Cold Case Files - A Family Cursed

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

Everyone in the family knew that Zilpha was the cool aunt, but to Jeremiah she was more. They had a special bond, almost like brother and sister. So in the Fall of 1992 when Jeremiah disappeared, Zilpha knew something was very wrong. Then just eight months later, Zilpha disappeared, too. Was it just a strange coincidence that two people from the same family disappeared within the same year? Or did these two cases have a terrible connection? Save money with HONEY - your new promo code finder! Get Honey for FREE at www.JoinHoney.com/coldcase  Support cellular defense and repair with TRU NIAGEN! Visit www.TRUNIAGEN.com and use code “COLDCASE” to receive $20 off any 3+ month supply, live from now until 6/30/2020! Get a quote online at www.Progressive.com in as little as 5 minutes and see how much you could be saving!

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. Zelfia knew where Jeremiah was. She knew exactly where he was. We live in fear. We had two family members missing. Who was going to be next? We knew we were up against some pretty staggering odds. It was the ultimate Hail Mary pass. In the rural mountain county of Marion, North Carolina, a woman had a nightmare. Her nephew, who was also her close friend, was murdered. That fact on its own is disturbing.

But when you find out the rest of the story, this case becomes an enigma. Because, in fact, her nephew was murdered, and her nightmare contained accurate details of what happened. And if that fact in itself wasn't baffling enough, the woman, the dreamer, she was murdered less than a year later. There are 120,000 unsolved murder cases in America. Each one is called a cold case, and only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare cases. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast.

In the fall of 1992, Jeremiah Pittman was staying with his friends. Jeremiah's father, Garland Edward Pittman, usually called Eddie, wasn't home very often, and as a result, Jeremiah turned to his friends and family for support. He was particularly close to his aunt, Zelfia Lowry. This is Carrie Gonzalez. She was my favorite aunt. I loved her with all my heart. I really think I loved her more than I loved my parents at times. I myself had an amazing bond with her, but it was nothing like Jeremiah's. Jeremiah was quiet and young. Zofia was not.

But they were still really close friends. They more or less acted like brother and sister. When Jeremiah disappeared in September of 1992, Zofia knew he didn't run away. He wouldn't have left without telling her. She knew something terrible must have happened. Nine months later, in June of 1993, something else terrible did happen. Zofia went to work, just like any other day. But she never made it home. Let's start with murder number one, Jeremiah. Family members describe Jeremiah's upbringing as rough. His father wasn't around much and didn't provide the loving, nurturing support a child needs.

On the day he disappeared, his roommate said that he left in his truck to go visit his father. The thing is, Jeremiah was never seen again. Jeremiah's truck, though, was seen on the side of the interstate by a passing family member. This is Dudley Green, an investigator on the case. Jeremiah was missing, but there was no real evidence of a crime. There was not a lot of concern on the part of the investigators at the time. They had heard rumors that Jeremiah had probably gotten in a truck with a truck driver and gone somewhere to Texas. They had hoped he was somewhere where he wanted to be on a beach in Mexico, you know, enjoying the sunshine.

Jeremiah was missing, but he wasn't considered an endangered missing person. Either way, he was gone and Zelfia was worried. Even if something was wrong and he needed to leave town, he would have told her. They kept each other's confidence, like the time this happened. There was one time Zelfia and Jeremiah witnessed something really bad.

They were parked at Eddie's girlfriend's house. Eddie comes and tells them to leave. Then right after they leave, he burns the house down. Zelfia and Jeremiah, they didn't go to no authorities or nothing like that. They just kept it quiet, told a few family members, and that was it. That was Reba Flores, Zelfia's sister, and that's how it was in Zelfia's family. Secrets were meant to be kept. Zelfia believed Eddie had something to do with Jeremiah's disappearance, possibly because of what they had both witnessed Eddie do. Eddie was violent.

Then, Zelfia had a dream, a terrifying nightmare, and she was desperate for someone, anyone, to listen to her. Zelfia had come to my house, and she was just really upset. She said, Jeremiah would not have left without telling her. And she goes, I want to tell you about a dream that I had last night. She dreamed that Jeremiah's own daddy, Eddie Pittman, had killed Jeremiah and had buried him and put lime on him. It made my heart beat so fast.

And she told me she was going to confront him, and I begged her to not confront him because I was scared for her life. She wasn't going to stop until she found out what happened to Jeremiah. She was not going to stop. We all shop online, and we've all seen that promo code field taunt us at checkout. I especially like to buy heavy things online, so someone else delivers them right to my door. But thanks to Honey,

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Discover how the invention of air conditioning changed U.S. politics, how Henry Ford instigated the Oklahoma City bombing, and how the YMCA kick-started the black market and cigarette smuggling. Listen to Flashback on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dreams aren't evidence, and not to be too philosophical, but dreams aren't always dreams either. Sometimes, when someone witnesses a trauma too devastating for their brain to process, they disassociate. Your body is there, but your brain makes you feel disconnected, like it's not even real. Kind of like a dream.

Jeremiah's disappearance wasn't considered a crime. It wasn't being investigated, and so life went on. It was never the same for Zofia, but at least she was alive. Zofia worked at a truck stop not too far from where she lived. She was a waitress. It was normal for Zofia to catch a ride to and from work, but it wasn't a problem for her to walk home when no one was available. On June 27, 1993, she never returned home from work. Her sister, Reba, immediately filed a missing persons report. Two people from the same family went missing less than a year apart,

and yet law enforcement didn't investigate, which isn't unusual when an adult goes missing, especially when it doesn't appear to be suspicious. I mean, adults are allowed to leave and not tell anyone where they're going. Law enforcement at the time believed that it wasn't unusual for her to be gone for several days in a row. They had heard that she was a free spirit and that she liked to party and have a good time, whatever that means. I can understand not investigating a single adult's disappearance, but two adult family members vanishing with no explanation, that feels different to me. Reba had similar feelings. We had two family members missing. They was making every excuse in the world they could to keep from looking for Jeremiah and Sophia. Everybody in that sheriff's office was awful.

You could walk in and they looked at you like you was trash. Like, you know, we wasn't worthy. One time, they told me to go do my own investigation to get rid of me. I go to the truck stop and I start asking questions. Nobody wanted to talk to me about it. I tried everything that I could. I wanted to know what happened. I wanted it for her. I wanted it for us, my family. Nearly a year later, on February 5, 1994, hunters, walking in a wooded area, came across the skeletal remains of a human.

Law enforcement was called in. Investigators determined that the body had just been dumped. There was no attempt to bury it or even cover it up. Some tissue and hair remained on parts of the body. Investigators also found a towel, a bed sheet, and some clothing. The clothing was later identified as belonging to Zelfia. This was no longer a situation that could be ignored. Adults have the right to leave town when they want to, but they also have the right to a proper investigation.

Zelfia wasn't missing. She was dead. Someone had killed her. Then they dumped her body in the middle of a wooded area usually only visited by hunters. It wasn't even until the next hunting season that she was found. Her autopsy revealed that she was found. Her autopsy revealed that she had severe blunt force trauma to her head.

Her skull had been almost completely crushed in. Even though her remains were skeletal, the wounds were so severe her cause of death was easily determined. She was murdered and no one was even looking for her. Investigators believe that she had been killed somewhere else and then discarded by her killers like garbage. Eight months after her body was found decomposing in the woods, someone finally took a closer look at the case. In December of 1994, a new investigator, Dudley Green, began looking into Zelfia's death. When you're taking on a case, you have to pick up the ball from where it is. It's kind of like drinking from a fire hose, because there's so much information, and it's coming at you like crazy. First, we needed to go back and talk to people at the last place Zelfia was seen, at the truck stop.

One of the individuals who discussed last seeing Zelfia said that she got in the car with someone, but nobody knew who he was or where they were going. We needed to try to get some more information. I visited the McDowell County Jail. Jails can become somewhat of a rumor mill. There were people who, for one reason or another, wanted to interject themselves into this case. One individual talked about being with some guys

when they had taken a blonde-haired girl wrapped up in a sleeping bag, carried her out in the woods, and left her there. Another guy claimed that he had been asked by a drug dealer to take this girl away because she had been killed. I heard 11 or 12 different versions of what happened to Zelfia. It was kind of a moving target, so to speak. I arranged a sit down with several of the family members to see what information they might be able to give. Zelfia's sister, Reba, spoke to Detective Green. She decided to share Zelfia's dream with him.

She also told the detective why Eddie would have a reason to harm both Jeremiah and Zulfia. Reba described a dream. From an investigator's standpoint, we have to deal in terms of evidence that we have, and dreams or visions are not evidence so I said okay I really thought that Eddie did it and I'll tell you why Zelfia and Jeremiah witnessed Eddie burning the house down for his girlfriend Rosemary so she can get insurance money Reba believed that Eddie had killed Jeremiah and that if he could do that,

he might be the one responsible for Zelfia's death. If Eddie burned Rosemary's house and they had witnessed that, that could be a possible motive for murder. We felt like we had enough information to talk to Eddie. Eddie denied everything. He denied having anything to do with Jeremiah's disappearance. And he completely denied having any knowledge of Zelfia's murder. Investigators were determined not to let their only lead slip away. They spent the next several months working on it. Two people, the same family, the same year.

Too much there to be coincidence. Then on February 5, 1996, Rosemary, Eddie's ex-girlfriend, appeared at the county sheriff's office. She came in that day to speak to Detective Green. She seemed worried, but decided to speak anyway. When Rosemary walked in my office that day, the last thing I thought I'd be doing would be driving her around while she's pointing where to go. She had said, I think Eddie Pittman is going to kill me because of what I know. We ride down to this real remote area. All of a sudden, she stops. She walks over to a ditch and points in the ditch

and she says, it's right there. Start digging. Rosemary took investigators to the neighboring county of Rutherford, just south of McDowell County. She brought them to the place where she told them Eddie buried Jeremiah.

She told investigators she was there the night that Eddie and Jeremiah got into a fight. A physical fight, which got so bad that Jeremiah was beaten nearly to death. Rosemary then said that Eddie picked up a hammer and hit Jeremiah in the head with it. He did this to ensure that Jeremiah was dead. They drove Jeremiah's truck along I-40 and left it on the roadside. She then went with Eddie to dispose of Jeremiah's body. They dug a deep hole and put his body inside. Before finally covering him with soil, they poured quicklime powder over his body, which

is basically pulverized limestone. It acts like cat litter does and helps hide the smell. Zelfia's nightmare came true. Her dream was gift her for a reason. There's too much there to be coincidence. Was it actually a dream? We don't know, but she knew what happened to Jeremiah. Armed with witness information from Rosemary, investigators obtained an arrest warrant for Eddie Pittman. When he was arrested and questioned about Zelfia's death, Eddie told investigators that he had not seen her and did not know what happened to her. Both law enforcement and Zelfia's family believed that Eddie was responsible for her murder. Her cause of death, severe blunt force trauma to the head, was similar to Jeremiah's. The major difference between the two cases was the disposal

of their bodies. Jeremiah was buried deep, so deep in fact that investigators had trouble finding him at first. After digging for a long time and not finding a single bone, Rosemary had to assure them that they were in the right spot. They just had to dig deeper. Sophia was dumped out in the open, possibly rolled in a sheet or a towel. Animals had gotten to her body, and so the original position couldn't be determined. Investigators knew one thing, though. Her body had not been buried. These are two very different ways to dispose of two family members. Investigators couldn't be sure that the same person killed them both. They knew who killed Jeremiah Pittman because Eddie Pittman pled guilty to his murder.

He made a plea agreement, though, and the charge was lowered to manslaughter. Still, Zelfia's family was certain Eddie was also the culprit in Zelfia's murder. I really thought that Eddie did it. He got rid of Zelfia because of her suspicions of him. I think Eddie Pittman got away with my sister's murder. Investigators had to be open to the possibility that the two murders were just a strange coincidence, that Eddie wasn't responsible for Zelfvia's death. Try as they might, they could not find any evidence tying Eddie to Zalvia's disappearance or death. So the case went cold and it would take investigators another decade to find the killer. Support for today's episode comes from Progressive Insurance. Fun fact, Progressive customers qualify for an average of six discounts when they sign up for Progressive Auto Insurance. Discounts for things like enrolling in automatic payments, insuring more than one car, going paperless, and of course, being a safe driver.

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spoke to the local media. He was attempting to get someone to come forward with information or a confession. And it worked. An inmate contacted Detective Green and gave them the name of Ronald, a friend of Zelfia's family. The prisoner told investigators that one day Ronald had appeared with a large blood stain on his clothes shortly after Zelfia's disappearance. And at that time, Ronald was driving a van. Investigators needed to find that van. It may have been the original crime scene they'd been looking for all that time. We are cautiously optimistic that this may be the break we've been looking for.

And so, we begin trying to find that van. We ultimately ended up finding it in a junkyard. It had been there for a long time. There were some stains in that van that appeared like they could be blood stains. There's a chemical called phenolphthalein, which is a test for the presence of blood. And when phenolphthalein reacts with blood, it turns a bright pink color. They were not blood stains. And so Ronald's van was not the crime scene. But Zelfia's family came to us with the suggestion that we might want to talk with Ronald. Ronald was friends with my son. One day, Ronald had told my son that he knows what happened to my sister. Ronald seemed eager to finally share with Detective Green what he knew about Sophia's murder.

He stated that on the night of her disappearance, he was at a friend's home. The neighbors lived in a trailer and they were playing their music so loud that Ronald and his friend went over to ask them to turn it down. The trailer owners answered the door, but they wouldn't let anyone in, and they were acting suspicious. Later that night, Ronald's friends told him that they saw the two men moving an object that resembled a rolled-up carpet or something similar. Ronald believed this to be Zelfia's body. Ronald gave investigators the mobile home's location, and Detective Green went to check it out with his partner, Dan Shook. He found the property owner and was able to look inside. It had been abandoned for quite a while, and it was obvious that animals had taken advantage of

that. Here's Detective Shook. It was an abandoned, old, single-wide trailer. And she confirmed that, yeah, back around 1993, there was a guy that had lived at that mobile home. And she gave us the last name of Whited, Robin Whited. At that point, I got a cold feeling. The landlady told investigators that Robin had possibly moved to Richmond, Virginia, years before. The investigators located Robin and went to speak to him. They believed he could be the key to determining if the mobile home was, in fact, their missing crime scene, and maybe he would be the key to finally determining what happened to Zofia.

I was able to locate where Robin was working at a car dealership. He was very polite and acknowledged almost right away that, yeah, they had partied with some girl and she had a strange name. I mentioned the name Zelfia. And he said, yeah, that sounds right. Showed him a picture of Zelfia.

And he acknowledged that, yeah, that's right. Showed him a picture of Zelfia and he acknowledged that, yeah, that's the girl that he had partied with. A sighting of Zelfia after she left work at the truck stop. Robin then told him that he and Zelfia had had sex, but when he woke up the next morning, she was gone. He denied having any knowledge of what happened to her after she left that morning. Even though this information didn't seem like much,

it was still better than investigators could have hoped for. They now have a confirmed sighting of Zelfia and direct information that places her inside that mobile home. And they finally have a possible suspect, someone who admitted to being with Zelfia on the night of her death. Based on her cause of death, severe blunt force trauma to the head, there would have been a lot of blood. Investigators were hopeful that they would find a match to Sophia's blood in the trailer, if that's where she was killed. But it was a long shot, being more than a decade later. It had been somewhat

open to the elements, so we knew we were up against some pretty staggering odds. It was the ultimate Hail Mary pass. Armed with cotton swabs, they descended upon the mobile home. They took samples of every possible place that blood evidence may have been. Cracks and corners where blood may have pooled, places that would have been hard to clean, walls and windows where blood spatter evidence may have been left or missed during a cleanup attempt. Myself and the other detectives were taking swabs of any place and every place that blood spatter might still be. Not likely, but you always have that hope.

After several hours, every one of us was just drenched with sweat. But we weren't finding anything. When looking for blood evidence, investigators use phenothaline. It's a chemical that turns pink when it comes into contact with blood. When investigators get a pink result, it goes on for further testing. They spent several hours in the small trailer, but hadn't found a single spot that turned pink. Sometimes you see something that you didn't see before. I knew that flies are naturally attracted to blood, and flies constantly excrete and regurgitate. Whatever they get into, they're leaving traces of that somewhere.

I was looking up at the bathroom ceiling and saw these dozen or so little brown specks. I'm thinking it might be fly speck. So I climbed up on the edge of the tub and just swabbed the specks and handed those down for analysis. And Detective Shook's hunch paid off. All of a sudden, one of those swabs, it lights up brilliant pink. Yes, this is what we've been looking for. I mean, there were some high fives went up. Happy as we were, that still didn't say whether this was Zilpha's blood.

We did not have anything to compare a sample with, because in 1994, when Zelfia's remains were found, DNA wasn't as prevalent a science, and so there was no sample of her DNA that was preserved. Where do we go from here? Detectives Green and Shook collected samples of the blood found in the trailer to later compare with Zelfia's DNA. But first, they needed to obtain a sample from Zelfia's body. Zelfia was buried in an infant-sized casket since all that remained of her were bones. Detective Green asked Zelfia's family for permission to exhume her remains.

I told them to do what they needed to do, and they wanted to know if I wanted to be there when she was exhumed. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't rebury her. A sample of her DNA was obtained and her remains were reburied. Later, test results confirmed that the blood on the ceiling was a match to Zelfia. She'd been in the mobile home on the night of her disappearance, and now detectives could prove it. They could also prove that she bled in the bathroom. And since she wasn't seen alive after bleeding in that bathroom, it was very likely that was the place where she had been killed.

Here's J. Alex Bass, the chief assistant district attorney. Detective Shook and Detective Green came into the district attorney's office, and what they told me was that they had a suspect. Robin whined. Detectives needed to speak to Robin again. On April 25, 2006, they brought him into the sheriff's office for questioning. Robin told detectives that he lived in the mobile home with his roommate, Bobby Taylor. I came in and worked that evening.

Bobby had the girl's phone number. And sitting on the car here at the mobile party. Robin was able to give us a name, and that was Bobby Taylor. Bobby has an extensive criminal record with some violent offenses on his rap sheet. Robin told detectives that he knew exactly what happened to Zelfia that night. She had sex with him but apparently did not want to have sex with Bobby. Bobby was angry about this and beat Zelfia. He slammed her head into the floor several times, killing her. The two of them then rolled her body up into a towel and sheets, the ones scattered at the crime scene. They drove to an

area near Lake James, just northwest of Marion. And then, like one might do with an unwanted piece of furniture, they dumped her body along a rural dirt road. At this point, investigators need to find Bobby Taylor, and they did, in federal prison. When he was questioned, he admitted to partying in his trailer with a blonde woman one night. He says that the last time he saw her, she was alive. Even when confronted with the conflicting information that Robin had provided, Bobby did not break from his story. He was a seasoned criminal. He was already in federal prison. He knew not to speak to detectives. And I said, Bobby, I've been doing this for 25 years. And he looked at me and he said, what you don't understand is I've been doing this for 25 years. And he was sitting in prison at the time. He was no stranger to trouble. This was something

that Bobby was kind of accustomed to. Robin was charged as an accessory to the murder of Zulfia Lowry. He pled guilty to accessory after the fact and was given a three-year suspended sentence. Investigators charged Bobby Taylor with first-degree murder. Even without his confession or cooperation, prosecutors believed they had a strong enough case against him. Bobby Taylor entered a plea of not guilty, and the case went to trial. This is J. Alex Bass.

I argued to the jury that Robin knows what happened, that he has a guilty conscience of it, that he did what Bobby Taylor told him to do because he was scared of Bobby Taylor. Fifteen years after Zelfia's death, Bobby Taylor was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. I loved Zelfia more than anybody in this world.

The pain's still there. I still feel it. Zelfia's niece Carrie visited the mobile home where she was killed. The trailer is still there, abandoned. This is where she died, right here. I'd like to see it just demolished, get rid of the evilness. Her family placed a memorial marker at the place where her body was found, a place for them to visit and ensure that she is never forgotten.

I have dreams of her. She looks the same in my dreams as she did when she was 24 years old. I really do think that dreams are given to us sometimes for reasons. In my dreams, Zelfia's always smiling and I'm just happy. Now she can rest in peace. Cold Case Files the podcast is hosted by Brooke Giddings. Produced by McKamey Lynn and Scott Brody. Our executive producer is Ted Butler.

We're mixed and distributed by Podcast One. Cold Case Files the TV show is produced by Blumhouse Television and Ample Entertainment. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com.