Anatomy of Murder - N.C.I.S. (Pamela Ann Kimbrue)

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

Just before she’s transferred overseas, an enlisted sailor disappears during her normal work routine. The world’s largest naval station is now a crime scene, and special agents look nationwide for her killer.For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/. Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

Families think, oh, I'm sending my loved one off to the U.S. military. Oh, for sure they're going to be safe. But you have a lovely, spirited young lady who, you know, vanishes on what should be one of your safest environments in the United States. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. of Murph. The men, women, the people who serve in our United States military hold a special place in our heart here

at AOM. These hardworking people serve our country, putting themselves at risk for all the things that we hold dear. And we think about that amount of risk usually during war conflicts or overseas, but not necessarily expected that they're in danger while they're working here in the U.S. You'd think these highly secure military facilities are completely safe from crime.

That is not always the case. And for today's podcast, we spoke to retired Navy Criminal Investigative Service agent, Joe Kennedy. My name is Joe Kennedy. I spent 28 years with NCIS working cases all over the world. If you've ever seen that show, NCIS, you might have an idea of what they do. The NCIS has three primary missions, criminal investigations, counterintelligence, and naval security. The NCIS consists of over 1,200 special agents. And not only does the agency investigate crimes against service members, but they also investigate service members who commit crimes all over the world.

And here's the big difference between NCIS and most other law enforcement agencies is that they travel all over the world. I mean, I'll give you an example. I've deployed to Fallujah, Iraq several times, to Afghanistan several times. All of those occasions were in support of conducting criminal investigations that were either involving a military member as a victim or perhaps the military member was a suspect of committing a crime. And quite honestly, I have to admit that I was fangirling a bit when I started reading all this because the idea of getting to do this type of work, the investigation plus traveling the world, well, it sounds pretty amazing to me. NCIS is responsible for covering a lot of ground. And one of their cases is of Pamela Kimbreu, a sailor based at their Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia. What we learned is, you know, what a patriot. I mean, that's the word I would use for her.

This young lady, she was from Bay City, Michigan. She was from a working class family, as I remember. She had come into the military to improve, to move on in her life and try to get work skills. And, you know, by all accounts, she was a model sailor. She was extremely well thought of by her co-workers and command members. Just kind of an all-American gal. You know, she was, by her family's account, her dad's tomboy. She loved animals and she liked taking part in their daily activities. And for her dad, that was his fishing. Pam joined the service and worked as a radio person. Simply put, she was responsible for transmitting and receiving radio signals and processing all forms of communication. That might deal with everything from when naval ships

deployed, you know, where they were going, when they were going. And back in 1982, Pam would actually hand carry some of those communications to various buildings on the base. You know, we didn't have the Internet back then. And, you know, so you're still talking about paper documents and, you know, rather primitive forms of communication. She normally worked the midnight shift and her job, her day to day was really to pick up these early morning messages, the various traffic that was coming in from different places and bring them back to various isolated communication centers on the base. Pam did excel in her role. And she was so good at her job that she was actually scheduled to transfer to a new assignment

out of the United States in the country of Greece. Pamela was in her early 20s at the time, and getting an opportunity to go overseas and how exciting of an opportunity it would have been for her. We say would have been because shortly before she made the transfer, she disappeared. And this was essentially one of her last nights at work in the United States. It was March 25th, 1982, and Pamela was working the midnight shift on that naval base in Norfolk, Virginia. So she was supposed to be making her rounds throughout the night. And after she visited the communications center, there's an interruption of the rest of her

schedule. So she doesn't show up at these other buildings aboard the naval base that she's supposed to be at. You know, we have certainly talked about many cases and sometimes the amount of time it takes for a search actually to get mobilized, whether that's 24 hours, 48 hours, before someone's even reported missing. But we're talking here about a U.S. military base. Just think about how regimented every part of their day is. The time it takes to make it from one location to another is pretty well established. So any break in that routine would likely be noticed quickly by co-workers. And so that, in this case, means they will mobilize that search very quickly. One of the first things I noticed about the base, it is almost a city within a city. Think of an aircraft carrier, and that's got, you know, 5,000 to 6,000 people on it.

And, you know, if you're in Norfolk, there's pier space, I think for four or five aircraft carriers, I could be wrong on that, can dock there simultaneously. Now, that's just one little small piece of the base. Then we go over to a fully capable flight line. This is a massive place. You know, I've looked at pictures of this and there are miles and miles to the space itself. So we are talking about a huge swath of land. It's on the Willoughby Bay, which is part of the Chesapeake Bay, which just dumps right into the Atlantic Ocean. And it was the largest naval base, and still is, that our U.S. military has.

More than 100,000 people either work or live there, or both. So with this large, large naval base, the search is on. It was some U.S. Marines that were guarding the gate back then. They said, hey, yeah, she came through, seemed to be her natural self. They knew her because it was a normal routine. You know, so nothing appeared nefarious at that point. And that would have been, you know, somewhere in the 11 p.m. range. So authorities there are interviewing various personnel and at least a potential witness comes forward. Somewhere between three and five, there's an individual inside the communication

center that thinks he hears, maybe it's a woman scream, or maybe it's screeching tires, or maybe it's both. One other element that was hampering the search that night was an incredible dense fog overnight. After he heard this, you know, he walks over, he looks out. And as he looked out the window, he sees, he thinks he sees the brake lights of a car, you know, over near the seawall, which the seawall is where seaplanes would land. And then they would, you know, go up the ramp and then get them out into the runway. So he convinces some other folks, hey, we need to go look. You know, they already knew that she had come into the base. So she's on premises. She hadn't left the base.

They'd searched the seawall where this witness had heard the screams. So the only thing that's really left is water. So a dive team is put out. You know, they searched. It's murky water coming out of winter into spring there. And they don't find anything. So they decided to wait until morning where they could get a better look in the light. It was the next day in daylight that divers made a gruesome find.

They found Pamela's car, a tan Camaro, which was pulled out of Chesapeake Bay. Naval officers feared the worst. And when they pulled out that car, they found Pamela. It's already a missing persons case, you know, but then the next day it turns into, okay, you know, we now have determined, unfortunately, this is, you know, now a homicide. You know, reading some of the reports, it was just heartbreaking hearing about how her family, her father in particular, heard the news. He was a counselor at a substance abuse clinic, and he heard his name called over the loudspeaker. And then when he got to the door, he saw two naval officers there, and he said he just knew. And I quote that he said

that after that, they told us she was murdered. And for the first time in my life, I felt like a madman. The fact that she is such a vibrant young lady who had a sterling reputation. I mean, everybody loved her and they thought the world of her. And here she is at really the start of her life, you know, honorably served her country. Now she was going to be transferred overseas. And, you know, unfortunately, Pamela was killed. The murder of Pamela Kimbreu shook the community. Families who have loved ones who enlist

and are stationed at U.S. bases all over the country, all over the world, have an expectation that they will be safe. But the military is not immune to crime. Crime has no bounds. I'm sure at that time there was a heightened state of alert, you know, especially for young ladies. It's a community like any other community. And so the crime scene really became Pamela's own car.

When they found Pamela in the backseat of the car, she was bound, wrapped up in a seatbelt. The perpetrator wrapped the seatbelt around her neck and then down in her legs so that, you know, I guess the theory is that she wasn't going to float out of the car. And several other items were recovered from that backseat. A six-pack of soda, but not the canned type, but glass bottles. And one of those bottles had been shattered. And also located within that submerged car was a stack of papers. Probably somewhere between four or five hundred pieces of paper. If you imagine buying a couple of sleeves of copy paper, that amount.

Also located in the car was a green ski mask, a little black bag, a T-shirt and rope. What we would call a very crude rape kit. It had some makeshift mittens in it. So someone had taken a T-shirt and cut it and fashioned it. You know, the theory is, hey, I'm not going to leave my fingerprints behind. This person came prepared. His intentions were to use those items on somebody. But, you know, when we think about the seatbelt for a second, Scott, you know, you pointed to it before that it was likely used to keep her in the car when it was submerged.

But it also strikes me that she would have likely been bound during what was evidenced as an attack. You know, I found this interesting, Anasiga. The medical examiner would determine that while there was evidence of blunt force trauma to the head and bruising around her neck, suggesting manual strangulation, either of those obviously could have been her cause of death. There's a lot of ligature marks on her neck where there's an attempt to possibly strangle her. She's bound with ligatures. But the autopsy revealed that she actually died from drowning.

And really that is just a different level of horror. She was abducted. She was bound. She was beaten. And really that is just a different level of horror. She was abducted. She was bound. She was beaten and strangled. And that the attacker probably thought that he had killed her. And then to try to conceal that crime, threw her into the water. But in fact, she wasn't dead. And then she drowned.

The ME actually added one more thing to that description you just gave. She was also sexually assaulted. And so, Scott, knowing what you know now, at that point, what are the questions in your mind? To me, is how could somebody get this done on a secure Navy base? That still boggles my mind. You know, this case happens on a military base in the middle of the night, which you think,

hey, that should be a secure environment. But a lot of folks don't understand that our military is not immune from crime. 95% of the military is great, hardworking people serving their country. But like our society, you have that small percentage that engages in criminal activity. There's somewhere around 30,000, 40,000 people that could have potentially been within, you know, less than a half a mile of where the victim was killed. So just think for investigators, how are they even going to narrow down the suspects? Geography is so important to solving murders. People can only kill in areas they're familiar with. So in this case, you think about, OK, this is a naval base.

It has some restricted access. You know, you've got to be a military member or have some legitimate reason to come on board the base. You can quickly determine your killer is a male, either a member of the service or a civilian who I clearance to be on the base. You've got to focus on where she's last seen. Who's the last person to see her alive? Who would have known she was going to that communication center that night? And so really they started speaking to everyone and anyone. And there's lots of witnesses, hundreds of people that were interviewed.

They started to get information about Pamela, and it just kept coming in the same. Nothing that led anyone to think that there was any particular person they should be looking at. People were polygraphed. People were suspicious of different people. Lots of potential suspects, you know. But none of it was getting them any closer to the who. This is where the case takes a very different turn. As the NCIS investigators are trying to narrow down their pool

of suspects, they're looking at many people and many theories. And one year later, another woman, a 21-year-old naval clerk, disappears. Three months later, that woman was found dead, strangled. And remember, Pamela was also strangled. And while investigating both of their cases, detectives thought the crimes could have been committed by someone who became known to them as the vampire rapist. On February 6, 1983, less than a year after Pamela's murder, Carol Ann Molnar, a Navy clerk at the Army Forces Staff College in Norfolk, disappeared.

Her decomposed body was found three months later, partially buried under rocks of a seawall at the Norfolk base. So, Anna Siga, the obvious question would be to me, are the two murders potentially related? Two women murdered on the same military base less than a year apart. And on top of that, they're also both strangled. But, you know, when we look at Pamela's case, you have someone that has tried to hastily dispose of her body by basically making sure that her car runs into the water. Where at least with Carol Ann, it looks like they took more time to cover up that crime by actually trying to bury her in the rocks. So maybe similar, but maybe different.

If anything, I'd almost expect Carol Ann's to come before Pamela's. Almost that Pamela's was a different level if you're looking at the progression of attack by one person. Pamela's homicide case was hitting a roadblock until 1985 when a couple of major developments put a nefarious criminal on the investigator's radar. Thanksgiving, late November 1985 in Brevard County, Florida,

something occurred that could have been pulled right out of a horror film. A woman hobbled down the roadway and a motorist stopped to help her. She was 19, nearly nude, handcuffed at her wrists and ankles. The hospital determined that whatever her injuries were, she was missing between 40 and 45 percent of her blood. The blood was seemingly withdrawn through several small pinpricks. Just saying that, Anastasia, it seems like very macabre. It does, but here this case is going to even take a darker turn. The police learned that the woman

had been hitchhiking the day before and that a person had stopped to give her a ride. He said he would take her where she needed to go but had to stop off at his home first. He invited her in and she refused. And then he got into the backseat of that car and choked her unconscious. When she woke up, she was now tied to a kitchen countertop. That man sexually assaulted her and videotaped the action. I just have to give you the warning that what you're about to hear next gets even worse. Her abductor then inserted needles into her arms and wrist and extracted blood and began to drink it, telling her he

was a vampire. He continued to hold her captive and threatened to kill her. It was after her attacker left the next day that she was able to escape through a bathroom window and crawl over to the road. She remembered the house of her kidnapper, and that led police to make an arrest. His name was John Brennan Crutchley. Crutchley was a serial killer. His former attorney had said that in 1989 that Crutchley was prepared to confess to no less than three murders and lead police to the burial sites. But negotiations between Crutchley and the prosecutors ultimately fell through.

So you might be asking yourself, how does this gruesome killer tie into the death of Pamela Kimbrough? Well, from 1979 through 1983, Crutchley worked at a Washington-based defense contractor and had access to Norfolk Naval Air Station. Remember, Pamela was killed there in 1982. You know, when it's taken a while, it makes perfect sense to look at this guy. The one thing that he did say was he'd lead them to the burial sites.

We already know where Pamela was found, right? In the back of a car, submerged in the bay. So yes, it makes perfect sense that I'd want to talk to this guy, but I would need a lot more information. Is there any physical evidence tying Crutchley to either murder? The thing that really strikes me when I look at them, while sexual assault

is, of course, sexual assault, but there is a real ritualistic part of Crutchley's crime, the one that we knew about, and the whole drinking of the blood, that is really something that fortunately is not part of almost any other crime. So it just doesn't seem to really fit other that he had access and that he was out and about committing crimes during that same time. We do have to point out that he never confessed and there is no evidence, at least yet,

tying Crutchley to Kimbrew or Carol Ann. Earlier, we described what was found in the back of Pamela's car as it was submerged in the bay. Besides the rape-type kit, the rope, the mask, I mentioned they found a stack of papers. The thought was, well, hey, did somebody grab her because of what she had in that stack of papers? Was there classified material that an adversary could use against the United States or gain, you know, knowledge? One of the interesting things is because of her job responsibilities, she would have had a security clearance, okay? Did that stack of papers have something to do

with why she was targeted? And her mother over the years really started to think about these things herself. You know, did espionage or her classified clearance have anything to do with her death? You know, maybe it was Pamela's line of work that had put her in harm's way. And let's not forget the time frame that we're talking about. Around this same time, there was a lot of spy activity going on. She was about to be transferred to sensitive communication posts in Europe. And this was really the late phases of the Cold War when there was a lot swirling about espionage.

The Soviets had already infiltrated the U.S. Navy by recruiting two members. They had what they called the Walker brothers. It was these guys who had been in the military. A couple of them were actually naval officers. They had been identified as spying. John Walker and his brother both were Navy warrant officers, and it was discovered while they were active. The Soviets had gone so far as to give Walker a device that he basically put on one of their machines,

a cryptographic machine that basically he could record and allow the Soviets to decipher all the communications that were being sent using those machines. He was ultimately arrested for selling United States secrets to the Soviet Union in 1985. But here's where Pamela comes into play. A former associate of Walker told investigators that Walker acknowledged killing a radio person, Pamela Ann Kimbrew. And on top of that, Walker had a watch with the initials P.K. You know, Scott, you hear it and it's explosive, but is it? The question I would have is, is it too big?

Meaning, is there actual evidence to back up the confession? And that's exactly what concerned investigators. You cannot try to make your theory fit the crime. You have to say, what does the evidence tell you happened? And ultimately, the consensus for the FBI agents who are working this case was that those initials on his watch, PK, was actually referring to a person named PK Carroll, who was Walker's companion at the time. So there wasn't any other evidence tying Walker to Pamela's murder. While there was several theories swirling around about potential persons of interest, nothing was panning out in Pamela and also Carol Ann's case. They went cold.

But then in late 1995, Joe Kennedy and his team stepped in. And at that time, I was the program manager for the NCIS Cold Case Squad. NCIS was actually the first federal law enforcement agency to fully dedicate a department to cold case investigations. No one person solved the murder. It's a team effort. And it's no different, you know, on this case. It was completely a team effort. I was more of just the air traffic controller in this thing. Dealing with death is something that Joe was no stranger to. Families who lose a loved one suffer in a very personal way. Joe made the transition to

homicide because of his personal experiences. Joe has lost five family members. And it wasn't just over the years. It was within a 17-month span. I lost five people in my life. My eight-year-old nephew was hit by a car in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina and died 10 days later after being on life support. My grandmother died on Christmas Eve. My mom died of breast cancer the day after Christmas. My dad had a stroke and died three months later. And my uncle hung himself in Durham, North Carolina, all in the span of about 17 months. And when that happened to me that year, I realized, you know what? This thing called life is really precious. And from that day forward, I decided, you know, life's precious. What can I do to try to help other people?

They're not going to get closure. But maybe can I help you at least know what happened? Joe at the time had 12 to 15 agents working with him exclusively on cold cases. You know, we had some really good people, talented people. For her to be abducted in the middle of the night on what should be a very secure naval base, right, it just spoke volumes to us that, hey, we got to get this case over the hump. This was predatory behavior. You know, and a lot of murders, you know, they're not predators like this. You know, I personally always love hearing investigators talk about their own personal methodology because it's all how we go about it.

And we may all end up in the same place, but that we approach it and work through these cases differently. And for Joe, his first steps were always starting with the file. The first step in any case is you have to, you've got to learn the case. You've got to understand the file. You've got starting with the file. The first step in any case is you have to, you got to learn the case. You got to understand the file. You got to read the file. He studies the crime scene photos and then he forensically reconstructs that scene. What does the scene tell me happened? Did it happen the way the original investigators thought it happened? Let's remember some of the details of what was found at this particular crime scene. You had the seatbelt, the stack of papers, and there was also broken glass and that missing

tab bottle. We were able to do what we call wound pattern analysis. And there was actually a doctor at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. And he was able to do some reconstruction for us that showed that one of those bottles is used as the blunt force object. Joe noticed that all of the wounds were on Pamela's right side. So if all the wounds are on her right side, then hey, we might be looking for a left-handed killer. Research suggests that between 10 and 12 percent of the world's population is left-handed. And let's talk about why this is a big deal at NSEGA, because it's going to narrow down your suspect pool.

But what is so interesting in cold case investigations is not only the amount of open cold cases, but something they all have in common. We got about 280,000 unsolved murders in the U.S. You'll see other people have stats and put it 230, 250. I can tell you it's around 280. And in all those cases, in about 95% of a cold case, do you know the suspect's listed somewhere in the file? Isn't that crazy? So they were interviewed in the original investigation.

You know, they were identified, but there was not enough information or evidence, or maybe they're not even under suspicion in the original case. And you know what? The killer's name was in that file. One of the things we've not talked much about is the sexual assault component. How could that shape or affect your list of suspects? Would that rule out the espionage theory?

Can the assault be a result of a random crime when the suspect came prepared with a mask and a rope? Those are solid questions. And the only way to get answers is to start asking the people who may have had motive, method, and opportunity, starting first with her boyfriend. She was dating an individual. He was not a military member. He was a civilian. Worked in the local community. They've been together for a while. Obviously focus a lot of times when you have someone that's killed. Whether it's correct or not, a lot of times we focus on the significant other. The man that Pamela was dating, he was eliminated back in 1982. But in a cold case, it's always worth taking a second look at everything.

One of the great things about this case is we did recover some DNA. Many years later, the crazy thing is we were able to actually get a fingerprint off of that paper. That paper is just submerged in water. Now think about it for over a day and a half before she's found. I'm amazed that they were able to lift a Layton off of this paper that was submerged in water as it was. And that really just talks about technology and how far these advancements have come. DNA was unheard of in 1982. and we still had access to that DNA, and, you know, whose DNA was it?

They weren't in the national database or the CODIS database, which, you know, back in 96, man, that was in its infancy then. We couldn't even compare it there for a match because there were so few people entered into that database. So how does Joe go about narrowing down his suspect list? One thing that I focus on in cases really hard as a cold case investigator is that you'll see that what happens to people who commit murder, and many people only murder one person, and that's it, their whole life. But their lives will do one of two things. It will deteriorate or it will get

better. And what I mean by is you'll see people who commit murder, they have to cope with it. So their lives will spiral out of control. So you start looking for those kind of anomalies or indicators, what we call post-offense behavior. Some people would disagree with that term as I'm using it, but what is going on with that person? They'll turn to alcohol after the murder. Okay, now they've stopped for DUI, or there's some drug addiction, or there's some, they're trying to cope with it. Or you'll see people, their lives will improve, like they'll turn to religion. All of a sudden, hey, before the murder, this guy never graced the steps of a

church, but now they're seeking Jesus. And he used this term post-offense behavior. You know, Scott, really, while I never thought about it that way myself, when you start to look at the cases, at least for me, the ones I've handled, those boxes are often usually checked. Relationships change over time. People change over time. It is a solid practice of investigations. So Joe and his team continued to comb through those files and

look for signs that would help them narrow down their suspect list. One of the things in the military is when you come into a communication center like that, there's a logbook where you log in and out of. And so I think maybe a couple dozen people that had logged in that night. But then you got 30,000 to 40,000 people within a quarter mile. And while there were a lot of suspects that crossed paths with Pamela, there was one name that slowly surfaced to the top. That man's name is Richard Whittle. And one of the big inconsistencies with him in this case was there's some original documents where he was interviewed. And he makes the statement that he did not see her there that night, that he did not know her.

Then when you look at some interviews of people he lived with at the time, they make the statement where, oh, well, he told me that he was a suspect in that case because he was the last one to see her alive. Wow. That's very different than what he told our investigators in the first time they were interviewing him. You know, and then he subsequently kicked out of the military for drug uses and moves back to California. Case goes cold. You guys already know I'm a fan of BRFs or big red flags. And one of Joe's investigative techniques was to look closely at potential suspects' life post-crime.

Joe is looking for someone whose life has changed dramatically for the better or for the worse. He was having a problem maintaining employment, regular employment, and his residence has frequently changed. He had married an older woman. He had moved back to his home of California. And there he started to have

all sorts of disturbing issues. Sexual harassment of co-workers, indecent exposure, including public masturbation outside, terrorizing residents for up to two years. And then that huge big red flag, or BRF as you like to call it, Scott, Richard Whittle is left-handed. And so as we focused on him, we decided, all right, we've got this DNA now from the rape kit. It was on a glass slide sitting in a medical examiner's office for years. And we pull it out of the evidence and we say, OK, it's sperm, it's semen, it's usable. So we just need to match it to somebody. So now the challenge is going to be how do you legally get their prime suspect, Whittle's DNA, without alerting him to see if he's a match? Joe and his team decide it's time to put Whittle under surveillance while they come up with a plan to get his DNA. So they hop on a plane and they headed to California. And so what we did, and this is what I love about this case and all cold cases,

is we went out to a small chain hotel in California up in the Palmdale area, and we sat down, and we had several NCIS agents. We had some local investigators that were helping us. And we said, okay, how do we get his DNA? What we're about to reveal is not something that we found in articles or case summaries. We wouldn't have learned about it unless we spoke directly to Joe Kennedy. The plan was to devise an operation to collect DNA, but not the way we usually talk about it. A buccal swab from a defendant based on a voluntary sample or a court order.

And so one person comes up with the idea, we got to get him to lick something. Somebody says, how about an envelope? And then it goes from him licking something to, hey, why don't we have somebody do a survey in his neighborhood? They were out doing a survey and that as part of the survey, you know, they licked the envelope and hand the survey back to us. And so then somebody said, well, hey, why don't we pay him for the survey? It's called abandoned DNA, collecting a sample without your suspect realizing it. I loved when I heard this plan because, again, those of us in this line of work, it's the stuff that we really can get going on when we hear the way others have gone about their work. And it really sounds like a pretty good plan.

Who's going to do this survey? And we think, well, we need a female to do the survey. And then we decide that female needs to look just like the victim. Because what we want him to do, and this is what I've learned the most, you've got to make your suspect relive the crime. And so we went through our agency at NCIS and we came up with this gal. What a terrific undercover. And she kind of looked like Pamela Kimbrough a little bit. And while there is an obvious ick horror factor to all of that, it makes perfect sense with this type of criminal or attacker, predator, it just might work. And we came up with a fictitious

company. And so we developed business cards for her. And then part of her story, as she told people, she knocked on the door, hey, I'm doing this silly survey. Would you do it? You know, we're paying to do it. At the bottom of the survey, it said to maintain the integrity of your survey, lick and seal the envelope. She starts at the end of Richard Whittle Street and ultimately gets to his house, clanks on the door. She convinces him to lick the survey. She says, hey, read the survey as I fill it out. He fills the survey out, and then, you know, he licks the envelope. After knocking on a few more doors in the neighborhood, the agent goes back to Richard Whittle's house. And so then she pretends that she locked her keys in her car and knocks back on his door. Clank, clank, clank. This time, he invites her in.

So once the agent is inside that home, she has a plan. And then she goes in and she says, Hey, I just moved out here from Virginia. They made sure it wasn't too good. They didn't say Norfolk. We made her say she was from Richmond because that would be too coincidental, right? Maybe he would even smell a rat.

Again, trying to put his mind back to the crime. But it would force him to go, oh, wow. So her story is, hey, look, I moved out here from Richmond, Virginia. I'm just trying to settle in. Y'all got any ideas of where to live? And then she gives her phone number. Well, we had a burner phone for her. And so when she left, she gave the number to just see if he would call.

So what he did is after she left, he is calling her, burning up that burner phone. You know, it takes at that time about three or four weeks for DNA to be processed. So the lab confirms, hey, whoever licked this envelope, that DNA matches the DNA from the sexual assault kit. Joe had a match and enough for an arrest warrant, but he believed that now was the time to get the confession. Skilled homicide detectives will tell you, yeah, if you want to prove it by DNA or, you know, some other piece of physical evidence, that's great. But ultimately, what you want is the suspect to say they did it, to confess, to admit, yes, I did do that 20 years ago, and this is how I did it, and this is when I did it. And so that's ultimately what we were

after. And here is where skill, strategy, and experience really comes into play. And I don't want to give away a lot of our tradecraft, but how can I learn about a person? You know, today it's all about social media. You know, back then, I got to go through your trash, you know, because I want to know what you eat, what you drink. Because my ultimate goal is not just catching you and getting your DNA and saying, OK, we got you. You did it. I want to use the things that we decipher out of your trash to build rapport with you, to get you to tell us the truth in the interview. I love listening to Joe talk about the preparation he does before really zeroing in on his prime suspect. It really comes down to great old school detective work.

You know, so we see that his wife had lupus. Not a good thing to have to deal with. He was not in great financial shape. You know, we learned what he liked to eat because we're going to have that available in the interview, right? To create rapport. And Joe also describes another approach that I loved. It's the Columbo approach.

And for those of you who don't know, Columbo was a character from a very popular television show. We actually just talked about him recently in another episode on Valet Tourist on AOM called I Definitely Did It. But Columbo is this really unassuming character. He drops his papers. He seems like he's a bit disheveled or not really know where he's going. But it's all very purposeful. Columbo to me is a master because, you know, he's so unassuming. And so that's how we wanted to we wanted to use a Columbo approach. We went to his work site.

He comes out. We approached him. Hey, are you Richard? What's your last name? You know, so we were just kind of playing coy and dropped our files on the floor. You know, like we're dropping the paperwork like, hey, you guys are stupid. You can't even hold your file, you know, and who are y'all? And I said, look, we're not even sure who you are.

You know, what's your last name? He said, Richard Whittle, you know, and we're like, OK. And we're out here looking at this old case. We're not sure, you know, you're on this list of people we got to interview, but not sure if you know anything. And so just kind of played coy. So we said, look, I don't even know if we got time to interview. We got to go. You know, I'm trying to make him curious. And I said, look, we got to go pack the leave to go back to the East Coast. And we're not even sure what your involvement in this thing is. If you want to come over here to the room real quick, we'll explain it to you. But we got to pack. And so he gets in the car and goes with us. So we were able to get him inside the hotel room and make him comfortable. Of course,

from his trash, we knew what he liked to eat. And so we had food there that he liked to eat and what he liked to drink. Slowly, methodically, Joe and his partner lay out their theory of the crime. What you've done and been able to get away with is really so impressive to us. What we laid out was the theory of the crime. You were in the building. You signed the log. How could you have not seen her? It's a small place.

And so then, hey, and look at the injuries. They had to be a left-handed person. About 30 minutes into the conversation, Joe applies a straightforward approach. I just simply looked at him and I said, hey, Rich, do you remember that lady who came to your door and had you lick an envelope? And he looked at me and it was like a light bulb went on. And I said, you know, Ms. Kimbrough was raped and sexually assaulted. And so there's this thing called DNA. That's all we had to say. And he dropped his head.

He realized, oh, my gosh, that gal that you had me lick that envelope was working for you. Yes, she was. And Richard Whittle begins to open up and talk about Pamela. So, you know, he went there with a rape kit. And I think he had seen her previously. He admitted he waited there. When she drove up, he approached her. The injuries to her lip show that he hit her. He incapacitated her. He threw her in the car. He sped over to the seawall. Just like the witness said, he sexually assaulted her. And then he realized, OK, after I've done that, now I've got to get out of here and I've got to get rid of her. And the easiest thing

to do is just push the car down the sea ramp and that will make the car disappear and I will disappear. Richard Whittle confessed to a sexual assault, but stopped short of detailing how he murdered Pamela. But for Joe and his team, the evidence revealed the rest of the story. Ultimately, Richard Whittle pled guilty at trial and was sentenced to two life terms in prison. Joe Kennedy's work on this case and others was always about finding that path to the truth, no matter how long it took. Since then, the Cold Case Squad has solved more than 60 cases. Now in retirement, he is sharing his experience. In fact, he literally wrote the book on

investigating cold cases, appropriately calling it Solving Cold Cases, and you can find it online. I love doing cases. I love trying to help families. You know, God has given me, gosh, what am I, 58 now? 58 years on this great planet. What I take from it is that this blessing of life, I try to now just at least give somebody know that, and we care about your family and the fact you lost a family member, that you were deprived of the preciousness of life. And we want to try to at least give you some resolution for that.

We wanted to come back to the murder of Carolyn Molar. The DNA match to Whittle was critical in the investigation, but it also answered another open question. The DNA was not a match, and that case is still an open one. The murder of Carolyn is still unsolved. And then coming back to Pamela. At sentencing, Pamela's mother wanted Richard Whittle to know exactly how she felt and what he took from her.

Quoting from the sentencing, she said, You picked her out. You fixated on her. You waited in the dark. You knocked her out. You tied her hands, but you still weren't done. You could have stopped, but you didn't. Admit it. You killed her because she knew who you were. As part of her victim impact statement, she looked at Whittle and she said, you robbed me of my daughter and sentenced me to a life of grief and mourning. Judge Smith called the crime vile. And before pronouncing sentence, Smith said,

I have a duty to protect society from your dark side. When will it erupt? Whose mother? Whose daughter? Whose sister? You've got a daughter. Would you want your daughter meeting up with someone like you? Think about that. Powerful words. And while Pamela's family felt justice was served, it wasn't closure.

A lot of people think that when, you know, this case got solved and, oh, well, the family got closure. And that is such an incorrect or an inaccurate statement because families never get closure. Their loved one's not coming back. What we might give them is some resolution as to what happened and figure out who did it. And that person's held responsible. You know, in thinking about her family, as we heard from them during the sentencing and part of what we read, let's just hope that her family can find some solace in her memories and her forever feelings of love. Her father talked at sentencing about the last Father's Day card that she wrote to him. And in that, and I quote, she wrote,

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Even though I'm not near, I hope you can hear me say, I love you. And from me and from us at AOM, we hope that Pamela's family lives the rest of their days still feeling her love. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an Audiochuck original. Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers and Sumit David are executive producers. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?