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- [00:00]
Nick
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:03]
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- [00:30]
Chronic Hives Ad Speaker
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- [01:30]
Captain
Foreign.
- [01:50]
Nick
Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing. Thank you for listening. I'm your host, Nick and with me, as always, a man that needs no introduction at all. Because yeah, he's kind of here every week. The Captain do we have a beer of the week? We do, we do. We got another one for Yaya23's wish list here this week, Captain. We got one of my favorite brewing companies, Zaftig Brewing out of Columbus, Ohio. They claim Worthington, but that's really just North Columbus, Ohio. This week we're drinking Juicy Lucy by Zaftig Garage, Grade four and a quarter bottle caps out of five. Juicy Lucy is Zaftig's take on a traditional American ipa. This juicy bomb is a double dry hop and they use citra hops to give it a subtle, light, fruity cut to the hops. I love the new location. If you're in North Columbus, make sure you check them out. This beer this week is brought to us by Rachel in North Carolina, Claire in North Hollywood, California, Kirk and Thornton, Colorado and Melinda in Baton Rouge. Thank you guys for chipping in and helping us buy Philip the fridge this week. And if you wish to buy us around, go to truecrimegarage.com and click on the donate button. Cheers.
- [03:08]
Captain
And again, if you want to check out the store at True Crime Garage, you can do so truecrimegarage.com also you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, truecrimegarage.
- [03:21]
Nick
That's enough of the business. Grab a chair, grab a beer and let's talk some true crime. This is True Crime Garage and this is the case of Christy Molex, The summer of 1975. August 23rd. 14 year old Christy Mullins accompanies her friend Carol Reeves to the Woolco department store. Carol had received a phone call from a disc jockey inviting her to a cheerleading contest in the parking lot of the department store. The girls had cut through the woods arriving in the parking lot promptly at 1:45pm. The disc jockey that they're looking for is nowhere to be found and they do not see a contest in sight. Christy Mullins sits on the guardrail. Carol Reeves, she goes into the department store to check to see what time it is. Just a few minutes later, Carol Reeves returns to the parking lot. Christy Mullins is gone foreign. This week we have a very strange case, strange indeed. The case, the murder case of Christy Mullins. This takes place August 23, 1975 in North Columbus, Ohio. 14 year old Christy Mullins is swimming at a pool at an apartment complex on Broadmeadows boulevard when her 14 year old friend Carol Reeves asked her to go to the shopping center. Around 1:30pm Christie's friend Carol had received a call from somebody claiming that he was a radio disc jockey and he was having a contest. It was like a cheerleading contest and the prize was going to be a pass to the upcoming Ohio State Fair. Christy and her friend Carol walked to the Woolco department store at the Graceland Shopping center that was just blocks from her home. The disc jockey had said that the contest would take place in the parking lot. At 1:45pm the girls, they walked through the woods. There was a cut through, you could take a couple different paths from the apartment complex to the shopping center. When they arrived they were unable to find the disc jockey and they couldn't see any contest taking place. Carol, who was excited about the contest, decided that she would go into the Woolco store to double check the time to make sure that they had arrived on time. When she comes back out, she's only in the store for a few minutes. She comes back out and her friend Christie is gone. When she last saw Christy Mullins, Christy was sitting on the guardrail. They had a long stretch of guardrail there near the department store. She had sat there and she was, she was waiting for her friend, combing her hair and just a few minutes go by and Carol comes back and Christie's gone. Carol waited about 20 minutes for Christy to return and when she did not return she went to the home of another friend of, of hers. Shortly after Christie disappeared, around 2:20 in the afternoon, a man named Henry Newell Jr. He's 23 years of age of Kenowa Avenue, now Kennewa Avenue is about three blocks from the Graceland Shopping Center. He was walking in the woods with his wife Pamela and their five year old daughter when he heard screams. And he ran to investigate where these screams were coming from, what was going on? When Newell arrived in the area of the screams, he saw a white man, about 18 or 19 years old, wearing cutoff shorts, no shirt, with long black hair, and he's swinging a two by four board and he's beating something into the ground. Noel looked and saw that it was a woman or a girl that the man was beating with the large board. He saw the man strike the girl in the head about three or four times with vicious deadly blows. The killer then saw Newell and took off running. He went running south in the woods to flee the area. Noel ran up to the girl who was laying on the ground and he becomes emotional when the girl is laying there lifeless and there is the board that she was being struck with is laying across her body. He picks up the board and he, he like launches it into the woods. He throws it into the woods and then he takes off his shirt. I mean, mind you, she's badly beaten in the head, in the face. And he takes off his shirt and he covers her up. He covers up her head. Newell then went to the department store to call for help. He was very upset, he was pretty mad. And he and several store employees started searching the area behind the store looking for the assailant. When police arrived at the shopping center, Henry Newell led them to Christie's body. Police said that later that evening a woman came into the store and told police that she had seen a man earlier that matched the description of the man police were looking for. The assailant had been riding a bicycle and had rode past her home, which was just south of the shopping Center. On Monday, August 25th. The Columbus Dispatch was it, which is a local, the major local newspaper featured the composite drawing of the suspect, the person believed to be Christie's killer. This prompted hundreds of calls to police. Most of them were calls coming from the north side of Columbus and a lot of them near the Graceland Shopping Center. Detective Tom Jones said that more than a dozen calls seem especially promising. Jones said investigators have canvassed hundreds of homes in the area, apartments, buildings and businesses in search of more eyewitnesses. Detective Jones was very confident that they would find other witnesses who had seen the killer before after the murder took place. Jones also stated that in 15 years as a homicide detective in Columbus that this was one of the most brutal beatings that he had ever seen. And although police at the time were pursuing several other theories, the strongest theory that they were going with was that the girl was forced into the woods and by a man who wanted to molest her and then killed her when she struggled. That was the same that her father, that Christy Mullen's father. Same statement he would give to the newspaper that same day, that he believed that she wouldn't have gone into the woods with somebody willingly.
- [10:55]
Captain
Well, her hands were tied as well, right?
- [10:59]
Nick
Yes, there, there is one source that says that her hands were bound.
- [11:03]
Captain
Yeah, with a telephone wire.
- [11:06]
Nick
Now, the detectives, they were going on that theory, but they were also checking reports of molestations in the area and they were doing what they were called referring to as backtracking, saying that many times when someone is molested or assaulted, sexually assaulted, that they don't actually report it, but when they read in the paper that a 14 year old girl is murdered, then they will come forward and say such and such assaulted me or so. And so, you know, we were involved in an altercation. These reports would come out later with hopes of helping solve a much more brutal crime. The next day, Tuesday, Officer Thomas Stroud, he's working foot patrol and traffic patrol down in the downtown area. He's at the corner of Town and 3rd street and he notices a face in the crowd. There's a group of about 10 people walking and he notices a man in his 20s. And he approaches the man and what, what stood out to him was the hair of the gentleman. The way that the hair kind of stood out from the face and the, the length of it was almost exactly that of the composite drawing that he had seen in the Dispatch the day before.
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Captain
Kind of looks like a mullet, right?
- [12:23]
Nick
Yeah, you definitely, yeah, a mullet or like a, like a slick back kind of Al Pacino kind of thing after you haven't combed it backward in a while.
- [12:33]
Captain
You know, somebody on Twitter said he looked like a redneck version of Jerry Seinfeld.
- [12:39]
Nick
Okay. Anyway, Officer Stroud approaches the man and he asked the man for some identification. The man provided the officer with his draft card registration number. So for those of you that don't know, that's something, I guess that people used to carry around with them back in 1975. Officer Stroud, he arrests the man on probable cause because he looks exactly like the composite drawing. And he says that the man went without incident. There was no resistance. Police identify the arrested man as 25 year old Jack Carmen. Police take Jack down to the police department. They are going to call in Henry Newell Jr. Who had seen the attack take place. And he brings his wife with him and they conduct an identification lineup. Now, him and his wife would successfully pick Jack Carmen out of the police lineup. After the positive idea is made, police sit down with Jack and they put him through some questioning for about six hours. During the course of that questioning, Jack Carmen admits to the rape and killing of. Of 14 year old Christy Mullins. Detective Thomas Stroudsberg would talk with media after the questioning and after the confession. And he would tell the newspaper that Jack Carmen is in very, very poor mental condition. He also does not have the ability to read or write. Jack was living at the Volunteers of America dormitory at 379 W. Broad St. Jack also does not drive a car. Detective Strasberg would go on to say that Jack Carmen, while he did confess to the rape and killing of Christy Mullins, that Jack was uncertain why he would have been at the Graceland Shopping Center. He said that he was unsure how he happened to get there, but he may have gone there to buy a shirt and. Or some pants. And then he would go on to say that he was also uncertain what he did after the murder itself, other than the fact that he knew that he stayed in the Columbus area. He said that most likely after he killed her, he probably got on a bus and headed back to the downtown Columbus area. Police trying to corroborate Jack Carmen's confession. They announced that they were looking and trying to find a bus driver, a COTA bus driver who might have seen Jack Carmen or had noticed a shirtless man wearing cutoff jeans that could have had blood spatter, blood specks on their. On their cutoff jeans. Now, they also would go on to say that it was a possibility because she was beat to death with a board, that those. That the blood spots would be so small that could have gone unnoticed by a local bus driver. Police did recover more than one pair of shorts from a rag container at the Volunteers of America dormitory where Jack Carmen was staying. They couldn't confirm if they were Jack shorts or not, but they did have some stains on them. And they had sent them off to a chemist to be tested. DNA tested. Well, not DNA at the time, but they wanted to test to see if they were blood, human blood on the shorts. I want to circle back to the phone call real quick, Captain. Remember the phone call that the girl received from the disc jockey asking about the. Could you come down to the cheerleading contest? We're giving away passes to The Ohio State Fair.
- [16:04]
Captain
Kind of a weird contest for a radio station to have.
- [16:06]
Nick
Yeah, but they were using. The police were using that as their lead. That was their lead until the description of the man went out, and somebody had found a guy that looked exactly like the description. Well, after they arrest Jack Carmen, they're going to. Well, let's talk about the phone call real quick. Okay, so a little more detail about the phone call. The. The phone call was actually answered by Christy Mullin's friend's mother. Now, that was Carol Reeves is Christie's friend. So the phone call was answered by Carol Reeves mother, and she said that the caller did ask for Carol by name. Now, Carol would go on to say that the man spoke with an Appalachian accent, and she did not recognize the man's voice, nor did she have any idea who the caller was other than she believed he was who he said he was. A disc jockey with a local radio station.
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Captain
Now, wasn't there some speculation, too, that there was actually calls earlier that week?
- [17:05]
Nick
Yeah, there was, and that's why I had to circle back to the phone call. Because after the arrest of Jack Carmen, police released a statement to the media that that phone call had simply. That it was simply a fluke that Jack Carmen, this maniac killer, ended up in the same location where these two girls were, because they had went on this prank phone call, what the police are now deeming as a. As a prank phone call.
- [17:31]
Captain
Right.
- [17:32]
Nick
And he just happened to be in the area, and he happened to grab Christy Mullins and pull her into the
- [17:36]
Captain
woods even though that there was phone calls made earlier that week, Correct?
- [17:40]
Nick
Yes. The authorities did a bunch of.
- [17:42]
Captain
Bunch of fluke phone calls.
- [17:44]
Nick
Yeah, There were several of these phone calls, and they were all made in that same area. These were all north side girls who had called into police and told them that they had received similar phone calls
- [17:55]
Captain
that same week, which is very similar, like we were saying earlier outside of the garage to the Amy Mihaljevic case.
- [18:04]
Nick
After the announcement of Jack Carmen's arrest, his former foster parents come out and they start talking to the newspapers, and they are saying, you know, he is. His mental state. He's. He's at the level of a child. And not only that, they. They don't believe that he could have done this. Now, it's typical that family members don't believe that somebody, a loved one is responsible for a heinous crime like this. I mean, this is somebody that had. Was being charged with beating a girl to death after raping her.
- [18:35]
Captain
He's mentally Handicapped.
- [18:37]
Nick
Extremely mentally handicapped. He doesn't drive, he doesn't read, he doesn't write. And. But what the foster parents would go on to say is that. That Jack would kind of do anything you told him to, that he would also. You could lead him anywhere. You know, when he was younger, if he did something and the foster father said, jack, did you do this? He would immediately confess whether it was something he did or not.
- [19:02]
Captain
Right.
- [19:03]
Nick
And then just minutes later, the foster father would say, no, Jack, you didn't do it. And then he. He would just agree, yes, I did it. And then minutes later, no, I didn't. And not only that, they said that he never. That he never hurt anybody. They actually believed that a small child could probably overpower Jack because he wouldn't understand the situation. He wouldn't understand that there was a struggle or a fight going on. And furthermore, the police would. Would come back to media and say, no, that's impossible. We know this guy did it because he led us to the crime scene. He led us to where the body was found. Now, the foster parents would come out shortly afterwards and say, that's impossible. We believe that the police must have walked Jack there and pointed to the spot and said, this is where this
- [19:52]
Captain
took place, or is this the place? He disagreed.
- [19:55]
Nick
Yeah. And he would just agree. The other thing that the foster parents were curious about was Jack had admitted to raping Christy Mullins. Well, there. There's a lot of contradiction here, because an autopsy that was conducted, they could not confirm that she was raped. Now, she was found, her pants were unzipped and her top was pulled up. But other than that, they couldn't find any evidence of a rape or sexual assault.
- [20:25]
Captain
But the top could have came up during the actual beating part, correct?
- [20:29]
Nick
Correct. Or. Or there could have been an attempted rape that. That was never successful, that ended up in the demise of Christy Mullins. The foster parents would go on to say that, yeah, Jack confessed to raping Christie, but would somebody please ask Jack what the word rape means? Because we guarantee he doesn't even know what that word means.
- [20:50]
Captain
Right.
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Nick
I mean, how can you confess to something that you don't even. You don't even know the definition of it.
- [20:56]
Captain
Yeah. So they're. They're leading this guy, and he confessed asses to it, and then they're going to take him to trial.
- [21:02]
Nick
September 2, 1975. A grand jury indicts Jack Carmen for rape, kidnapping, and three various accounts of murder in the death of Christy Mullins. And the very next day, on September 3rd, Jack Carmen. He agrees to a plea bargain in which charges are reduced to one count of aggravated murder in exchange for his guilty plea, and he's sentenced to life in prison. So let's review this real quick, Captain, because things are happening very fast here. Right. Things are happening very fast to a guy that is. Is mentally handicapped and that we have already talked about might go along with whatever the group is telling him to do or go along with.
- [21:47]
Captain
Yeah. Hence the plea bargain.
- [21:49]
Nick
Yeah. On. On August 23rd, Christie Mullins is killed. On August 26th, Jack Carmen's arrested. That's just three days later, on September 2nd, he's indicted for three counts of murder. And then on the 3rd, he pleads guilty to one count of murder. So this takes place all within the course of 11 days from death to conviction. It's around this same time that workers at the Volunteers of America on West Broad street where the mentally disabled Jack Carmen live, they start reporting that they had seen Jack that day and that he was at that location as late as 1:45pm in the afternoon. Now, remember, we said Jack didn't drive a car, so he relied on coda bus to take him everywhere that he went.
- [22:40]
Captain
And roughly, the murder took place about
- [22:42]
Nick
22225, according to the eyewitness that had seen the girl being beaten. The head. He said that around 2:20, he had seen Jack Carmen beating the girl in the woods. Well, that's. That's a bit of a stretch. So it's 16 minutes by car with no traffic from that location on the west side of Columbus all the way up to the north side of Columbus. Sixteen minutes. So if they saw him at 145, that puts them there about 201. But now, she wasn't just. She was taken from. From the side of the department store, brought into the woods. I mean, maybe by car, but anybody that's traveled by bus, they know that that bus moves a lot slower than a car. And you got to stop and make all those different stops. Right.
- [23:26]
Captain
Well, what's interesting is, okay, they. They claim that they got there at 145. We don't know that for sure. Right. We are. We're approximating.
- [23:37]
Nick
Correct.
- [23:38]
Captain
They get there at 145. It never states that. She went and checked. And, oh, by the way, it was 145. They were on time. I do think she was excited about the contest, so I think they were on time. But then she comes back 10 minutes later. So she would have. So you're trying to tell me that Christie Mullins would Just be wandering off for no reason. It seems like there was that window of opportunity for somebody to. Lawyer lore. I can't speak to that.
- [24:09]
Nick
But the captain, I like the captain, always adds five minutes to timelines because this.
- [24:15]
Captain
Forwards and backwards.
- [24:16]
Nick
Yeah, this is, this is 1975. People aren't walking around with, with cell phones. Now, they do have wristwatches, obviously. But what you're saying here, if we
- [24:24]
Captain
add five minutes, I have a wristwatch on right now and it's not working.
- [24:29]
Nick
So it's right twice a day.
- [24:31]
Captain
Exactly.
- [24:32]
Nick
So if we're saying by the captain's timeline that if they did arrive on time at 1:45 and if the friend Carol was in the department store for 10 minutes, she would have came back out at 155, maybe two o' clock at the latest. That means Jack Carmen would have had to have taken a car straight from the West Broad location all the way up to the Graceland Shopping Center.
- [24:55]
Captain
Well, you went and taken a car, he would have taken a bus. But.
- [24:58]
Nick
Exactly. But that was. That's the only way, is what I'm saying, to get there in that amount of time.
- [25:03]
Captain
And we know that when you go to the home, then you got to go back and forth. Okay, did he leave at 140 or did he leave at 150 or is that this last time they saw him, that he was actually just there the whole time?
- [25:16]
Nick
These workers, as said, came forward saying that there's no way that he could have arrived in time to commit the murder. Now, not only that, there's people that start checking. The police didn't check this. The detectives did not check this. They just believed the confession. Now these people start checking and they start signing petitions to that he needs to be retried, that they need to do a new, more thoroughly investigation. Because according to the bus schedule and according to the transit authority, there's no way that he could have made it from the west side of Columbus at 1:45 to be at that location at Graceland shopping center at 2:20pm yeah, in
- [25:59]
Captain
1975 it'd probably be a lot easier to make the drive. Traffic was probably less than it is now. But also if it. To me, it seems like the cops are more worried about closing the case than they are finding the truth. And I think that happens a lot in cases. And we really need to put pressure on the police to be looking for the truth, not just looking for closure.
- [26:27]
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- [27:40]
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- [31:55]
Nick
about some things that are going on in the world at this time period. So this is the summer of 70 and we had covered at the beginning of this season the Son of Sam. Well the Son of Sam murder started taking place late July, mid to late July of the same summer. So New York City has got a maniac running around killing people. They haven't solved that crime. There's, there's more victims. The victims are adding up. Okay and then you have a 14 year old girl in Columbus who is murdered. This is a well populated area. It's Clintonville, Ohio North Columbus. There's a lot of people there today. There was a lot of people back in 1975. This is a well populated area and all of a sudden they got a maniac on the loose that's killing kids in the woods, you know, and so killed a kid. Yeah, right. And. But this was front. On the front page of the major newspaper at the time, the Dispatch. And this was a crime that. You're exactly right. The cops were very concerned about solving this. You saw the picture, you saw the composite drawing that they put in the newspaper. The guy looks like a maniac. I mean he, he, he looks like somebody you'd be afraid of him. Then you heard that he raped and beat. To beat a girl to death with a board.
- [33:11]
Captain
Yeah, two by four. So.
- [33:13]
Nick
Yeah.
- [33:13]
Captain
But here it goes back to my original thought though is we. I understand that there's pressure to solve a case, but the pressure should never be to close the case or to solve a case or, you know, to finish things. The pressure should always be to find the truth. And I think they just came across a guy that was mentally handicapped. I think they interrogated him. They, you know, I think their tactics probably were questionable. And they got a confession out of a guy that didn't know what he was talking about.
- [33:47]
Nick
Now you have to sign a confession, right?
- [33:49]
Captain
Uh huh.
- [33:50]
Nick
Okay. Jack Carmen couldn't write. The police said he couldn't read or write. So. So let me get this right. I'm going to have to write out your. If I'm the officer, I have to write in your. Jack Carmen, I have to write out the confession for you. Right?
- [34:05]
Captain
Right.
- [34:05]
Nick
And, and I put a little X at the bottom and say here, Jack, sign here. And not only did I write the confession for you, but you can't even read it to know if that's what you told me.
- [34:16]
Captain
Correct? Right. And most of the time they'll just hand you a piece of paper and they go, just write down everything. You know, they leave the room. A tactic that I've heard that detectives use often is they won't even read it. They'll just come back and say, I'm guessing there's some lies in here, so just rewrite it. So they had to write out the confession for him and probably put a X by it. So again, he can't read what he, what they wrote. Now working in the banking industry, I dealt with a lot of mentally handicapped and they would have a signature that they would sign so that a lot of them could sign some kind of signature. So I'm assuming that Jack did that.
- [35:05]
Nick
Yeah, I would guess that he, that he signed. I mean he had some identification with him. Usually that requires a signature as well. He, he's 25 years old. I'm sure that he had some kind of signature or a scribble that he used as a signature.
- [35:18]
Captain
Oh, whether it's a scribble or not, that's his signature.
- [35:21]
Nick
Have you seen my signature? My signature is, Is a scribble. Yeah, is a scribble. And I'm no doctor. September 8th, this is just five days after the guilty plea. More than 70 people attend a meeting at Sharon Township hall to question the police investigation. Shortly after the meeting, the. This is when they establish. Established the justice for Jack committee.
- [35:43]
Captain
Yeah. And basically what this committee is doing, what everybody should have been done doing for the. From the get go, is they're pushing the issue for. Look, if he did it, fine, but let's get to the truth.
- [35:59]
Nick
Let's review the other evidence though too. I mean, we talked about the timeline that it was impossible for him to make it there.
- [36:05]
Captain
Now it's highly unlikely.
- [36:06]
Nick
Very unlikely. But the, the, the test of the shorts, nothing comes of that.
- [36:12]
Captain
Right.
- [36:12]
Nick
They couldn't even.
- [36:14]
Captain
They were his shorts at the time being 1975. They're probably looking for blood and then just to see if the blood matches like her type of blood.
- [36:23]
Nick
Yeah. Or if, if it was even blood at all. That was. They had stained the shorts.
- [36:28]
Captain
I wonder if it was jorts. You know, jean shorts.
- [36:31]
Nick
It was jean shorts. The cut off. Yeah, cut off.
- [36:34]
Captain
Oh, jorts.
- [36:36]
Nick
The other evidence here is they couldn't find a bus driver. Remember? They had.
- [36:41]
Captain
Wait, hold on. If you're listening in your garage right now and you're drinking a nice brew, right?
- [36:46]
Nick
Yeah.
- [36:46]
Captain
And you look down and you're wearing jorts, just get up, take your jorts off, throw them in the trash, light them on fire. Just don't wear jorts.
- [36:56]
Nick
Wait, no, no, I disagree. If you are in the garage drinking a beer and you look down and you're wearing jeans, I want you to stand up, take them off, get a pair of scissors and cut them into Jorge just above the knee and then throw them in the trash.
- [37:13]
Captain
Or send me your picture of your jorts on Instagram.
- [37:16]
Nick
All right. Got sidetracked there. But on November 19 of the same year, a court appointed attorney, Richard Addison files a motion to set aside Carmen's guilty plea and, and conviction on grounds that Carmen is mentally incompetent.
- [37:31]
Captain
Yeah, they, they gave him a new lawyer. Technically. Yeah. So I find that interesting. And I think probably at this point the police are starting to backpedal. Like, what are we doing? Or what is what we doing morally correct?
- [37:46]
Nick
And you know what? I have no evidence of this, but other than the fact that he did get a new attorney, I suspect the first attorney might have just told him to plead guilty. I mean, that's. That's the gist of it, right?
- [38:01]
Captain
Yeah. And the DA and everybody is connected. They all know each other. A lot of people played golf together. So who knows? It could have just been like, look, we have a bunch of mountain of evidence saying he did it. And then the attorney just said, okay, cool. But that it was after the plea that they come out with the alibi. And I think if the defense attorney, the first one, knew about the alibi, they probably would have said, wait a second. What's going on here?
- [38:30]
Nick
Well, keep in mind, everything was happening very fast. I mean, he. He was arrested on the 26th at the end of August, and the first couple days of September, he's pled guilty. So they're piecing this together here and for. For this type of murder conviction.
- [38:47]
Captain
I don't give a About fast, though.
- [38:48]
Nick
Some time should have been spent on this.
- [38:50]
Captain
Right? That's what I'm saying. I don't give a. About a fast. I give a. About. Correct.
- [38:56]
Nick
But you know what? I do give a. About people coming together for the right reasons. Wearing jorts together and coming together for the right reasons. And you had. You had Those people, those 70 people that attended the meeting in Sharon Township. And you have. And you have the Lantern. Okay, that was the Ohio state newspaper. Right, Right, the Lantern. There was a couple of gentlemen there that.
- [39:19]
Captain
This is a college newspaper, correct?
- [39:21]
Nick
College newspaper. A couple of reporters there, they start doing. Covering this story, and they're the ones that start voicing to the public that, hey, there's something going on here, that this guy has been convicted, wrongly convicted of this terrible crime.
- [39:36]
Captain
And Clintonville is north of campus. So it's not. This really doesn't have anything to do
- [39:42]
Nick
with the campus area, but it's a publication regardless. And then in late December of the same year, Columbus Monthly, which is a magazine today, I'm assuming it was a magazine back then as well, but they decide to cover the same story that the Lanterns covering there. They bring in the same investigative journalist and have them release their story on a much larger scale.
- [40:08]
Captain
So you said that's released in December. So that's what, three months after the.
- [40:15]
Nick
Correct, correct. December 29th, Columbus Monthly released their January 1976 issue that covered the case and covered the story.
- [40:27]
Captain
So then once he gets his new attorney now, they're set to go to an actual trial with a jury.
- [40:33]
Nick
Well, what takes place is January 30th of 76, Jack Carmen's conviction is set aside and a competency hearing is ordered.
- [40:44]
Captain
And what did they find during that competency hearing?
- [40:48]
Nick
So it took a few months to figure this out, but at the, in the end, in mid May of that same year, a judge, a judge ruled that Carmen's civil rights were violated by the Columbus Police Department.
- [41:02]
Captain
And, and, and that's based, I think, on the interrogation.
- [41:05]
Nick
Yes. And here's, here's what I like. I find this odd, you know, when somebody, when somebody, when they confess to a crime.
- [41:14]
Captain
Yeah.
- [41:14]
Nick
You know, when you hear like this, this mentally handicapped person was stuck in a room for six hours. We were questioning him. No, six hours, that's an interrogation. Let's, I mean, questioning and interrogation, those are two different words, right?
- [41:29]
Captain
Yes, they are, Captain Obvious, but it's
- [41:33]
Nick
a way of skewing what you're actually doing, right?
- [41:36]
Captain
Yeah, but you originally reported that they were questioning him for six hours. I wanted to chime in and go, six hours is a long time.
- [41:44]
Nick
That's an interrogation. Those were the words of the Columbus Police Department as given to the local newspaper at the time.
- [41:52]
Captain
All right, so civil rights are violated. And what else?
- [41:58]
Nick
So the prosecutors appeal that ruling. And then Jack Carmen is ultimately granted a new trial. On December 19, 1976, after a six day trial and 849 days behind bars, Jack Carmen is acquitted in a retrial and he's set free.
- [42:19]
Captain
You're skipping over a lot of stuff.
- [42:21]
Nick
Go, go ahead, Captain.
- [42:22]
Captain
All right, so who do they call as their prime witness?
- [42:26]
Nick
I don't know.
- [42:27]
Captain
They call Henry Noel, Henry H. Noel Jr. And where do they find Henry Null at?
- [42:36]
Nick
Is he in jail?
- [42:37]
Captain
Yeah, he's in jail. Do you know what he's in jail for? He burnt down his own home. And so he burns down his own home and he's put in jail.
- [42:49]
Nick
An accident, I'm assuming.
- [42:50]
Captain
Oh, yeah, no, it was arson. And so they pull him out of jail and they bring him to the courtroom. And then the defense attorney basically combats everything he says and the jury doesn't believe a damn word he says. And they actually believe Henry's responsible for the murder.
- [43:09]
Nick
And that was. The Christy Mullins family had believed that from from the beginning. I mean, right when back In September of 75, when the local townspeople started getting together and questioning the guilt of Jack Carmen, her family flipped almost immediately and said, and you know, they, they didn't believe this Henry Newell story at all.
- [43:31]
Captain
Yeah, but now what's weird about his story Is, you know, he's walking in the woods with his wife and his son. Right. Or daughter, I can't remember, it's their
- [43:43]
Nick
five year old daughter.
- [43:44]
Captain
Okay, so now you have to go against what Henry's saying, you got to go against what his wife is saying. And obviously they were not going to question the five year old.
- [43:54]
Nick
Yeah, let's think about what he said. He said that him and his wife and daughter are walking through the woods, he hears some screams and he decides he's going to run to investigate where those screams are coming from. Right?
- [44:06]
Captain
Run towards the danger.
- [44:07]
Nick
Yep. He runs towards the danger. He sees a tall white man, shirtless white man, in jorts with long black hair, swinging a 2x4, which they actually said was probably only about 2 foot long, you know, as a broken off or cut off board, and swinging this two by four. And what he, he says at first beating, he sees him beating something into the ground and he looks down and it's a, it's a girl or a woman that he's hitting in the head. He sees the assailant hit this person in the head three or four times. He then says that the assailant turns and looks at him and they looked each other in the eyes. And after this maniac had seen Henry Newell, he drops the board across the body of the girl and he takes off running. Well, let's think about what Henry decides to do then. All right? He says, I'm emotional. I became overwhelmed with the emotion and I ran up to the girl. Now, he must have noticed that she was, that she was dead or beyond help at that point. Right. Because he says in frustration, I picked up the board, I threw it into the woods and I took off my shirt and I put it over her head.
- [45:26]
Captain
Now I could see myself removing the board from her body. I could see myself doing that. I could also see myself pulling off a piece of clothing once I, if I knew she was passed away, if I knew she was deceased, I could see myself covering her face out of respect, you know, just, you know, or not wanting to see it, I guess. So I, it's, to me that's not super far fetched. I think it's a clever story that he came up with at the time.
- [45:56]
Nick
You know, I think that it's a way to explain away my fingerprints on the board and why my shirt is covered in her blood.
- [46:03]
Captain
Right.
- [46:04]
Nick
And second of all, I think the act of covering her face with my shirt implies that he believes she was beyond help and, and that she was dead at the Time that he ran up to her body. So let's think about this, right? If.
- [46:19]
Captain
If she's dead when I find her, then I could. Obviously I couldn't have killed her.
- [46:23]
Nick
And I'm a man in my young twenties. Right.
- [46:26]
Captain
You're not.
- [46:27]
Nick
Well, no. Well, Henry Noel is. Okay, I'm. I'm Henry Noel. Right.
- [46:31]
Captain
Okay.
- [46:32]
Nick
I'm in the woods shirtless. And so he was 23, I believe, at the time. And so his wife would have been about the same. Approximate same age. So my wife and young daughter are in this woods somewhere. I just left them and ran towards the danger and I chased away this maniac, this. This bloodthirsty maniac that just ran through the woods.
- [46:53]
Captain
Right.
- [46:54]
Nick
So. And I determined that the girl is
- [46:57]
Captain
dead, but he doesn't have his weapon anymore. So. Okay, keep going.
- [47:00]
Nick
But what is my first reaction? I run to the department store and I call for help. Yeah. I. And I guess everybody will. Would react differently. So maybe I shouldn't go read too much into this. But to me, my first thought would be this maniac's in this woods, and my wife and my daughter are in this woods too.
- [47:22]
Captain
Right.
- [47:22]
Nick
I don't know that I would flee the woods in search for help. I would want to help, that I'd probably be yelling for help, but I'd also be calling for my wife and my daughter to make sure that I'm there to protect them.
- [47:34]
Captain
Yeah. But part of me thinks that if I saw that, I'd be sizing the guy up. And then. I mean, I hate cardio, but I think. I think part of me would have just. You know what they say, fight or flight. I think I would have went towards the fight instead of staying with the body. But I guess. I guess also if you're coming up on somebody and you don't know if they're deceased or not, then maybe that hesitation. By the time you look up, the guy's already long gone.
- [48:02]
Nick
Now, at least one eyewitness that was. That was at the Wool coast store when Henry Newell arrived there to call. He says he ran there to call for help. Right?
- [48:12]
Captain
Right.
- [48:13]
Nick
One eyewitness says that he thought or. Sorry, it never explained if it's a he or she, but they had thought that Henry looked to have become upset and angered when he was informed that the cops had been called. And it was after this time that him and several of the Woolco employees went outside of the department store to look for the killer. To look for the maniac.
- [48:38]
Captain
All right, so Henry goes to Woolco to Call the police, basically, or get help. He's trying to get help from the Woolco. That's hard to say.
- [48:49]
Nick
Wilco
- [48:52]
Captain
department store. He's trying. So maybe he's not trying to call the police. He's just trying to get help in general. But. So, you know. But then you claim that somebody says he looks visibly upset once they say the cops are on their way.
- [49:05]
Nick
Yes. And then. Then it's after that that he goes outside and with some of the WCO employees looking for the killer. Now, this is just one eyewitnesses account. I mean, who knows? He could have been shaken up by what he had just seen, and he wasn't. You know, it could have been. Whatever the reaction. It's just interesting to me that that little tidbit was in the newspaper at the time. I do know that Noel and his wife Pamela, they were questioned for a couple of hours after the incident. Now, a lot of that's probably just,
- [49:41]
Captain
you know, you can say question because it was only a couple hours.
- [49:44]
Nick
Yeah. And a lot of that's probably. What did you see? What were you and I witness of.
- [49:50]
Captain
Right.
- [49:50]
Nick
You know, going over the description of the man. But here's one thing that you asked me earlier that was. That was interesting. I kind of danced around it because I didn't want to go too much into it at the time. But you had asked. I had said that Noel and his wife had identified. Positively identified Jack Carmen as the man that they had seen in the woods. Well, here's some issues that I have with this. Right. Okay. And you had asked were they. Did they. Did they do the lineup at the same time? Were they. Did they ID him at the same time?
- [50:24]
Captain
I don't know if that actually made it in after an edit, but.
- [50:27]
Nick
Okay.
- [50:28]
Captain
But yeah, that was my question was did they go in to do the identification of Jack Harman together or did they just do it separate? Because to me, I. I feel like legally you should do it separate where it doesn't hold up in court.
- [50:44]
Nick
Legally, you should do it separate. But let's also review his story. His story says that he ran ahead of his wife and the killer ran off. And I guess maybe, maybe what we're missing, we don't know all the details because the police don't release every detail to the newspapers. But according to that story.
- [51:04]
Captain
Oh, I wish they would, though.
- [51:05]
Nick
Did his wife actually see the killer or did the.
- [51:10]
Captain
Or did she just see the back of him?
- [51:12]
Nick
Or was she just going off of what Henry told her to say or what he said? He saw. And here's the other thing. If they both, like you said, if they both ID them, Jack, Carmen, together, was she just going along with what. What whoever Henry pointed to.
- [51:27]
Captain
Right. It's. It's interesting. And then, then the other question to me was, was he the only one in the woods or is she just lying about being in the woods altogether?
- [51:39]
Nick
The thing here, too is. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on here that took place in a very short period of time. You know, there's that phone call. Did Henry Newell make that phone call to try to lure the Christie's friend right to the store near the woods? I mean, the woods back right up to. To the store, into the, to that area?
- [52:05]
Captain
Yeah. A lot of people believe, once you look at this case, that, you know, what was Chrissy's friend's name again?
- [52:11]
Nick
Carol Reeves.
- [52:13]
Captain
So Carol gets phone calls probably earlier that week, and then gets one that day again, like we said, kind of like the Amy Mihaljevic case. So I think, you know, when he said, oh, I'm a DJ and we're having this cheerleading contest, just meet me outside. And I think he thought, I'm going to get lucky and she's just going to come by herself and then I'm going to negotiate a situation where I can get her alone. But what happened? She brought a friend. And then I don't think whoever called her was expecting there to be two. And it just so happened that Christy decided to stay back instead of, hey, I'll just go in with you. She stayed back and that was the killer's opportunity right there. And so really, this, the victim was supposed to not be Christy. It's that whole wrong place, wrong time thing.
- [53:06]
Nick
Does the caller pretending to be a disc jockey pick the Woolco store or pick that parking lot because he knew that a girl that lived in that area would cut through the woods? And he could have got. He could have been in the woods with her alone, watching her, following her.
- [53:22]
Captain
That's grab her.
- [53:24]
Nick
And as you said, now there's a friend there, now there's two.
- [53:28]
Captain
Yeah, that's the other speculation is that the killer would have just called, meet me here, knowing where she lived, should have to cut through the woods, and he would have got her just in the woods to begin with. But since there was two girls there, it was not an opportune time. He could have just stayed back in the woods and didn't react until he saw her go into the Woolco. And then, but then he had to act on Christy instead of her friend.
- [53:55]
Nick
Now, after Jack Carmen is acquitted in December 19th of 1976, it's determined that Jack Carmen didn't even know Christy Mullins, that he had actually pled guilty to killing a girl that he had never seen before. He spent 846 days in, in jail or prison because of that.
- [54:19]
Captain
Yeah. And if you see some of the pictures just of Jack Carmen when they're arresting him, he just looks happy all the time. He looks just like he's happy to be there.
- [54:29]
Nick
Happy talking, smiling on his way into court. He's smiling on his way out of court.
- [54:34]
Captain
He's, he doesn't understand what is happening.
- [54:37]
Nick
And it breaks my heart. I mean the guy, he seems like, like what his foster parents said, like he's just a nice guy that doesn't, he wouldn't know to fight somebody because he doesn't understand the situation.
- [54:49]
Captain
Yeah, he's basically living in a shelter.
- [54:51]
Nick
Yeah, they, they said that his foster parents at his defense, you know, they said that a four year old could have, could beat a four or five year old kid could beat up Jack Carmen because he wouldn't understand the situation. And ask him what, you said you raped that girl. Ask him the definition of rape. Does, does he even know what that means? And, and this is terrible that, that somebody took advantage of this person. And, and I mean, had these people not come to his defense, the, the, the, the citizens came to his defense, these reporters came to his defense. Life in prison.
- [55:29]
Captain
Yeah, but I think that's a, that's a problem with the justice system is when you're pushing the issue of closing a case. There is pressure on these cops to close this case. And that's, I mean it's a one, it's a heinous murder. Two, it's a, it's a, it's a sophomore in high school, it's a 14 year old girl. Not, not a woman. You know, just somebody just starting their life and somebody beat her to death in the woods. I mean there's pressure from the whole community, but God, you got to get this shit right.
- [56:03]
Nick
Yeah.
- [56:03]
Captain
You can't just be taking a guy that's mentally handicapped and just feeding him the answers and then going, oh, I mean look, at the end of the day, you're the only person that has to live with you. And you're going to tell me you're going to be able to look in the fucking mirror when you set down a guy that you knew was incapable of understanding what you're talking about and you just get him to confess to this idea.
- [56:26]
Nick
Well, there were some things working against the police. You know, obviously, the ethics. Well, basic human decency is one thing. No, what I'm getting at, though, is they were put in a bit of a pickle. I mean, you have a. A eyewitness who's just lying. Okay? He says, I saw this maniac killer. He describes the killer. They make a composite drawing of this person. And not only that, typically you would. You would put this guy through the ringer. You would say you saw the killing go down. You would put him through the ringer because he's very likely to be your number one suspect. But because he says that my wife and daughter are with me right now, all of a sudden, you have to. You have to believe him. You don't have to. But that's what.
- [57:14]
Captain
He has an alibi.
- [57:15]
Nick
Yeah, yeah, he has an alibi. And then. Then second of all, they released the composite drawing. Now, here's one thing I will say the composite drawing, Jack Carmen looks exactly. He's a dead ringer for the composite drawing.
- [57:28]
Captain
I think the person that made the Redneck seinfeld joke was Mr. Do it or something on Twitter. I stole that joke from him.
- [57:37]
Nick
So, yeah. And no, I don't mean any. Any verbal harm to Mr. Jack Carmen. I already said that, you know, that. That I feel terrible that this happened to him. But he, you know, there's.
- [57:50]
Captain
There.
- [57:50]
Nick
Okay, this is 1975. When you hear that a girl is beat to death in the woods, an image comes in your mind when it's described that it was a white man with long black hair. And it was. It was like, just below the ears. It wasn't long black hair. And the composite drawing is just below the ears, and it's kind of handicapped.
- [58:08]
Captain
So one, he probably doesn't have a lot of money to keep. Get a haircut.
- [58:11]
Nick
He's got a wild. He's got a wild look to him.
- [58:13]
Captain
Yeah, well, but the other thing, too, is a lot of them don't understand how to shave. So when I was working in the bank and they come in every week and you got to help them out, you'd realize, like, they don't shave as often. I mean, I. The captain never shaved. But you don't shave. I stopped shaving when I was 20 years old. I was like, wait a second, I don't have to do this shit anymore. But no. And so what's. What you're basically saying, though, is if you see him in some pictures, it just seems like this happy, cheerful guy that doesn't understand what's going on. And in other pictures, he does look like, like this psycho killer, you know?
- [58:49]
Nick
Yeah. And, and that, that probably confused the police because when you, when you start, if you're investigating this and you start to maybe not believe Henry Knowles account of what he saw.
- [59:01]
Captain
Yeah, but here's what we do here.
- [59:03]
Nick
Then the very next day, within 24 hours, they pick somebody up that looks exactly like him. And you're to going, what's the chances of that? No, no, no, that's one in a million.
- [59:11]
Captain
But, but the problem is you got to start cha. You got to change the way that we investigate murders. Because here's what we do. If we're investigating, let's say, a drug cartel, right. You put somebody's name on the board, put Jack Carmen's name on the board, and then you just keep going. You need to go find the next guy that he's connected to. Right. And same way with the Henry Knoll, you go and you say, okay, now let's go dig more into him. But the way murders work is that you put these people on the board. And so what the police did was they put Henry Newell on the board and they said, well, Henry Noel was the one that saw the eyewitness. Right. And his wife and his kid were in the woods with him. So boom, Alibi. Cross his name off the list. Sorry, just put. And they cross his name off the list. And then where do we get the eyewitness testimony and the deposit sketch? We get it from Henry Knoll. And then that, that sketch matches Jack Carmen. So now we just keep following that path. And so that they follow that path. And guess what leads to a guy that agrees with everything you say. So I understand that point. You go, okay, well, obviously this looks like the guy that Henry saw. And Henry was with his wife, so therefore he couldn't have done it. So now let's just talk to this guy. Well, maybe they didn't even push too hard. It doesn't seem to me like they would have had to, but maybe it was going to take a while to actually. I mean, they could have said where you. Did you do this? Yes. Did you do this? Yeah. Maybe his story was just all over the place because he was disagreeing to everything. And so they had to clean that up a little bit. And I think maybe, you know, maybe they, they're not horrible people. Maybe they actually thought they were on to something until the people from the shelter come out and say, wait a second, he was here at least till 1:45.
- [61:13]
Nick
Yeah. And where I think they really dropped the ball was, was just before that. Because after he's positive, after Jack Carmen is they positively id'd by Noel and his wife. And they. They take his confession. They're immediately telling the newspaper the next day it was just a fluke that Jack Carmen was there. And what is, what are their first statements to the newspaper? His hit. He's a very, very poor mental condition. And the next statement is he doesn't drive. And Jack Carmen doesn't know why he was at Graceland Shopping Center.
- [61:50]
Captain
Right.
- [61:51]
Nick
And he doesn't know where he went after the murder. He. He, other than we know he stayed in Columbus. So he's saying, I guess if I was at Graceland Shopping center, then I must have got on a bus and went back downtown. Well, so they were very quickly dismissing the phone call that Carol Reeves received. They're immediately saying, okay, well, this was just a prank that had nothing to do with the murder.
- [62:16]
Captain
Again, putting things on a list and just crossing them off.
- [62:19]
Nick
They're just checking it right off, saying, nope, that has nothing to do with it. But then, furthermore, they don't even bother to remember. They said, we are looking for a coda bus driver that would have seen this man taking a bus to or from the area before or after the murder.
- [62:35]
Captain
Yeah.
- [62:35]
Nick
And that bus driver never came forward.
- [62:37]
Captain
Right. And if he's not driving, if he's getting around town, if he is at all, these bus drivers are going to start recognizing that, you know, their patrons. So I don't know. It's. I like, like you said, I think it's. I think it's pressure. I think it's unfair pressure. I mean, look, I like cops. I think there's a lot of great cops out there. There's a lot of amazing detectives. I think they're put into these high pressure situations to close these cases. And I think sometimes, because, look, you're getting pressure from the whole community. Community, but you're also getting pressure from the family, you know, and. And I, and I do believe that the. The family, you know, because hindsight's 20 20. So then after the fact, you go, well, yeah, we never believed that Jack was involved to begin with. I think once they saw Jack and they saw the sketch, I pro. I bet money that they're like, yep, that's the guy. But, you know, you take a couple more steps and it's like, wait, this. This doesn't add up. Something's not right. So he's acquitted, and then Henry Noel Jr gets out of prison. And then what happens?
- [63:50]
Nick
When. When does he get out of prison?
- [63:52]
Captain
I'm not really for sure because I don't think he spent that long of time in jail.
- [63:57]
Nick
I knew that he was in prison, but I had a hard time tracking that down as well. And why did. I wanted to know when he got out of prison? Because in January of 1982, this is less than seven years after the killing of Christie Mullins. Pam Newell, his wife that was with him that day, files for divorce now about a month later in February, and she, his wife, Pam Newell, is found dead in her apartment, the result of a barbiturate overdose. And there is a suicide note found by her side.
- [64:31]
Captain
Okay.
- [64:32]
Nick
Which, I mean, strange because I don't.
- [64:35]
Captain
Strange because we discovered, you know, a possible suicide case, and now Noel is
- [64:40]
Nick
the number one suspect in this killing. And.
- [64:44]
Captain
Well, it's not killing. I mean, it's technically no in Christy Mullen's death. All right. Right.
- [64:52]
Nick
And who was the one person that would have known for sure if she was with Henry Noel or not?
- [64:58]
Captain
Pam.
- [64:59]
Nick
Pam. And I'm telling you, there is this picture. You might be able to find it@columbus monthly.com I'm sure you can find it somewhere on the Internet. But there is a picture of Henry Null at the crime scene where he's talking to police and he's telling them what he witnessed and what he saw. And he's crouched down and he's kind of like pointing at the ground and looking at the ground.
- [65:19]
Captain
And.
- [65:20]
Nick
And his wife Pamela is 5, 6ft from him, and she's crouched down as well. And she is, you know, they say a picture, it says a thousand words. The look on her face when she's looking at her husband.
- [65:34]
Captain
Right.
- [65:35]
Nick
The look on her face is almost like. Like she doesn't believe a word he says or. Why are you making me lie for you? That it's just a disgusted look on
- [65:44]
Captain
her face because I wonder if she saw any of Christie, because I think that would be enough to, you know, definitely, definitely emotional reaction that happens there. And if, you know, like if you're not for certain if he did it or not, you know, you could be looking at him just going, what are you, a animal?
- [66:07]
Nick
Well, what I'm thinking is that he probably came home without a shirt on, right. And he asked his wife to go for a walk in the woods. I mean, I can't. Does he come home without a shirt on?
- [66:24]
Captain
No, I. I think. I think he bring. I think he tells her after the fact. I think there. Whatever Goes down between him and Christie, goes down and then for whatever reason, maybe he thinks somebody saw him and so he goes running to Woolco, to. Which that doesn't make any sense either anyways.
- [66:46]
Nick
No, but that's the thing about this case. There's so much shit that doesn't make sense.
- [66:50]
Captain
Right.
- [66:50]
Nick
And how does. Do you blame Pamela? Do you blame the wife?
- [66:56]
Captain
Because if she wasn't there, if she doesn't know and then, you know, he's the one that finds this body.
- [67:03]
Nick
No, but what I mean is she knows whether or not she was with him in the woods, right? When he said he heard screams and went running off. And then.
- [67:10]
Captain
But it's her husband. So I could see her just going, look, it's a little white lie. No, I wasn't with him. I was just a little bit far farther away. And then, you know, but that's the thing. Why would he go to Woolco? Why wouldn't he just run home? Because if he ran home, he could then just tell his wife, I was walking in the woods and I found this girl. The same story applies. And I saw this guy. And then you call the police from there. But maybe he knows that if he goes home that he has to call police. I don't know.
- [67:40]
Nick
Or again, though, my first reaction would be he states that his wife and daughter were in the woods with him. My first reaction would have been to run to my wife and daughter to locate them and then go for help. That's what I would have done.
- [67:53]
Captain
I don't know. I think there's a part of me that thinks that I would have ran after the guy if there was a guy, you know, but, but who knows? So, so she, so Pam ends up committing suicide. Possibly in quotations.
- [68:07]
Nick
That's what it's, you know, that's what everybody says, but I'm sure there's plenty of rumor to the contrary.
- [68:14]
Captain
Well, this is also 75, so the other thing too is I don't know if she's working at the time. And maybe he's, maybe it's just a one income family. Right. And so there, there would be another motivation for her to go with his story. Well, he's the breadwinner, he's bringing home everything, you know, he's taking care of us. So, you know, if he goes away, then what the hell, you know?
- [68:41]
Nick
Well, and Christy Mullins family would continue to fight for justice for their daughter, for their sister, for their, you know, and their father, Norman Mullins was of the belief that Henry Noel was the person they should be looking at all along.
- [68:57]
Captain
Right.
- [68:58]
Nick
And he, he begged and bothered and poked at the police department to continue to investigate this. To look at. No. And they, the other thing here is they just kind of swept it under the rug for a while. They, they, I think they, what they were doing was they were ignoring their mistake that they, that they were refusing to put a spotlight back on something that they had done wrong.
- [69:22]
Captain
Well, the problem too though is that you have a eyewitness and he's claiming one. I touched the murder weapon. So really, I mean you get fingerprints. Oh well, he covered his story there and then he put his shirt on top. My argument with that is if you have the shirt, it's a big difference of you laying your shirt on a bloody body or splatter coming at you. And I know that forensics was different back in the day, but I'm sure they could have saw splatter and wink. And one thing that I find really interesting is the trial of Jack Carmen. The jury believed that the witness was the murderer. I thought that was very interesting.
- [70:07]
Nick
Yeah. And that was kind of the general consensus among the citizens of the area at the time too.
- [70:15]
Captain
So then Pam passes away, alleged suicide. And then where does this story go from here?
- [70:23]
Nick
Well, unfortunately In April of 2006, Norman Mullins, he's the father of Christy Mullins who was still fighting for justice for his daughter. He passes away at the age of 72. In September of 2013, Henry Muhl Jr. He dies at the age of 63. Three from cancer.
- [70:43]
Captain
Yeah. And you can find his obituary online and there's not much written about him. He did get remarried, he was married for about 16 years to his in quotation loving wife. And it just kind of listed his kid, kids, grandkids and step grandchildren.
- [71:05]
Nick
Yeah, around that same time, John Oler, he begins researching the Mullins murder case. What he, he wants to write a book about it and he thinks that this is going to be a lengthy book. He was going to look into the investigation and try to get another investigation going here. What he does is he ends up contacting the two gentlemen that wrote for the lantern back in 1975 and he ends up getting all of their old notes, all of their interviews and every bit of evidence that they collected along the way. He gets that from those guys and he's not digging into it too terribly far until he realizes this is no longer a book project. This is more about finding the real murderer. And what was going to be a lengthy, a full length book that you would see on the Shelves everywhere ends up becoming an ebook. Something very important takes place in. In 2014. In May, the Columbus Police agree to review the 40 year old murder case of Christy Mullins. Now this takes place. Now keep in mind the Mullins family had begged the police to look into this for almost 40 years. And they got little to no help in a new investigation of this case.
- [72:27]
Captain
And this is another pet peeve. So just let me jump on the soapbox real quick. We're very quick to be like, hey, let's, let's close this case. Let's get justice right away as much as we can. So much that we'll take a mentally handicapped guy, put him in a room and interrogate him and get a false confession. But then after they lose the case, it's like they sit on their hands and don't open up any of these cold cases. It's just, it just sits there. So it seems so asinine to just sit at the beginning. It's rush, rush, rush. And then after that it's like, it's kind of like hush, hush, hush, you know what I'm saying?
- [73:08]
Nick
Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of that was that they had little to no evidence for any other suspect. I mean, they had no evidence on Jack Carmen who they took to court. And furthermore, just a couple years after the murder, the area was bulldozed over. Because they were building up that area at the time.
- [73:27]
Captain
Well, yeah, they built 315 North.
- [73:31]
Nick
Yeah. So any, any additional stuff that they were hoping to find or to conduct any kind of surveys or anything like that in the area. You know, they had lost the opportunity for that. Now it wasn't Ohler, it wasn't the author that was able to get the police to agree to review the 40 year old murder. And he actually said that he got involved and tried to get them involved and he got the same run around that the Mullins family had got. It was only after the Clintonville Area Commission had requested the police look into this again.
- [74:08]
Captain
Now sometimes what happens is you get new detectives and guys that were younger coming up, they hear about this injustice and they, they sink their teeth into it.
- [74:18]
Nick
Yeah. Because the Clintonville Area Commission has no authority to make the police reopen the case or to look into it further. It's just at their request. Now the, the current police department granted that request and their cold case squad reviewed the case and it took them about a year, maybe two years, and they come out in 2015, November 6th, and the Columbus Police Department announced that Henry Noel killed Christy mullins. More than 40 years earlier. And they rule the case solved and closed. And they, they.
- [74:53]
Captain
And one of the reasons offer good. One of the reasons they did that too was one of Henry Knowles nieces came forward and said, look, this has been a family secret for years, or at least family suspected him of doing this. And he supposedly. He confessed to her. To.
- [75:13]
Nick
He confessed. According to the family, he confessed to her and at least one other family member stating that he had taken the girl into the woods or got her to go into the woods with him.
- [75:24]
Captain
And he made a move.
- [75:26]
Nick
He made a move. He, he was going to rape her. It never got that far. Things got out of control and he killed her.
- [75:34]
Captain
Well, and, and I, I don't even know if it just happened that way. I mean it, it could be as simple as I just want to. I'm not simple, but it could, his motive could have been I, you know, interested in younger girls. And you know, what he said to the niece was that he made a move and then she, you know, didn't react the way he wanted her to. And then that's when things escalated. That doesn't make him any less of a fucking dirtbag. He's a dirtbag, period. You know?
- [76:06]
Nick
Yeah. And we do got to be clear. I mean, obviously he, he had died before they make this announcement. And what I was, sorry, what I was trying to say, Captain beforehand, was that the, the police did offer a full apology to the Mullins family for their slip up. And they called their, their work 40 years ago. Shoddy at best. But right. You know, you, you can't try a guy who's dead. And I guess it's easy to say that he did it and they closed the case. And there is, to be honest with you, there is not a ton of evidence that, that he did do it. However, what police can say is that they had enough that if he were still alive, he would be indicted and he would, he would be tried for that, that murder.
- [76:51]
Captain
Yeah. And so here's what I find frustrating. So that's 2015, and the case is closed, right? Case is closed, my friend. No, not so fast. 2016, the police discovered that there's a new technology out there. That technology is called Global Filer. And basically what this is, it's a different way to test DNA. And what this Global Filer works best on is old DNA or possibly
- [77:27]
Nick
not
- [77:27]
Captain
really contaminated, but deteriorated DNA. Exactly. And so they have this new test, and this is now in 2016. They will not, they will not discuss what item they're testing so we don't know if they're testing the shirt or the 2x4. If there's something else at the scene, the cops will not talk about what it's, what item will be being tested. Now, they did say, because it's. The case is technically closed, that this could take anywhere from six months to possibly even two years, which is a little ridiculous.
- [78:11]
Nick
Like, so they're, they're saying that if the case were open, it would be a more expedited.
- [78:18]
Captain
And I'm not for sure on that. It might just be that this global filer DNA testing, maybe it takes longer.
- [78:24]
Nick
It's new technology.
- [78:25]
Captain
Right. And there's, there's a, you know, kind of a chain of command. You know, obviously if things are set to go to trial, they need to have those DNA tested. I mean, who knows how back up they are? I mean, this world is going to hell in a handbasket real quick.
- [78:39]
Nick
But as said, I don't know exactly what that evidence is, but I do believe if they're saying we have enough evidence that if, if he were still alive today, he would be on trial for that murder.
- [78:50]
Captain
And these are the same people that put Jack Carmen on trial?
- [78:54]
Nick
Well, not the same people. The same.
- [78:56]
Captain
Right.
- [78:56]
Nick
The same, the same department 40 years later.
- [78:59]
Captain
So hopefully, I mean, if we get an update on what the, this DNA test come out, will, will update everybody once we know information on it.
- [79:07]
Nick
And one thing that's obvious here though is, you know, 40 years ago, police believed that three people were at the crime scene. Henry. Henry Newell, Jack Carmen and Christy Mullins. Yeah, and we only think that Jack Carmen, they only thought Jack Carmen was there because of Henry Noel. And Henry Noel pointed at him in a lineup and said, that's definitely the guy that was there. Well, they prove he was definitely not there. So that leaves two people at that crime scene.
- [79:38]
Captain
Well, it's definitely interesting. It definitely has some twists and turns to it. It's a case I've never heard of. I do like covering the cases that are lesser known. You have to really kind of dig deep for the information. So do we have a recommended reading for the week?
- [79:53]
Nick
Well, yes, we do, but real quick before we get to that, this was a case that kind of blew my top because, you know, seldom I came across this case about four or five years ago and looked into it and then, you know, it goes away and you look into it a little bit later, you read up on it and. But the, the strange thing here is seldom do you review a cold case or stumble across a cold case and then there's an actual outcome. Usually these things just sit there and continue to be cold forever. So our hats should be off to the author, to the gentleman that worked at the Lantern and way back 40 years ago to the people of Sharon Township that that got together and said, no, Jack, Carmen didn't do this and you got to get him out and we got to figure out who did this. So there was a lot of people that had a hand in this to find justice, whether it be after the perpetrator was dead, you know, but at least justice was found at the end of the day. So we got to give.
- [80:51]
Captain
Well, don't, don't speak too soon because
- [80:55]
Nick
we will wait for the captain to update us on the the DNA.
- [80:59]
Captain
Yeah, I mean, you know, put that on my shoulders.
- [81:01]
Nick
But you asked about recommended reading. Yes, of course we have one. And this week we are featuring Life After Death. This is by Damien Eccles. You may know him as the one of the members of the West Memphis Three. He was the so called devil worshiper. This is his book that he wrote and released after he was released from prison. And it talks about it may it talks a little bit about the case, but it mainly discusses his time in prison and things he witnessed and experienced there. It does also go quite a bit into his childhood which was, which was very insightful. I recommend this one highly. Life After Death by Damien Echols. You can get that through our website truecrimegarage.com click on the Amazon banner and pick that up today. So until next time, be good, be kind and don't litter.
- [82:21]
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