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Stolen: The Angie Housman Story /// Part 2 ///
00:57:53
Stolen: The Angie Housman Story /// Part 2 /// 854 Part 2 of 3 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com November 18, 1993 in a quiet suburb of St. Louis, a 4th grader disappears on her way home from school. 9 year old Angie Housman was last seen departing the school bus after arriving at her normal stop. Something happened between the bus stop and home and she vanished. There were similar cases and victims nearby at the time which complicated the investigation. Sadly, Angie was just one of many victims that are discussed throughout this story. This is the story of an investigation that lasted decades and the dedicated detectives that lived, worked, and closed out one of the most heartbreaking cases that we have reviewed. Beer of the Week - Brew Free or Die, Blood Orange IPA by 21st Amendment brewery Garage Grade - 4 and a quarter bottle caps out of 5
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Oregon Lottery Representative
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Verizon Representative
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Unknown Speaker
Foreign.
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Nick
Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick, and with me, as always, is a man who independently celebrates his independence. Here is Captain.
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Captain
It's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend.
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Nick
We are still sipping on some brew Free or dye blood orange IPA by the great people over at 21st Amendment Brewery. This fruited IPA is brewed just like 21st Amendment's West coast style brew, Free or Die IPA, but with an abundance of fresh blood orange puree and a touch of dry hops. It's refreshingly great. It's refreshingly different. Garage grade four and a quarter bottle caps out of five. And here are some cheers very much deserving. Cheers to our good garage friends. First up, a cheers to Michelle from Endicott, New York.
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Captain
And a big we like your jib goes out to Angie Lloyd and Leavenworth, Kansas.
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Nick
Here's a cheers to Reggie in Grand Island, Nebraska.
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Captain
And the big tall cans in there goes to Rosemary. And in scenic Dearborn, Michigan, here's a.
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Nick
Shout out to Tristan Sakamoto in Happy Valley, Oregon. And last but certainly not least, we give a shout out to Gene and Dean from Akron, Indiana. Everybody we just mentioned, well, they donated to this week's beer fund and for that we thank you.
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Captain
Yeah, BWR you in beer Run. Want to give a big thank you to all the freak nasty True crime Garage listeners that went to true crime garage.com and they clicked on the store page, checked out some of the new merchandise, used the promo code and picked them up some swag. Colonel, that's enough of the be.
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Nick
All right everybody gather round, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime.
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Unknown Speaker
To get to the scene, he drove down a little private lane, little asphalt lane that, that led off of the two lane asphalt state highway into a wooded area referred to as bush wildlife area. And I think I, at one point in time I was told not to mention bush wildlife. They didn't want the bad publicity. But whatever that, that's where she was found. Everyone knows that now. So the scene was tree line road on both sides. You couldn't really see anything beyond the trees because it was so thick with trees. Even though it was the leaves were falling or have had fallen off the lens. Does that make sense? She was found probably 20, I don't know, 20 yards, 3 yards off the road in the woods. I think, honestly I, I worked that particular area pretty much and I, I think to this day, even if I would have driven down that road and in the nine days that she was missing, I had driven down that road several times. Dead end road goes to the end of a, that goes back to where a schoolhouse had once been, had since burnt down. I would go as part of my patrol, I would go down that road, I would check for hunters to make sure that their vehicles weren't broken into. There was nobody back there dead in a vehicle. It is still to this day a popular place for people to go to commit suicide, as sad as that is. So I would check that that was part of my patrol function. I would go back there, I would check for cars for various reasons. And the point to that was I believe that had she been sitting up, leaning against the tree, I would have seen something that probably would have piqued my curiosity out in the middle of the woods, if that makes sense. I could see that far, yeah, the woods were thick, but I could and eventually I walked back there. So it was a matter of pushing branches out of the way that you could walk back there. So she had a pair of jeans with her. I, I don't know had. If she had worn them to school. I know there was some issues with her when she got ready for work or got ready for school that morning, that she had a skirt or some skirt or something on and it was too cold. Mom Said so she made her put jeans on. So if you. If you can imagine the legs of the jeans, they were wrapped around a tree. They were looped through. Her arms were behind her back and just tied in a knot. Yeah, just. I don't know if she wasn't lame. She was against the tree. She was flat on the back. Yeah. Like laying. Yeah, yeah. Left side of her left shoulder was like, right at the tree. Arms were like, swung to the side behind her, if that. And then so like her. Her hands taped or handcuffed, as you said, they were on the left side of her body. She's nine years old. She's flexible, obviously, but much more than me, but. So she was laying on her back, left side kind of against the tree, her left shoulder, and then the jeans secured her. I don't know if it would have normally, the way they were tied, if that would have kept anybody there that wasn't, you know, near death anyway because of no food, no nothing, apparently for nine days, seven days. However long she lived, I can tell you that she was definitely alive when she was put there, because her. They were. You picture this in your head. Let's just say they sit her down at the tree, they tie her hands behind, or her hands are handcuffed behind her back, whatever, and they tie her to that tree. You can see in the ground where she had, like, used her feet and she tried to either sit back up or reposition herself. So you can see where the ground was. The scuff. The scuff marks in the ground from the heels. From her heels. That make sense?
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Nick
Yep.
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Unknown Speaker
She's. So she's on, like a leaf covered ground because the leaves are falling and she's pushing with her feet to try to reposition herself. I could speculate she was trying to sit up. She was blindfolded or had duct tape over her eyes. I just can't imagine just what she was going through.
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Nick
Very sadly, the body of Angie Housman was recovered in the neighboring county of St. Charles County. There was a lot of evidence at the scene, or at least a lot of items that detectives confidently believed could yield some physical evidence. So they spent days collecting and then even more time examining items that were found on Angie and items found scattered at the scene. Some forensic clues were retrieved from the examination, including a fingerprint on the duct tape that was covering her mouth. We need to note here, and this was very smart on behalf of the detectives, they refused to say how Angie died. Right. We are. We are reporting it here today. It would eventually be Reported for. But for a very long time. And as best as they could keep this thing under wraps, they would. They would simply just say that it was an extremely violent death, confirmed homicide.
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Captain
Yeah. And we have some big details. And if they would release those details, like the handcuffs or the duct tape or how she was bound to the tree, if they release any of that information, then you can get false confessions. You can get, you know, bogus reports coming in. It can. It can muddy up your investigation, bog.
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Nick
Down the investigation, as I like to say. And of course, and they were expecting, because of the amount of local news coverage and how much media presence there was in this case, from the time that she went missing to the time that she was found, they were expecting that they would get some false confessions or at least that they may get somebody calling in with bad tips or many, many people calling in with tips that are not great for your investigation. Meaning they're. They're leads to follow up on, but they don't lead you to the suspect or to the persons or person responsible. You know, they. They had good or believed that they had good physical evidence and that it would only be a matter of time before they found the killer. So let's add this as well, Captain. A lot of what you were saying, I'm going to echo it here because of the very specific way that Angie was left. Should the killer talk to someone else or. And that person were to come forward to police with some details, well, then they would also know that they had a good lead, a great lead, likely the best yet. Because if someone says, hey, I think so and so or so and so told me that they knew what happened or were involved, here's what they told me. There's specific details in there that would tell detectives right away, this is. This is our lead that we got to chase down immediately. Push the other ones aside just for a moment, and let's work on this one. The other thing, too, is keep in mind the fingerprint. When you're investigating and you find a fingerprint that is pulled from an item that you know that the killer had to place on your victim. And think about the crime that we're talking about, the abduction of a child, sexual assault, homicide. This. Every one of those is telling you that you are likely dealing with a person that has. That was already in the system, that's been picked up for something else at some point, locked up for something else at some point, and you're going, aha, we got this guy's fingerprint. We got the killer's Fingerprint, we're going to find him in a database somewhere. It's only a matter of time. Sadly, what happens here is, and I don't know that this was ever released to the public, but sadly, what happened with that fingerprint? They tested it and tested it and analyze it, analyze it because they thought that they could pull that over time it would get better. Because the fingerprint that they pulled was simply this. It wasn't good enough to throw it in a database and find a match. It was only good enough if you had a one to one comparison to say that person, not a match. This person. Yes, is a match.
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Captain
Right.
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Nick
People that know this case and if we have enough time, we'll get into it. There were a lot of suspects in this case, a lot of suspects. Now, many of them, they were able to eliminate, maybe not off of their words, but or what else they were being told about suspect A, B or C, but they were able to eventually eliminate them based off physical evidence. So some of that would be this one to one comparison of the fingerprint. Remember we also talked about there being fibers and hairs that were recovered from this scene as well. Now, I mentioned bad tips. I want to be clear here. Most of the time that this is people with good intentions calling in, phoning in, saying, hey, I think so and so did it or I saw this and it was weird. It's the people aren't bad that are phoning those in or alerting police. If you see something, say something. But what it, what it then, what then ensues is you have leads that detectives have to chase down ultimately to spend time on those and efforts and resources on those, only to figure out that, well, didn't lead us to the person that we're actually looking for right now. Let's flip the page on the monthly calendar here and go to December 1st. So we're still early on in our timeline here. December 1st, 1993. So this is now four days after Angie's body was found. This is when another girl disappears. November was one of the worst months ever for this community. And now December is right on par to be the same, to be of the same dread here. For this we go to Hazelwood, Missouri. Hazelwood is about seven or eight miles from St. Ann. With daytime traffic, the quickest route would be about 14 minutes drive time. This case that we're about to get into is not only nearby in both time and proximity, but right from Jump Street. This case is eerily similar to that of Angie Houseman's case. So Here we have 10 year old Cassidy Center. Everyone calls her Cassie. On Wednesday, December 1, she arrived home from school and then she left on foot to walk to a friend's house. This meeting was known so the friend became somewhat alarmed when her friend did not arrive. But they're, I mean they're little kids. That happens. The little girl Cassie never showed. When Cassie didn't return home at 5pm her mother called the friend's house to learn that the daughter never arrived. Now here is something that's quite unique. I don't know that we've found this in other cases. If we have, I don't recall but little Cassie, 10 year old, she had this little yellow alarm that she would keep with her. Now I don't know the specifics of this alarm but I remember these from when I was a kid. And sometimes adults would carry them. Like if a lady was out jogging or walking and known to walk in parking lots late at night. These were often ones that you could strap onto like your purse or you could put them even around your neck. And it was just this little kind of picture, like a little tiny flashlight. They kind of look like that and you can hit a button or you can pull them. Some of them you would pull and then it would send off this like very annoying loud ear piercing alarm, right? The, it's not monitored. It's not like the old commercials of I help, I've fallen and I can't get up.
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Captain
Right.
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Nick
Life alert. It's, there's nobody monitoring it. So you're not paying for any type of service. You used to be able to buy these things for like $10. And so people would carry these and you could pull them. It's, it's almost like a, a rape whistle, right? But a battery powered alarm that you could pull them or hit a button in. This very loud annoying alarm would just keep going and going and going and it's meant to draw attention or scare persons off. She had one of these on her the day that she went missing. Now remember, the Angie Houseman case was big news. A lot of people were following it, A lot of people were afraid, especially people with kids. So I don't know if this was purchased because of the news of Angie Housman's case or if she was already arming herself with one of these. But I saw other news articles stating that a lot of these types of items were being purchased around this time because of the Houseman case. Again here in this case, like the Houseman one, we have a rather small amount of time in which something happened to this little girl. Same age, roughly, nearly identical victimology. And of course, after this little girl goes missing, police feared that there was a serial predator in the area. We already talk about the Major Crimes Unit working Angie's case, the FBI being brought in, but they also were using something that was a little bit of a new strategy back then. This was an FBI strategy and it was a program called Rapid Start. So I'm going to read a little excerpt here from the great book in the Light of All Darkness. This is page 168 from the notes. It says Rapid Start was used in the November 18, 1993 kidnapping of Angie Houseman and the December 1, 1993 abduction of Cassidy Center. Investigators feared that a serial killer, a child serial killer was active after both bodies were found separately. So very sadly, Cassidy Center's body was recovered the next day. They use this Rapid Start program and strategy. This was from my understanding here, Captain, this was something that the FBI put together when there was a bomb case going on somewhere in the South, I believe just a year or so prior to these two kids going missing and then being found killed. And it was a way to collect and organize tips that were coming in from the public and a way to help them strategize and prioritize chasing down specific leads. And also a way of making it easier for detectives to communicate with one another, but also communicate with the FBI and work hand in hand. We know, we saw how difficult the lack of communication made things in the 70s and early 80s with some of these very difficult cases to work where you have multiple jurisdictions or multiple agencies. What we're seeing here in the late 80s, early 90s is an effort, an effort by these agencies, specifically the FBI, to make it so that, that the barriers that were once there for communication are no longer there. Eliminate those barriers. Open door communication can only help. Should help your investigation. The point is, the object is obviously is to catch these bad guys as quickly as possible because we know how the likelihood of sexual predators to re offend, especially child sexual predators. And now in quick succession here you have two kids roughly the same age go missing for a period of time, later recovered dead. And obvious signs that it's a homicide, obvious signs of an abduction. And you have a community, two communities, a whole area region that is terrified about a serial killer, potential serial killer operating in this area.
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Captain
Not only do we have two abductions, but remember that we had the abduction attempt before the first abduction.
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Nick
Exactly. Now, the St. Louis Post Dispatch did fantastic coverage of these two cases. One of the more interesting articles that they put out was from January 23, 1994. So we will go to there real quick here to kind of explain what was going on at the time in the area and how police were working. Try to figure this out very quickly. So they reported that the headline was cases at Ground Zero, Woman's killing investigated with those of two girls. This was by Kim Bell and Bill Bryan of the Post Dispatch. And I'm not going to read the entire article here, but the key points are that there was a third victim. So a woman who was killed. She was 20 years old, her name is Amy Bond. And there was thoughts that there were things in that investigation that made it seem like it was possibly connected to the Houseman case and then Houseman and Center, because the victimology is so similar and the proximity is so close in both time and distance, there was a lot of people that thought they were connected. So if Amy was connected to Angie, then she was connected to both in many people's minds. So part of that is 20 year old Amy Bond. She was working at a Casey Masterpiece restaurant and she got off work. This would have been in the month before Angie was abducted. When she got off work, it everything is telling us that she was intercepted between the time she left the building, the restaurant and getting to her car and when she was later, her body was later found and recovered. The killer had used a considerable amount of electric tape to bind her and even used it on, on her face and head in a manner similar to that of Angie's case with the duct tape. And because there were sexual assaults in both cases, there was a lot of thought that maybe they, they were connected. So this article is telling us that the task. There was a task force that was formed because of the panic that was going on. And the task force was made up of detectives from across many different jurisdictions and agencies working together. Because you also had three different jurisdictions where these crimes took place, plus the victims are found in other locations from where they were abducted. So you can see how complicated this whole thing gets very quickly. They were saying openly in this article here, Captain, that police don't even know if there is one killer, two killers or more. Saying detectives have interviewed hundreds of pedophiles and peeping Toms. You had asked about the old pervert roundup. It sounds like they absolutely did that. And they took it a step further. They've even questioned convicted murderers and rapists. And because of how much work was spent on this and talking to all those people, rounding those people up and chasing down leads they even saw solved a string of burglaries, car thefts, and assaults, thanks to leads that were developed during the course of talking to these people in these inquiries. Right. All of this effort, it did help to develop a profile of the killer. We'll get into that here in a minute. But when being interviewed, the. The task force, the man in charge of the task force, he openly said, look, we got all these detectives working this case. There's a lot of different opinions here. There's a. There's. There's many different theories across the amount of detectives that are working this case. Yeah, you gotta.
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Captain
You gotta go. Hey, perverts, come, come gather around. Take your hands out of your pocket. Stop playing pocket pool. We got some questions to ask you little perverts.
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Nick
So according to the article, it says, each morning, about 45 detectives from St. Louis county, the city of St. Louis, and the major case squ huddle at the county's police academy for a briefing. They then break into three teams, one for each victim. I. I really think this is a very smart strategy. This is something we talked about when the, when there had. Before there was an arrest in the Long island serial killer case, because you had agencies that could not come to a consensus, an agreement. If all those victims were from the same killer, same group of killers, and we had said the same thing back then, you. You can investigate this in a way that they are connected and also not connected all at the same time. You just got to be smart with it. When Cassidy's body was found. So Cassidy's body was found on December 9. There. There was a whole bunch of tips that came in, of course, and there were thousands of leads, thousands of tips that were. Police were doing the legwork on it. FBI lab experts were sifting through crate loads of evidence that had been shipped out to Washington for analyzation and testing. And in this article, so keep in mind, this is from January 23, 1994. They're saying, look at this time. It's been about six weeks since these. These two girls were abducted and murdered. And we. We haven't found a killer yet for all three of these victims. Amy Bond was 20 years old, lived in Chesterfield. I want to make sure we throw that out there. And it was the parking lot of the. The Casey Masterpiece barbecue and Grill on Chesterfield Parkway South. And she was abducted Oct. 4, found Oct. 5 in a wheat field in Montgomery County. So now you can see we have multiple counties involved in this investigation. Going back to the Cassidy center, the Cassie case that personal alarm, a yellow device, this article says the size of a transistor radio, was found sounding off screeching in a neighbor's yard. Whatever happened to her, that alarm was activated. She may have activated it, likely activated herself, but when it's found, it's found in a neighbor's yard. And she is not found right away. She's not found until December 9, when two teenage boys found her body wrapped in a bedspread and quilt in a St. Louis alley. She had been beaten severely. And the task force that we have referenced a couple of times was formed the same day, December 9, that her body was found. And police in this article go in and out of saying, look, there are some, there are similarities that are striking. There's also some considerable differences. And I did like one of the quotes that came from one of the detectives that was saying, you know, they're saying some think it's a serial killer, that they're all, that they're all connected. But to be clear to the reporters, he's saying it's a gut feeling kind of thing. That and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee. We have no proof yet.
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Nick
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Nick
Plus.
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Nick
It's convenient too.
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- [32:39]
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Nick
Foreign.
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Captain
We are back. Cheers mates. To the windows, to the walls. Cheers to you, Colonel.
- [33:54]
Nick
Cheers to you, Captain. We had mentioned that there was a profile that was put out. This was released to the public.
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Captain
But just real quick, we have a sketch in the first abduction, but do we have a sketch for the second abduction?
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Nick
So we end up with a, a different composite sketch that comes that stems from something else. So to be clear, the first composite sketch that came out was from the attempted abduction one week prior. I believe it was 10 days prior to Angie Houseman being abducted. Of course, you got to wonder, is that that failed abduction attempt, is that connected to Angie's case? Yeah, let's, let's get into this profile real quick and because this case is very complex, so we'll stay and try to keep things in chronological order here. It looks like this profile was compiled and then released to the public on December 4th. The article we just referenced came out in January, so we're jumping back just a second here. I found short versions of this profile and profiles are weird, aren't they? Like we've reviewed a whole bunch of them and it doesn't seem to be any real template out there for an FBI profile. And then a lot of times they may have a lengthy profile and then only release a portion of it to the public.
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Captain
Yeah, they could have hold back information within the profile.
- [35:19]
Nick
Correct. There may, there may be parts of that profile that they want to share with law enforcement, but not the public in general for, for a multitude of reasons. Now, rather than go through a handful of, of the shorter versions, it seems like the, the lengthiest version I could find was from J. Tigertale on Reddit, who has many good write ups on other cases, who wrote that the profile they predicted that the murderer or murderers was an intelligent white male between the ages of 20 and 45 who may have recently started living alone and owned more than one vehicle. They described him as a loner who didn't get along with women and may have experienced a recent major stressor in his life, like the death of a loved one or losing his job or a divorce maybe. Yeah, exactly. Divorce that would go along with recently started living alone.
- [36:16]
Captain
Yeah.
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Nick
And look, I don't want to get into the psychology of this profile, there's a lot, there's a lot of things that I could duck and weave on on this profile and what I'm seeing and the way that things line up for this profile. But we can say this, this is going to greatly affect the investigation. I personally think that looking back, this may have had a huge negative effect on the investigation. But look, there's, they're, they're panicking right there. They have a, an area community that is freaking out and rightfully so. Children are being plucked off the streets. They're throwing everything at the wall here. And I think that's also something you want to show the killer killers. We're pulling out all stops here, man. We are doing everything we possibly can. We have more resources than you, bad guy. So eventually we will catch up with you. We outnumber you. We will eventually hone in on you and bring you in one of these.
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Captain
Again, this scenario, these stranger on stranger abduction, it's rare. So when you have a situation where you have three that are possibly connected, two attempts that were actually committed and one that wasn't. But again if these three are connected, then this sicko is, something has snapped and he's just going to keep doing what he's doing until he gets caught. That, that's what it makes, that's what it seems like to me. Or we do. We have a scenario and we've talked about this. Like in the Long island serial killer case, was there more than one killer happening? Was there all this stuff in the news and somebody went, well now when I kill somebody, I'll just dump them in this area because then they might confuse this victim with another killer. And so is there other sickos, other perverts sitting around touching their little. We, we going, hey, this guy, somebody out there abducted a girl. Well, I've had this fantasy and, and now if I do it, maybe they'll pin it on somebody else.
- [38:25]
Nick
In the Amy Bond case too, the adult, the 20 year old who was abducted and killed, there, there's some signs there too that, that show me similar things like the Angie's case where the person went to great lengths and we also get a clear motive. I believe in Amy's case because she's a restaurant worker, they you leave with cash in hand at the end of every night. So this is clear the way that she was found, what was done to her, that the motive was a, this was a sexually motivated crime because the money she made that night was found in her car. That, that was overlooked by her abductor. And killer. And one other thing that it's believed that the killer did in that case was moved the vehicle to make it look like maybe she had been abducted elsewhere. That that case is, is a complicated one and remains so to this day. Just like these other two cases with this profile that comes out, they very quickly get all these tips that come in. They have 100 suspects, 200 suspects, 400 now in total. In the Angie Houseman case, throughout the years, there was 500 men roughly that were considered to be suspects and ruled out as the perpetrator in Angie's case. And they could be ruled out for a number of different ways and reasons. Most of the time it was the physical evidence that they had to compare to what was found at the crime scene. Now back to something that we talked about earlier. You brought up the composite sketches. On December 17, we have a guy down in Texas who was picked up for that first composite sketch. So this is. So this guy lives nowhere in the area. Yeah, he travels around for work. How do. What leads them to him is they didn't, I couldn't find this. So I don't think it was public record. They had a partial plate. Remember that? We, we got the description of the guy and he was driving a vehicle. They had a partial plate. And I think what they did was they must have run that plate in all of the possibilities that come up and they find a guy that matches the description with a plate that would line up to match the partial. Yeah, they go down and they talk to this guy and he confirms he was in the area. So he trout, he traveled for work, but he also had a relative. I can't recall, Captain. I've apologized. I think it was his mother that lived in the greater St. Louis area. Well, you know what?
- [40:54]
Captain
Maybe get your together, get your together.
- [40:59]
Nick
So this guy's name is Gary Stuffelbean and of course immediately guilty. He is claiming that he was innocent and they're telling him, like, look, we think you're good for this attempted abduction and we also think that you're good for murdering these two girls. So they arrested him. And what was released to the papers is they were saying he said incriminating statements. He gave incriminating statements after we question him.
- [41:24]
Captain
Right.
- [41:25]
Nick
And his rebuttal to that is? Well, they questioned me for something like five or six hours over the course of a 12 hour time period. And so I was, you know, a little disheveled and worked up during the course of that. But he says I also, they, they also kept threatening me Saying that, you know, you're good for these two murders until we find it, until somebody else turns up dead, you know, until. Until somebody else turns up dead, we're convinced you are the killer. So now he's got a shift because he's absolutely guilty of attempting to abduct this little girl. But now he needs. He. And we know that because he pled guilty, he may. He may have claimed innocence in the beginning. His wife and his kid were standing by him. His mother was standing by him. They're all speaking out in the paper that he's been wrongly charged, and they're dragging his name through the mud. And this is. This is terrible what they're doing to my husband and father and son.
- [42:27]
Captain
What we learned this year in the true crime community is that if you confess to your wife or your mother, that doesn't count.
- [42:34]
Nick
No, I'm not. He didn't conf. I'm. He. They're standing by him and claim that he's innocent as well. With what? He confesses in court. Eventually he pleads guilty in court, and he. And he. He. He has to go on the flip of this because, look, he admits to being a pedophile and attempting this abduction. He's saying, I didn't kill those, but I didn't kill those two kids. And so the short of it is he was able to prove that he didn't kill those two kids. He wasn't even in the area when they were abducted. Again, he lives in Texas, another state, and he gets.
- [43:10]
Captain
So.
- [43:10]
Nick
So basically it's charged and sentenced for the attempted abduction.
- [43:15]
Captain
Right. And, and basically law enforcement then believe this guy because based off of his whereabouts and his alibis and stuff, he's guilty of this crime that he has admitted to being guilty of. And these other ones he couldn't have done because he wasn't in the area.
- [43:31]
Nick
It's.
- [43:32]
Captain
But to. To have to admit that you're a pedophile and you try to abduct a kid.
- [43:37]
Nick
Well, but remember, he traveled for work and he traveled for family. And the. In reality, it looks like he was traveling just to. To be a piece of. Because there were other accusations. Once his face and name were. Were put out there, there were accusations from people in other locations, even in other states that came forward. And then he ultimately admitted to committing other crimes. He never admitted to killing anybody, but he admitted to commit committing other crimes. And these accusations and other crimes were. Were children and grown women as well. So thankfully, they got that guy. Unfortunately, he's not the guy for the Angie case or any of these other three cases, as it would appear. Now, Cassie's case, it's February 3rd. This is shortly after about 10 days ish, after that article, big time article comes out about the task force, the 45 detectives in the area working together on this major case squad, working all three of these cases separately and in unison. But it is on February 3rd that they make an arrest. This guy was in his late 20s. His name is Thomas Brooks. He was arrested for murdering Cassidy Center. And the cases is very weird because what happens is the way I understand this is that some. A good tip comes in that leads them to this guy. He lives in a house in the neighborhood. He lived with his sister. I believe he was renting a room from his sister and his sister had a roommate as well. Somehow he. I don't know if she knocked on the wrong door, but his story ultimately is that, that he abducted her with the intent to rape her. But she fought back so much that he, that his reaction was to beat her to death.
- [45:38]
Captain
Jesus Christ.
- [45:39]
Nick
It's believed that the alarm was sounded, her little personal alarm that she was carrying, that she either pulled it or, or set it off and that he had tossed it into a neighbor's yard. So he lived in the neighborhood. Somebody, when they found the victim, when they found little Cassie, remember she was wrapped up, concealed in a bed spread and quilt or some other item. The caller, the tipster, had recognized one of those items and pointed them to that house. And very quickly, this, I mean the amount of disturbing details in this story across the three cases are incredibly hard to fathom. Even, even having been looking at this for two weeks, it looks like the sister and the roommate were aware that there was a dead girl in their dwelling for a couple of hours or 24 hours, however long was until he moved the body.
- [46:50]
Captain
And why didn't they call law enforcement?
- [46:52]
Nick
Because they are pieces of shit. They are horrible freaking people. That's why. I mean there's. We can examine it as much as we want, but it doesn't take a doctor to come to that diagnosis. So they don't, they don't turn in their brother or roommate or whoever, whatever their relationship is to Thomas Brooks. They don't turn him in. It's not until they are being pressed by police and being charged. They were charged with obstruction of justice, with multiple charges. And then both of them say, yeah, this is what happened. This is what we believe happened. This is what we think happened based off of living with this guy. So the, the Cassie center case ultimately gets Closed. There was an arrest and conviction there after a trial. And they were able to confirm. This is after questioning and the physical evidence that they had in Angie's case, they were able to confirm that he had nothing to do with Angie Houseman's murder. As as many similarities as there were. Yeah, he had nothing to do. Now, back to composite sketches. We already cleared one of them with Gary Stuffle Bean.
- [48:05]
Captain
What a bad name. Well, Stuffle Bum.
- [48:08]
Nick
I hate to make fun of it, because we don't. Unfortunately, we don't get to choose our last names, and rarely do we get to choose our first name.
- [48:16]
Captain
So you can change it.
- [48:17]
Nick
Yeah, but there's other Stuffle beings out there, I would guess, that are. That are not terrible, horrible people like old Gary is.
- [48:24]
Captain
Yeah, that's why they deserve.
- [48:26]
Nick
I'm with you, Preston. It's an odd name. The. There was a composite sketch that was released to the public on February 8th. This was detectives announcing that they were looking for a different man. This would be a heavyset man between the ages of 38 and 45 with brown hair, wavy brown hair. And the police were very clear about this. They were saying, he's not a suspect. He could turn into a suspect. He's just a person that we're interested in talking to because he was spotted multiple times in Angie's neighborhood prior to the abduction, on the day of the abduction and since the abduction. On one occasion, an eyewitness says that this man matching this description was seen with another man. So here. Here's the quick descriptions here, Captain. The man they're looking for is the heavyset man between the ages of 38 and 45 with wavy brown hair. And then the man that he may have been seen with on another occasion was tall, slender, Caucasian. Both of them are Caucasian. And. But the tall, slender man appeared to be in his late 20s, with either light brown hair or possibly red hair. The vehicle that they were in or he was in was reported to be possibly a blue older model sedan. Police were looking for the car, looking for this guy, because it was somebody that they wanted to talk to. One thing that they did announce to the public that I found was quite interesting was, and this has to be based off of the information that they get from eyewitnesses about this vehicle. And I bet you they got some pretty specific information and description of this vehicle because they went into the neighborhood, casing the neighborhood, looking and looking and looking to try to find a guy that looks like this, asking people, have you seen a guy that looks like this? Have you seen a car that looks like this? Can you direct us to a car that looks like this? They couldn't find it. I'm basing that off of the fact that they did state to the public that this guy's not local because we, we can't find him, we can't track him down. We're hoping he would come forward or somebody knows who he is so they can direct us to him. We just want to talk to him about things he may have seen during his time in and out of the neighborhood.
- [50:53]
Captain
I hate to bring up that weird 13 year old boy that says she's going to be found tied to a tree. There's going to be a blue car. Doesn't make any sense.
- [51:05]
Nick
Well, this is where this story comes about. Right? Because the way that that story works is that he made those statements during the Thanksgiving Day football game when he was at the, the house of a friend at the time. None of this was reported to police. When it was reported was when this request by police was out in the public with the second composite of the guy that they wanted to talk to. When they gave the description of that vehicle to the public. Somebody that was there on that Thanksgiving with the 13 year old boy called in because they remembered the boy saying something about a blue car.
- [51:42]
Captain
Right.
- [51:43]
Nick
And so this is how that story comes to light and makes its way to us. Because you go, well, how Nick, how do you know that that happened if it was never reported? What was reported? But it wasn't reported until after February 8th. So this was well after Angie was found in late November. This is one of those things that this case received so much local news coverage and we've seen this with other cases. It just seems like some people, for whatever reason want to be a part.
- [52:12]
Captain
Yeah, I call horseshit on this story.
- [52:16]
Nick
Yeah, well, so they, they go and pick up, they go and pick up the boy and of course he actually, I don't think it was ever publicly stated as such, but he had to be considered a person of interest or, or even a suspect at some point. He just knew too much. Right. Maybe he's not responsible. Very likely he's not responsible. But why does he know this information? Again, he says it's something that came to him in a dream. There was another family member that, that told police. Our family seems to have a history of having strange things come to us in dreams. This might be the first for him, but it's not the first for our family tree. They, I mean, they question this kid. They had him submit fingerprints Hair. They really looked at this kid, and he, he couldn't be connected to Angie's case again.
- [53:07]
Captain
Well, it's kind of weird that.
- [53:08]
Nick
Again, how true is that story? I mean, right?
- [53:10]
Captain
It could be complete horseshit.
- [53:12]
Nick
Yes.
- [53:13]
Captain
Or, but, but it is strange that family members would go, hey, look, this is. No, I, I've witnessed things like this where I couldn't explain it. You know, somebody just knowing something that they shouldn't know and knowing that that person had no connection to it. So I, I don't want to say it's completely. You know, I don't. I'm not smart enough to think that I know everything about the world or how everything works. And so is this a possibility? Could there be certain people that are clairvoyant?
- [53:47]
Nick
Sure.
- [53:49]
Captain
But it also could just be a horseshit story.
- [53:51]
Nick
Yeah, I mean, there's. And I don't want to. I find it fascinating. I truly do. So there are some people that will roll their eyes when we bring up the psychic stuff, because when you go back to these old cases, and this one's not that old, I mean, 1993, but when you go back to the 70s and the early 80s, you'll see a lot of this psychic communications and activity. Some of them are just terrible people that are trying to bilk money or get money or notoriety. But then there's other people that I think are legitimately either trying to get involved in the case for whatever reason, or they're trying to help, or maybe they did dream something or, or they think they sense something. I'm with you. I don't know that it's any of that's real. I find it fascinating. I find it an interesting part of these different true crime stories. But the other thing too is you could dream something or sense something, and it's the same as a lottery ticket, right? A million dreams. One of them is going to be accurate. One of them. It just will be. Now, the specific, the specificity here of his claims, if, if in fact this wasn't completely made up after the fact seems, Seems jarring to say the least. Now, we, we had mentioned holding back information and the best that they could. When you have this many people working the case, it gets very difficult to hold back everything. Information has its way of leaking and making its way to others and, and the public at large. The best way to keep a secret, in my opinion, is don't tell anyone. And that's simply not possible with an investigation of, of any type of homicide investigation. I don't know if you want to get into some of the other people, the names that are kind of always been tethered to this murder investigation because there's. There's a bunch of them now. One thing I will say so I spoke extensively with Detective Lieutenant Ed Copeland from the St. Charles County Police Department. He was the one that was first on the scene that found Angie Housman. I'll spoke with Captain John Lankford of the St. Ann PD so he worked for the outfit that. Where she lived, where Angie lived and. And was reported missing to both of these individuals, worked this case for over 20 years. And then later another detective joined Detective Mickey Morris, who is retired from St. Charles County Police Department as well. All three of them said the exact same thing. Now, they weren't the three, the only three to work this case, but Ed Copeland and John Langford worked this case more than anybody else. Mickey Morris came in and worked this case thoroughly for almost the entirety, if not the entirety, of her career. All three of them said the same thing. One thing that complicated this investigation for detectives over the years is no matter what time period they were in, in their investigation, there was always two or three really good suspects. Two or three guys that all that looked really good for this. And they weren't always the same two or three guys throughout the history of the investigation. Those. Those names changed throughout time. But you can understand how that would complicate an investigation because you're spending so much time vetting your flavor of the month or flavor of the year guy or guys who look really good for.
- [57:36]
Captain
Yeah, but can I just point something out? We. So there's three cases, right? Two actual abduction, one attempted abduction. Two of the three get solved, but two of the three are stranger on stranger abductions.
- [57:54]
Nick
Well, even Amy. Amy Bond's case was abduction and murder, and that was stranger. That was a stranger and stranger.
- [58:02]
Captain
Right. So wouldn't it. Statistically, it would tell you that in Angie's case, it wasn't stranger on stranger.
- [58:10]
Nick
Well, in any case, statistically, it wouldn't be stranger on stranger. Right.
- [58:14]
Unknown Speaker
But.
- [58:14]
Captain
But also because we have these other cases within that area that were. I just wonder if that changes the statistics and how you approach that, being law enforcement.
- [58:25]
Nick
Yeah, I. I can't give a great answer for that. I mean, I really can't. And look, you're together. Well, you can say that. But I'm offering up a lot of information here in the course of this two hours. So I think my shit is pretty well in order. But when you are trained, when you're trained to Be an investigator. You're not trained to. There's a methodology to finding, connecting victim to perpetrator. And it. That methodology does not involve much in the way of training of, well, the person's a complete unknown. Right. Because then there would be. There would be little to tie them to the victim, if that makes sense. So that. That is not something that is often trained. That's why you see shows like Mindhunter where they had to take a whole new approach when they started to see an uptick in stranger on stranger crimes and violence and murders, where they had to send around a couple of guys that understood this better than anybody else to teach the local police department and the local sheriff's office. Hey, you got to start thinking outside of the box on some of these. If you're working your investigation the way that you've been trained to, and it doesn't lead you anywhere, you need to start thinking that it was somebody that didn't know the victim at all.
- [59:45]
Captain
Right?
- [59:46]
Nick
And now here's what you do, and here's. Here's what we can attempt to do. And a lot of times, what was great about those guys, and it goes. You know, that show is great, but it goes well beyond Douglas and wrestler going out and teaching these other police departments, because at some point, what they started doing was they started going around bringing in individuals from the different FBI field offices and training them. So then they could go out and have a designated area that they would work in, and they would train local law enforcement in their state or in their region. And what happened in so many cases, as you see on Mindhunter, is that when they're there and they are educating these and teaching these courses, if you will, oftentimes they're being. Somebody's telling them, hey, we got this case. And we've never been able to connect it to anybody. Could you help us? And they would work it briefly while they were there or when they had to return, they would work it from afar. And that's how some of those cases got solved. And people got locked up in cases that we may have never had a conclusion.
- [61:09]
Unknown Speaker
And the. The weather also Nick had had to do with Ed's always said this. That determine how long she was out there, because there's no. So Thursday night. Thursday was Thanksgiving. And there's always. Dallas always plays football on Thanksgiving. Follow me. Yep. So during that Dallas football game in my area, where I live, which was five miles from where she was found it, we got freezing rain, or it was freezing rain. It was coming down as sleep or whatever. When she was found, she's laying on her back as I described. And then like the, the low level areas, her eye sockets, her stomach, all of that was. She was pretty much covered with snow, freezing rain, whatever. So that occurred on Thursday and she was, she was in a. In a prone position or whatever that is, whatever. She's on her back supine, but she's covered with the precipitation that fell during the day on Thursday. And if she was sitting up, if she had been put there on Thursday, she obviously wouldn't be covered with that stuff. I, I've always said she was placed there on Tuesday or Wednesday and died from hypothermia, although it was cold enough for her to die from that for the entire time that she was missing. If it got nice during the day a couple times, but the nights were too. They were too cold for anybody to be naked and survived at.
- [62:53]
Nick
The Stick around for episode three of this case. More information coming. Join us back here in the garage. Until then, be good, be kind.
- [63:19]
Unknown Speaker
Sam.