.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Let's let it die down. Why do we got to relive this?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Yeah. Certainly with the cases that are. That there's been some type of resolution, too, because not all of the cases we cover are cold cases that haven't been solved. Some of them have been solved, you know, to one degree of, like, certainty or another.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jordan Sillers]

And on those cases, I definitely ran into this people. They, they don't, they don't want to talk about it. They don't want it to be rehashed, which I do understand. Sure. I think that, you know, this is a matter of public interest, these stories, whether it's, it's, you know, the job of law enforcement or whether the stories have some lesson for, you know, hunters. I think they are a matter of public interest, and so we should cover them, especially if we're adding something new to these stories. But I certainly ran into that. And people said, I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to rehash this. Did that.

[Steven Rinella]

You did that sometimes come from the victim's family?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. Yeah, there. There. There were times I would be more.

[Steven Rinella]

I would be sympathetic to it.

[Jordan Sillers]

I'm.

[Steven Rinella]

I am coming from the victim side. It's hard for me to be sympathetic to it coming from the murderer's perspective.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right, right. And. And I think.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I bet you want this to go away.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right, Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, I understand that. Yeah, of course.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, I do. And I think it's. I think it's a question of culpability. Right. Like, Paul's family didn't do what he did. And so in. In a sense, they are victims. But, you know, again, this is a. This is a. This was a big story, especially in this area. And I think that we have an obligation to cover it as truthfully as we can with, you know, whoever will talk to us. And, you know, I, like you say, I feel sympathy with all of these cases, and that's one thing I really wanted to be sure that never got lost. I think with a lot of true crime, like the genre, a lot of people approach it as like a puzzle to be solved. And that makes sense. It's an investigation. There's evidence, there's clues. But because the way we reported this, we talked with the people involved, we talked with the victims families, I always want to center the fact that there are real people involved. Right. These are real humans who have gone through the worst imaginable pain, and I'm asking them to talk about it. Right. And so I always feel sympathy, and I try to reflect that in the way that we tell these stories. You know, I try to really get into who the victim was as a person to talk with their family and friends. Like, what were they. Like, what was their character? What did they like to do? Because I think that's really important, and it reminds the audience, like, this is not just like a puzzle to be solved. This is a real person. I just think that's really important with. With this genre, especially of true crime.

[Steven Rinella]

Tell me about the Terry Brisk murder.

[Jordan Sillers]

The Terry Brisk murder.

[Steven Rinella]

So, because here we're jumping up to 2016.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, this. This is a bit more recent. So Terry Brisk was. He was hunting whitetail. It was the third day of rifle season in Minnesota. He's from Little Falls, which is in central Minnesota. It's a pretty rural community, but he'd lived there his whole life. So he went out on a Monday. He'd taken off that day of work. He went out on a Monday to go check his stands. I got the sense it wasn't like a serious hunt. He had about 120 acre property, that it was like family land that he hunted. And he was just going to go out, check his stands. Like maybe he ran into a, you know, maybe he runs into a deer, maybe he doesn't, but he's just going to go out there. So he's out there, his son Jonathan comes home from school and immediately wants to go out hunting. He knows his dad is out on that property, and so he goes out there, he finds a stand. I want to say it was a ground blind, but I can't remember that detail. But he's texting his dad, like, hey, I'm out here, where are you? And he can hear a cell phone, like, dinging. So he knows, like, he's close, but he, he doesn't. Like, he keeps hearing the dinging. So, so, Terry, his dad doesn't silence his phone. And so he's like, that's just strange. And so he gets out of the blind. He. He walks not a very long distance because he can hear the cell phone. And he finds his dad. He's lying on the ground. He's. He's been shot. And so, you know, the investigation kind of the. The deputies arrive, they bring in some state law enforcement as well. They investigate the crime scene. And one of the weird things they notice is that he's. There's no gun, right? And they assume a hunter is going to go out on his property during deer season, he's going to have a gun with him, right? Because, like, the surest way of seeing a deer, right, is like to not.

[Steven Rinella]

Have your gun with you, even if you're just checking. Even if you're just.

[Jordan Sillers]

Even if you're just checking. Yep, even if you're just checking. So they, so they look for the gun. They can't find it. The family tells them that it was probably a.30 30 Winchester lever action that he liked to hunt with. They can't find it. Can't find it. About a year later, they go back out because what, what the, the sheriff who spoke with me said is at the time they were looking, there was a really thick, you know, cover of leaves on the ground. And so they were concerned maybe it was hidden somewhere. And so sure enough, the next spring, when that leaf cover has decomposed a bit, they go out again and they find the gun. And that's when they confirm that the gun that killed him was his own gun. But they also know, based on, you know, the crime scene, that it wasn't a suicide. They're confident that he was killed with his own gun by someone else at close range. So the sheriff says it's likely that this person spoke with Terry. Certainly they interacted in some way, and somehow this person got Terry's gun and shot him. And they've. They haven't been able to figure out who did it, or at least they haven't been able to gather enough evidence to figure out who did it. And that's kind of where the case has been.

[Steven Rinella]

How old was the. How old was the kid?

[Jordan Sillers]

He was. I think he was 15 at the time. Yeah. In 2016. So Terry was married and had four kids, and Jonathan was the oldest.

[Steven Rinella]

How far away was the gun?

[Jordan Sillers]

That's undisclosed. I asked the sheriff. He doesn't want to say where it was found. He said, I think the words he used were nowhere near the crime scene.

[Steven Rinella]

What?

[Jordan Sillers]

So, yeah, nowhere near the crime scene. One of the things that was mentioned potentially is that it was on a different property, but the way it was described to me, it's not like it was in someone's shed. Right. And they found it there. It was in the woods somewhere.

[Steven Rinella]

Doesn't make a ton of sense if it's far away.

[Jordan Sillers]

What do you mean?

[Steven Rinella]

If it's way far away, they're gonna wait for the leaves to settle down from rain and decomposition and then go look way far away.

[Jordan Sillers]

I mean, I don't know exactly how they conducted the search. I assume some kind of grid search. And there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of room and nowhere near. Right. It wasn't next to the body. It could have been 25 yards away. It could have been.

[Steven Rinella]

It's only 120 acres.

[Jordan Sillers]

It's only 120 acres.

[Steven Rinella]

So you could have been 500 yards away and not in the.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep. Yep. And that is one of the things that's so tough about, like, off property. Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah. A lot of these cases, like, the investigators don't know when to stop. Right. In their search for. For clues, for evidence, because they don't know how big the crime scene is. And so that was a challenging part of this, unfortunately.

[Steven Rinella]

They apparently never disclosed where he was shot.

[Jordan Sillers]

Like, which part of his body. No, they never have. I asked that, too. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And like, that's like. Can you. Can you explain why they withhold those little details? Because we. We talk about that.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Like you talk about that in the original in the original blood trails with the turkey hunter that's found dead out in the woods.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Is. They view it like it. They. It's a tool.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

To know details that no one else knows. Well, someone else knows.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. Exactly. And. And that's how they use it. So when I talked with Brent, the example he gave was, if. If we say we know what the murder weapon was, the murderer will then go throw that gun in the river. Right. So that's one example of something. I think. I think there is definitely validity in wanting to keep information close to the vest because they can use it. Whether that's in an interrogation. Right. They. They can better figure out if someone's lying or telling the truth if they, you know, haven't released a lot of details. Right. So if they know, if. If this person they're interviewing somehow mentions or let slip a detail that they haven't released to the public, well, that's a big deal. Right. Sure. And so they.

[Steven Rinella]

There's a thing that only you know, and then you're interviewing some guy and he knows, and he just happens to throw out.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Some weird remark, and you're like. Yeah, he wouldn't know that.

[Jordan Sillers]

Exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

He never told anybody that.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right, Right. Exactly. So. So those. Especially with the crime scene, those details are often not disclosed. And I totally get it. Sometimes I wonder whether. Whether investigators are being a little too cautious. And that's just from my perspective as someone who's just trying to get as much information as possible. So, you know, it's frustrating for me. It's frustrating for the family, can be frustrating for the public. But. But they do have reasons for it. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Tell me about the Ludger Bellinger.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, it's Ludger Belanger.

[Steven Rinella]

Lier.

[Jordan Sillers]

Blander Belanger. I got that wrong as well until someone corrected me. So this is another disappearance, but It's.

[Steven Rinella]

It's also 1970. Like. Like, kind of like a. Right around when I was born. Things were hot. Things were spicy in the woods, man.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Yeah. So this is 1975. So the 50th anniversary of this is actually coming up here pretty soon. So this is also a disappearance, but it's a lot different than the Bob Christian disappearance because we have a lot more information about who did it. It's just we don't. They were never convicted, and we don't know what they did with Luger. So he was a hunt.

[Steven Rinella]

This is the big woods, man.

[Jordan Sillers]

Maine. Exactly. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

We are in Maine.

[Jordan Sillers]

The big woods. Washington. Maine, which is in the eastern portion of the State, not too far from the coast. Luger went hunting with his wife, Linda, and his brother John. They went out kind of before work. Linda and John both had to work later in the day. Ludra was kind of between jobs, I think, but they went out early in the morning to see if they could find any deer tracks and just to sit and wait and, you know, see if anything showed up. They didn't find anything, so. So Linda and John went back because they had to go to work. Luger said, I'll, you know, I want to hunt for a little while longer, and then I'll. I'll come back home. At the time, Lujer. Well, still. But Luder and Linda had three young daughters at the time, so they had three kids. They were fairly newly married, but. And fairly young, but. But they had three kids. So Luder, again, doesn't come home, and he's supposed to drive Linda to work. And so the way she describes it is she was kind of mad at him at first. Right. She assumes he's just, like, out hunting and forgot. Right. But, you know, as the hours tick by and he still hasn't come home, she starts to become really concerned. So she calls the main game wardens, and they come out. Two game wardens come out and start to look for him. They search all night. No sign of him. And they consider calling, like, a larger search party, but it was pretty cold, and they figured that would take too long. They really wanted to find him then because he'd been out all night at that point. So. So they finally, they. They talk to a neighbor who says he saw Ludra go into the woods at this point. And the neighbor is a big hunter and a trapper. And so the neighbor says, if Ludra went in that way, I bet he went to this spot in the woods where there are often deer. And so, sure enough, they go to that spot, they find his tracks. They figure out that he shot a buck, and he dragged it out to a road. One of the really cool things about this story is it's a really great example of good police work, of good detective work. The game wardens were able to really read the signs in the snow because it had snowed and then gotten warm, and it kind of melted, and then it froze again, and then, like, a cold snow had come on top of that. So they're able to kind of figure out a timeline based on, like, is the track sequencing? Yeah. Is the track in the. The slushy, like, frozen stuff, or is it, you know, in the top? And so they Do a great job tracking Ludra to this road. They. They figure out that a car had driven up and picked Ludra up. And they put the deer in the trunk. Hmm. And one of the things they notice is that Ludra had left his gun leaning against a tree. And they figure out that one of the other guys in the car was the one who got out of the car and went over and picked up Luger's gun and brought it back to the car. And they just think that's kind of strange. Like, wouldn't Luder be the one to get out and go get his gun? And so that sort of tips them off. They also. Another great piece of detective work. They find a receipt in the snow for a local garage, like a. Like an auto body shop. And it has, like, the names of the guys who are driving the car. And so they immediately go to the auto body shop and they talk to that guy. Apparently, you know, two guys had come in potentially drunk, potentially, you know, on drugs, just, like, acting crazy. They'd asked for their car to be fixed. Something was wrong with the radiator. Then they left. And between them leaving, they leave the auto body shop, pick up Luger, something happens, and then they go back to the auto body shop later. So that's another piece where they're able to kind of figure out a timeline. And so they go to talk to these guys, and they've never been named. The suspects have never been named. I refer to them as suspect A and suspect B, because, again, like, they've never been officially named as suspects.

[Steven Rinella]

Come on.

[Jordan Sillers]

And I actually don't know because. So another part of this story, the game warrants, who investigated this have both passed. They both died. But an author, a journalist named Darren Worchester, published a book based on the accounts of a bunch of different main game wardens. His father in law was a game warden. And so he compiled all of these stories from these game wardens he'd spoken to, one of which was Luger's disappearance, was Luger's story. And so that's really how we know a lot of these details, is because he spoke with those wardens before they died. Yeah. And so I was able to interview Darren, who again, very kindly sat down and talked with me for a long time about this case. And so that's how we know a lot of the details, because they were never released to the public. I contacted, you know, the main state police, who are right now, like, in charge of the investigation, and they declined to be interviewed.

[Steven Rinella]

What are these two guys like, what do these two guys say for themselves?

[Jordan Sillers]

Well, one of them. One of them died in a kind of crazy circumstance. The other one is still alive. And according to Linda, who I spoke with, you know, maintains his innocence.

[Steven Rinella]

But what do they say? Where do they say Luger in the buck, got out of the car?

[Jordan Sillers]

They. I don't know that they ever really got that far in the investigation. What I mean is they never accused them and, like, tried to prosecute them. So they never actually, like, got them in a court and said, you know, what's going on? So they. They, like. They said they saw Luger, but we didn't pick him up. Right. Someone else must have picked him up. And that's kind of the story that they maintain, even though it's no.

[Steven Rinella]

Their receipts in the snow.

[Jordan Sillers]

Well, their receipt is. So they were there, right? They say, oh, yeah, we were there. We saw him, but we didn't pick him up. We didn't do anything to him. We don't know what happened to him. And that's sort of the story that they've maintained over these years. The first, the one suspect, they're both characters, you might say, but the one died because he blew up his own house in an apparent attempt either at insurance fraud or to kill his wife. He filled his house with, you know, whatever gas was being used in the house and set some kind of. I forget. I. I talk about in the episode. It was some kind of timing device, right, that was going to go off and then, like, blow up his house, and it went off too soon while he was still there. And they were hoping he would give them a deathbed confession because he didn't die immediately. He was flown to a hospital, but he never said anything.

[Steven Rinella]

You ever seen the movie in the Bedroom? It's a lobster trapping reference. There's a murder, and they know who did it, but they never face justice until they do. Yeah, it, like, a little bit surprises me. Not surprises me. But you can imagine the family at a point, being like, we're just gonna have to figure this. We're gonna have to do what needs to happen.

[Jordan Sillers]

Man, I can see that temptation, for sure. I think talking with Linda and Tracy, the youngest daughter, they feel like knowing what happened won't change what happened. They really just want to give Ludra a proper burial. They want to put him to rest in a respectful way that he deserves. And that's really all that they're motivated to do at this point, because Linda has been. She has been pushing, you know, for years. She was part of A group that actually helped to push the state legislature to open, like, a cold case unit in the state police because they didn't have that before. She, you know, runs a Facebook page where she, you know, advocates for both her case, but also other people's cases. She posts about other disappearances, other unsolved murders. And so she's just been, you know, trying for years to bring some measure of closure to her and her family. And I think she's not. I don't want to speak for her, but I think that's her primary motivation now as opposed to, like, you know, what I imagine right after it happened and the years after it happened, which was to. To bring the guys who did it to justice. Now it's really just, we want to find him. We want to figure out what happened. Every hunter knows that the wilderness is full of surprises. But sometimes what you find out there isn't an elk or a bear. It's something darker.

[Steven Rinella]

It never made sense what law enforcement was saying to us. How could there have been no marks on her?

[Jordan Sillers]

This season on Blood Trails, we're following the trail of seven cases that start in the field and end in the shadows. Each story begins with a hunter stepping into the wild, but not all of them come back. All theories are out there. You know, everything from murder to UFOs to Bigfoot. I'm Jordan Sillers, a journalist with over a decade of experience investigating stories about hunting, fishing, guns, and crime. Join me as we. We track the truth through tangled cover and cold case files, where every trail tells a story, and every story leaves its own trail of blood. Blood trails. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Steven Rinella]

Let's jump ahead to a 2018 homicide against Chong Mua Yang. Among Guy. We've had. Monk. We've had Hmong guys from. We've had Hmong guys by the last name of Yang. Our friend Ya Yang comes on the show now and then. It's a clan name. Your last name is a clan name.

[Jordan Sillers]

Okay. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

The Hmong, as we. As we've covered in past podcast episodes, there are. There's a. There's a large Hmong pot.

[Jordan Sillers]

Not large.

[Steven Rinella]

There's a. There's a significance. A substantial Hmong population in the United States of America.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

The Hmong listeners, I'm sure you're. You've heard of the Vietnam War. Well, the Vietnam War was not confined to Vietnam, obviously. And the. The US Ran a lot of covert operations both in Cambodia and Laos. You'll Hear mentions of like the Ho Chi Minh Trail, for instance. And the Ho Chi Minh Trail was, was not like a specific trail. You have to imagine it like a constantly changing route. And so in trying to attack supply lines from the north, we would sometimes stray over into Cambodia or Laos. And also our enemy in the war, like they had bases and infrastructure and operations happening outside of Vietnam. So we ran what we now know as like the secret wars. We ran these like covert operations which involved US Military personnel. The way, you know, if you think back to like the way Green Berets function, the way some CIA paramilitaries function is they use indigenous forces. Right. Like they're regarded as force multipliers. So when we were fighting the communists in Vietnam and fighting the communists in Laos, we were allied with a tribe, the Hmong, who were a somewhat stateless people. They were a mountain tribe. They were a somewhat stateless people and they hated the communists. So we, our CIA paramilitary special operation guys allied with the Hmong. When we pulled out of Vietnam, it was very similar to picture when we pulled out of Afghanistan, how many we took some of our collaborators with us, but translators, collaborators were abandoned in Afghanistan to be hunted down and killed by the Taliban, arrested by the Taliban. So when we pulled out of Vietnam, we brought a lot among. We brought a lot among with us. We brought them into Missoula, Montana, we brought them into Minnesota. And then over the years, other Hmong would slowly make their way out of Laos, cross into Thailand. In Thailand, they could go into refugee camps and then also could wind up emigrating to the US as asylum seekers. Yeah, because they were stateless. They had assisted the Americans and the communists were still hunting for them. The Hmong being a mountain people, are historic hunters. Right in the places where the Hmong settled, they, they took up hunting in America. And they under. This is just me editorializing here like I'm, I'm doing a crash course in a little bit of history to understand this case a little bit. The Hmong developed a reputation, developed reputation as these as violators and poachers. Okay. Now when we had Yayang on, who, who's who, whose family came from Laos and Yah was actually born overseas, but we had Ya Yang on and he, he expressed like, we talked about this reputation the Hmong had and Yah didn't apologize for it. And he's a very law abiding individual obviously, but he was kind of trying to speak to that the people's experience. Here you have a, here you have a stateless people where the Government of your. Here you are in Laos. The government is hunting for you. Like, you're living a secret existence up in the mountains. You're not represented by the government at all. Your whole life is, like, clandestine.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And all of a sudden, you get brought to the U. S. And that's your background. Right. And you come to the US and it's kind of like, oh, no, no, home.

[Jordan Sillers]

It.

[Steven Rinella]

You're not supposed to hunt squirrels.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Right. Till September 15th. And you're allowed five.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

He was like. There was just. There's sort of like, you're going from no government or your government's hunting you, you know, to, like, this completely different system.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And so he said there was a period when it was just, like. It was kind of incomprehensible.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, they knew to hunt, they wanted to hunt. They fed themselves on fish, they fed themselves on game, and it was just hard to understand.

[Jordan Sillers]

I mean, it's hard. It's hard for American hunters. Yeah. It's hard for American hunters to navigate sometimes.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. And so they develop this reputation. And of course, you have the obvious. Just racial tension.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right?

[Steven Rinella]

The racial tension. We see it. There's other cases where we took guys so, like, South Vietnamese who were fighting with us against the North. A lot of South Vietnamese wound up getting involved in shrimping in Louisiana. And there's huge tension between traditional Cajun shrimpers and these South Vietnamese dudes who are getting set up by churches to compete with them. It's, like, tension. And all of a sudden you're in Minnesota, and all of a sudden there's all these guys, and they don't look like you, and they're from another country. They have different cultural practices. And there they are on the landscape, and it's like, oh, they're taking all the game. They're the reasons I'm not seeing anything. And you have a history of. Then you have a history of just suspicion.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. An easy scapegoat for your own unsuccess.

[Steven Rinella]

Hmong dudes. Hmong dudes are like, these guys don't like us. Right. In some ways, we, like, fought for this. We fought for America, but we're not, like. But a lot of people were not welcome. Yeah, we, like, sacrificed our families and lives fighting your enemies, but now we're your enemy. Other guys are like, oh, all these new dudes, these Asian dudes are shooting our squirrels or catching our fish. They're snagging our salmon, whatever. Right. And it creates, like, this atmosphere. Yeah. Like, I. I love to think that this is fading now, but this was a real thing and, and, and, and, and I had heard about it.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Thank God. I wound up becoming friends with, with like becoming friends with. Among family.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And getting a better sense of the whole picture.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right, right. Yeah. And that's, and that's the background for this homicide of a, of a Hmong hunter. And one of the, one of the tricky parts, I think so. So with this story, I have read the case file from the Bath Township police. They were, the detective there was kind of the primary investigator on this case. Just to kind of preface the rest of this, I haven't spoken with the family yet and I will before we put out this episode. But currently the status of the case is somewhat open. There's an appeals process that's going on and so my information comes from the case file and I imagine some of this will be fleshed out a bit after I talk to people. So just to preface it with that. But reading the case file, it seemed like it was challenging to investigate because there were so many instances of like racial comments being made in this particular, like, you know, state is a state park, hunters in this state park who, who, you know, made racist comments. Right. Against the Hmong. And so it was like almost too many options right. When investigators started this because they'd hear, oh, so and so said such and such about this Hmong hunter. Oh, so and so sent a text to their buddy saying this racist thing. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Because there's the. Among dudes there.

[Jordan Sillers]

There were a lot of examples of this. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Just, I just want to just interject the thing, like, kind of like how this stuff works. Yanni and I were down in Missouri, hunting in Missouri. And just in our wandering around and hanging out at boat launches and stuff, we just shooting the breeze with all these guys all the time. These guys are explaining to us like flat out telling us there's no squirrels. This would be news to people that live. This would be news to Missouri squirrel hunters. It was funny because we did some squirrel hunting on this trip and did fantastic. There's no squirrels because the Hmong come down from Minneapolis and do big squirrel drives.

[Jordan Sillers]

Squirrel drive.

[Steven Rinella]

And you're like, home. It's some, some guys. Enough guys, enough Hmong guys came down from Minnesota and conducted a squirrel drive in Missouri. In Missouri. The likes of which has eliminated squirrels in Missouri.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Huh? Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Yeah, if you say so.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I believe everything everybody tells me so. Okay.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, just lunacy.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But straight faced, right? We're like, can you explain a squirrel Drive to me.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. How does that work? I'd love to know, honestly, because they.

[Steven Rinella]

Kind of go into the trees and go into holes. You don't push them out. They don't drive. They don't put squirrels. Don't push.

[Jordan Sillers]

No, no, they don't. They don't.

[Steven Rinella]

You don't bump squirrels. You don't mooch squirrels.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Straight face, dude.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right?

[Steven Rinella]

Straight faced. Like a real problem.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, yeah. Right. And. And that just adds a whole, a whole wrinkle to this, to this case, to this investigation. Right. Because you layer that on top of just.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Like, oh, he must be the guy because he's saying all this bad stuff about the mugs. Like, no, everybody's bitching about the Mongod, right?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, everyone is. And also, just because you say this doesn't mean you're going to go shoot some. Some guy. So. So what happens is it happened in 2018, the Rose Lake State park in Bath Township, Michigan. It's similar to the. Somewhat similar to the Terry Brisk case where he, he goes out hunting by himself. He's pretty familiar with this area. He's hunted it quite a bit and he doesn't come home. It's after dark. The family launches a search party and he's found he's been shot in the head once. And from there the investigation, you know, moves forward. And again, it's extremely difficult. There's limited evidence. There's some footprints around the body that are. That investigators have a tough time matching to, you know, any one specific person to kind of skip ahead a bit. The way that they eventually name some suspects is basically through. They. They get pings from their cell phones that they were in this area. They put in a request basically to Verizon or AT&T or whoever, like, give me all the cell phones of anyone who's in this area on this day at this time. And these two guys pop up. Another thing that happens is a witness. So, so Yang is killed and all his stuff has been stolen. Like, he doesn't. His backpack's gone. He had a shotgun that was gone. And so a witness sees two guys walking down the road and one of them is holding two long guns. They're obviously hunters, but one of them is holding two long guns, which is obviously strange. And so eventually they're able to, you know, they identify these guys. The one guy's name is Thomas Olson. The other guy's name is Robert Rodway. They identify them. You know, they, they interrogate them. They do find a can of like, scent spray I think it was like, to. You put on your boots to, like, you know, remove your scent.

[Steven Rinella]

So these guys are deer hunting?

[Jordan Sillers]

They're deer hunting. Yeah, they're deer hunting. And believe it or not, they say it's like, one of their first times deer hunting. They're not, like, experienced hunters, these guys. So they find this can of scent spray with Olson's DNA on it in the vicinity of the body, and so they feel like they have enough to charge both of these guys with murder. A thing about this case that I haven't figured out yet, and this is, I want to talk with people and figure this out, is Robert Rodway's charges were dropped. They charged both of them initially, but his charges were dropped. And according to the attorney general from Michigan, they say they were dropped due to an unresolved issue regarding admissibility of evidence. And so I don't know what that. Like, what specifically that's referring to. I don't know if the. An investigator messed it up. I don't know if they just decided, like. Because only one of them presumably pulled the trigger. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so I don't know if they just figured we think it's Olson, not Rodway. I don't know.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, the other one would be least obstruction of justice.

[Jordan Sillers]

You. Right, right. And. And they were very. You know, they. They sat down for interviews and. And to be clear, you know, just so everyone knows, Olson maintains his innocence to this day. His family says he was wrongfully convicted. He says he didn't do it, and they say the evidence was not substantial enough to convict him. But he was convicted in 2024. Last year, a jury convicted him of, I believe it was second degree murder. He got sentenced to 20 to 60 years in prison, but he's appealing right now. As we're recording this, he has asked for a retrial, which is kind of the first step. A lot of times in the appeal process, you ask for a retrial, you say, you know, my. My representation wasn't sufficient. They didn't do a good job. I want a new trial. And then I presume they'll go through the appellate process. So that's where this case is now. So this is really an ongoing situation.

[Steven Rinella]

The text message exchanges.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Are bizarre, where there's a different guy who has a text message, a different person of interest in the investigation that had texted someone about how he was going to kill. Yeah, Yang.

[Jordan Sillers]

Different guy. Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I was just kidding.

[Jordan Sillers]

He says he was kidding, and I have an alibi.

[Steven Rinella]

I was just like, Making a joke about how someone should kill the Mungai.

[Jordan Sillers]

And he did have an alibi according to the case record, because there were a few guys, there was one in particular that they were really looking into for several years. Right. Because remember, this happened in 2018. So this has gone on for the last six years. There was one guy they were looking into pretty closely. They eventually ruled him out because they confirmed he wasn't in the area when this happened. And so you're right, these text messages were one of the most damning pieces of evidence because, you know, Rodway and Olsen are texting back and forth about this case, joking about, joking about it, you know, making racist comments.

[Steven Rinella]

They go back there and hunt. And they go back there and hunt years. Two years later they do. And there's a photo of them and one of the, one of the guys texts with the photo text. The other one, a couple of cold blooded killers revisiting the crime scene.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep, yep. Then there's a lot like that. There's a lot of very. Yeah. Very damaged. Funny, right?

[Steven Rinella]

They like. They think it's funny.

[Jordan Sillers]

They think it's funny. Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That they, they had texted each other in a Meat Eater article.

[Jordan Sillers]

They did, Yep. Yeah. One of them sent. Pat Durkin covered a story about among guy who killed. I think it was six hunters. It was a pretty famous case.

[Steven Rinella]

And just on this, there was a Hmong guy who trespassed and was hunting in someone else's stand.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

These guys confront them. Him. There's a shootout. And the Hmong guy who, who was probably trained. I mean, he's probably a veteran.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

They get into a shootout and the Hmong guy, man, somehow kills like five or six.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Guys in a shootout.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, yeah. Some of them as they were running away.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, no, that. I mean, that. Listen, I had my whole preamble. Right. It was unfair of me to not point out the way that, that in like the way that that case.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Those murders inflamed tensions.

[Jordan Sillers]

Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And that's, that's another important. Yeah. Piece of context.

[Steven Rinella]

That's a major omission on my part to not mention that there's like that.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. And, and, and Pat, you know, he wrote an article for us for the website a couple of years ago, and these guys apparently, you know, were reading Meat Eater or they were sent it. And so they send Pat's article about this incident, this massacre, and they kind of go back and forth joking about it like, you know, this is us, we're gonna.

[Steven Rinella]

They didn't really Understand the article, though.

[Jordan Sillers]

They didn't. I think they probably just read the headline, but it was about a mungai who, you know, killed a bunch of people. And, you know, they were basically joking about it, going. Going back and forth. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

They're like, this will be us next year. The DNR won't be ready.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, I just. Yeah, I just thought it was wild that, you know, I'm reading this. It's like, you know, 400 pages, I'm reading through this case file, and all of a sudden there's a meat eater article sent back and forth by these two, you know, alleged murderers. So, yeah, that. There's a lot to that case. And I'm very curious to talk to the detective. Hopefully he'll speak with me and we'll see. We'll see where it goes. You know, the. The evidence was. There was evidence. There was that scent spray. There's these text messages.

[Steven Rinella]

There's a lot of cell phone pings.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. There's cell phone pings. So there's certainly evidence. I don't know if an appellate court will think that there's enough. And that's kind of where it is right now. Dude.

[Steven Rinella]

I love America. I love our Constitution.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

That's the greatest document of governance ever produced. But good lord, did we make it sometimes a little easy not having the ability. Yeah. Like, you want to now and then imagine a world in which you can put screws to people a little bit better. To be like, buddy, come on, we're gonna have a little chat.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right, Right. And, you know, just like.

[Steven Rinella]

And you're not going home today.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Yeah. And just like, going back to the victim's family. I mean, this has been horrible for them. Yeah. I mean, and because in this case file is included, like, emails back and forth from the detective and the family members, and they're like, have you found anything? And he's like, we're working really hard, you know, and back and forth like this for years. And to go through not only losing your dad. Right. Your uncle, but to not know who did it.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jordan Sillers]

And to hear all these rumors. Right. Because there's. There's rumors just swirling on social media that they're hearing from other people.

[Steven Rinella]

People are joking about people celebrating your death.

[Jordan Sillers]

Exactly. It's. I can't imagine. It's horrible. And so, you know, they. I think were. Were very happy to get this amount of resolution, and they're extremely, you know, stressed, I think. And again, I haven't talked to them. Just, like, seeing what they post, you know, brief Text exchanges about where this case is going and just hoping that they'll get that resolution and it will be final and they can kind of, you know, have that. That closure.

[Steven Rinella]

Man. Dude, I love it. It's one of these. One of these going to start coming out. When can people start listening to these, Corinne? You know.

[Corinne]

October 30th.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, yeah, October 30th.

[Corinne]

Right before Halloween. I'm just going to add one plug, which is important for the show and for the audience, please, instead of just go back and listen. Listening to the trailer in episode one and two and three and four, etc.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, we skipped. We skipped a million of them. We didn't talk about them all.

[Corinne]

Yeah, they're a ton. But please, because this is a net new, brand new podcast feed called Blood Trails. Please subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts, please subscribe to the feed or it's called.

[Jordan Sillers]

A lot of people use the word follow now. Subscribe's gone out of fashion.

[Corinne]

Sorry.

[Jordan Sillers]

Hit the plus button or the follow button or whatever.

[Corinne]

Yeah, thank you, Phil.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, subscribe, follow. As Phil puts it, follow. So you can follow along.

[Jordan Sillers]

There you go on blood trails and.

[Steven Rinella]

And then if you got. If you got hot tips, send them in.

[Jordan Sillers]

Dude, we, yeah, we set up an email, actually. If you have a tip about a case that you think we should cover or one about one of the cases we do cover. It's Blood Trails, the Meat eater Dot com. All right.

[Steven Rinella]

Thanks for coming on, Jordan.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Steven Rinella]

I look forward to doing this again, man. Like, makes me, you know, like sometimes people will tell me about a health problem they're having and I start getting the health problem.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

You'Re not gonna get murdered, Steve.

[Steven Rinella]

No, but I'm saying I'm having like anxiety, like an all body reaction. I mean, I'm having an all body reaction in.

[Corinne]

In these first episodes.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm like, my muscles are tense.

[Corinne]

These first episodes we've listened to, they're really good. They're just so good, you know, original reporting, creepy music, like. Yeah. You get whole body feels while you're like, totally just brought into that world.

[Steven Rinella]

It gets you right in the feels. Gets you right in the feels. All right, thanks for coming on.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Steven Rinella]

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