Cold Case Files - Dark Angel

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

Pam Pitts’ body was found burned at a popular party spot in the Arizona desert. Even when a second victim is discovered in a mineshaft it takes decades for the truth to come out. Check out our great sponsors! If you’re 21 or older - download Slotomania on the App Store or Google Play Store and get one million free coins! Download June’s Journey today! Available on Android and iOS mobile devices, as well as on PC through Facebook Games! Clare: Go to Clare.com/coldcase for 10% off your order!

An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Listener discretion is advised. I can't even describe the pain that we went through. I don't think I could have felt worse if somebody would have ripped my chest open with their bare hands and pulled my heart out while I was still beating. I don't think I could have felt worse if somebody would have ripped my chest open with their bare hands and pulled my heart out while I was still beating. I don't think it would have hurt that bad.

When you're dealing with a case that's going on and on unsolved, every day it drains you because you can't take your mind off of it. You just feel like, how can it keep going on like that? And nothing happened? No suspects. There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America. Each one is a cold case.

Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's September 14th, 1988, a crisp fall day in the picturesque town of Prescott, Arizona. Surrounded by lush pine forests and mountains, Prescott is breathtaking. Aside from its natural beauty, Prescott has a rich history and a small town charm. It's around 11 a.m. in Prescott when Pamela Pitts calls her father, Paul. Pam wanted to know what I was doing, and I told her I was working. And she said, well, I wanted to talk to you about something. I said, well, why don't we have dinner at Murphy's Restaurant here in Prescott?

Pam has been living in a small house on Lincoln Street with two roommates for the past three months. But over dinner with her dad, she admits she's already having second thoughts. She says, we're behind on a rent. And she goes, I'm tired of it. And I want to know if it would be OK with you if I moved back home. And I told her, absolutely. I didn't want you moving out to begin with. And I said, when do you want to do this?

She said, well, I'm going to come to the house on Saturday and do laundry. So we finished having dinner, and that was the last time I saw Pam alive. Pam was the eldest child born to Carol and Paul Pitts on June 25, 1969, at the K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where her father was stationed with the 410th Bomb Wing. Being a first-time dad was great. I loved being a dad, and Pam was a happy baby. She was very active.

She was very loving and fun and friendly, and she was a real joy in my life, a real joy in my life. She loved to swim. She liked riding her bike. She liked getting out in the woods, hanging out with friends and hanging out with her brothers and sisters. Pam's younger sister, Carrie, was especially close to her. Pam was about two years older than I am.

Stacy is my younger sister, and then Paul Jr. is the youngest. Pam was very much outgoing. She was part of a group of friends that liked CB radios, and her handle was Dark Angel. Pam was not afraid of the limelight. She always looked out for me. She was a pretty good big sister. By 1988, Pam's parents have separated, and the children stay with Paul while their mom, Carol, moves two hours south to Casa Grande.

Pam left school in her junior year and is working at a local sandwich shop, but she keeps in contact with her high school friends. Pam can't wait to make her mark on the world, and she is eager to be independent. So, in June 1988, Pam moves in with her best friend, Shelley Norgard. Her father, Paul, isn't as enthusiastic about his daughter leaving the nest, and he tries to dissuade her. I said, I'm opposed to that. You've got your own room here at home. You've got your own private entrance. But she did anyway. I was kind of upset about that, to be honest with you.

Pam and Shelly struggle to make the rent on their own. So they get another roommate, Jeremy Anderson. The three of them get along pretty well. But by September 14th, Pam tells her dad that she's ready to move back home. She tells him that she would stop by the house in three days, but she never arrives. Saturday, Pam did not show up to do laundry. And at the time, I thought, well, you know, they're kids. I mean, as a parent, you just kind of roll with that.

And later that evening, I get a call from Shelly. She says, Pam took off, and I don't know where she's at. She goes, is she at your house? And I said, no, haven't seen her. She was supposed to be here today. And she says, well, I'm worried about her. You know, in the 80s, we didn't have cell phones like we do today, so it was a little harder to stay in touch.

We weren't super concerned because Pam liked to go hang out with friends and do stuff. Two more days pass, and on Monday, Paul calls Pam's job and asks to speak with her. When he learns that she did not show up for her shift, he calls the police department. Prescott Police Detective Bill Bradshaw and Sergeant Bill Hobbs are dispatched to Pam's house house and Shelly lets them inside. After getting permission to search Pam's bedroom and the communal living areas, the detectives try to figure out where Pam may be.

They found Pam's purse, her driver's license, medicine, all her personal effects were still there. Bill Hobbs and myself sat down at the kitchen table with Shelly and asked her if she knew anything. And she said that she believed Pam had gone out partying. She wasn't really worried of anything happening to her. And she said that they had a joint checking account to pay the rent. And Shelly deposited her portion of it. And then Pam Pitts had emptied the account and wasn't paying the rent. And so she was a little upset about that.

I didn't have really anything to say that her words were really that unusual. I was rooming with somebody, and they stole my money, took to pay the rent. I'd probably be very upset, too. While the police are looking for Pam, Paul Pitts begins his own search for his daughter, starting with a call to the high school. When Paul Gabaldon answers the phone,

he has no idea how much of an impact the case will have on his life. In 1988, I was the assistant principal at Prescott High School. My responsibility was student services. In May of 2013, I started working for the Avapai County Sheriff's Office as a cold case investigator. Well, I only met Pam once. She was very respectful to me. I remember that phone call from her father wanting to know if anyone at the school had seen her. And a couple days later,

I remember reading in the Prescott Courier that she was a missing person. For the next 10 days, Pam's siblings try their best to keep it together and hold on to hope. It was very stressful while Pam was missing. We were in school. My dad was still trying to work and looking for my sister. My parents were separated. We were in survival mode, hoping that Pam would walk through the door.

On September 29th, it's been 15 days since Pam was last seen. A couple in a wooded area known as Gordo's Pit are rifling through some refuse that was often left behind by local kids who went there to party. As they are sifting through the trash, they notice a human foot. There was a big pile of garbage bags and laying on top of the pile was an unknown body that had been totally consumed by fire.

Melted into the wrist bones was what appeared to be a bracelet, and you could make out just a couple of letters of dark and a couple of letters of angel on that. Just like Pam C.B. Hand handle, Dark Angel. Dental records would later confirm that Pam was the victim. Police cordon off the area of Gordo's Pit, located seven miles northwest of the town, and start processing evidence. The Prescott Police Department forms a joint task force with the local sheriff's office to track down Pound's killer. Lieutenant Tom Boltz and Captain Victor Dart

from the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office recall the scene. There was a lot of trash around her and on her. The injuries to her body were gruesome. The sheer brutality of what happened to her was the most striking thing. The body was burned so bad that they couldn't get it in the body bag without it falling apart. But it was taken to the medical examiner's office

where the autopsy was performed. He noted there were fractures in the skull that he said were caused by heat, but no obvious cause of death could be determined at autopsy. During the autopsy, the ME identified heat-killed fly larvae, so we suspected that Pam had been killed and stored somewhere and then deposited on the garbage pile and burned. The task force heads to the high school and begins conducting the first of hundreds of interviews in the case. Since I was the assistant principal,

when law enforcement came to the high school, they interviewed the students in my office. They learned from a couple individuals that Pam had been seen the night of the 16th at Gordo's Pit at a big party. Someone comes forward to tell the police about an incident after that party where Pam was killed in a ritual. Tell me what you know about the Pam and the Pit situation. I was with Aftrak.

He was all joking around saying that he had to kill some girl, saying that he finally made his first sacrifice to Satan and all this stuff. He said that he took a little ice pick, he stuck it in her jugular vein, and he bled her for a little while. And then he set her on fire. Rumors about a kid named Half Track are reported to the police. But it was all uncorroborated and seems to be fueled by the so-called satanic panic

that caused uproar throughout the 1980s. Sociology professor Mary DeYoung sheds some light on what that means. 1988 was just past the peak of the satanic moral panic in the United States. The rumors were that there were satanic cults that existed secretively within communities and were engaging in criminal behavior,

even rape and homicide. The satanic threat was everywhere, everyone, and everything during that period of time. In the Pitts case, I think the unusual method of homicide and discovery of the body probably lent itself to satanic interpretations and satanic rumors. I think the police have to do due diligence in looking at claims, remembering during that period of time that there's still a lot of cultural discourse

about satanic cults and Satanism. The detectives are quick to discard the satanic ritual angle, and they turn to Pam's roommates, Shelley and Jeremy. They want to know where they were on September 16th, the last day anyone saw Pam alive. Jeremy's alibi was that he was at a football game that night, and that was kind of a significant event. And then he hung out with a couple guys. Shelly said that on the night of the 16th, she got off work. She went and picked up her boyfriend, Ray. Shelly tells detectives she and Ray met up with her friends Don, John, and Terry,

and they went to their house to watch a movie. She says they were there until around 2.30 a.m. Detectives ask one more time. You sure you didn't take Pam out to the pits? I'm positive. Shelly's boyfriend, Ray, agrees to take a polygraph, and he passes. Just as detectives move on from Pam's roommates, a new possible suspect emerges. People start to talk about Melinda Perry, a local girl who's been rumored to start fights. One person tells detectives that he witnessed a physical confrontation between Melinda and Pam at the party on September 16th.

She went after Pamela Pitts. that he witnessed a physical confrontation between Melinda and Pam at the party on September 16th. She went after Pamela Pitts, and they started to fight. And during the fight, Pamela got thrown on the ground. She just kicked her head like a good four or five times. She got up, and she was bleeding, and she fell back down. How was she bleeding? Through the head?

From her head? Yeah. As the investigation shifts and a new prime suspect is identified, Paul Pitts struggles to come to terms with what has happened to his eldest daughter. All you can think about is my poor kid and what kind of horror she went through. You just want to find out who did it. It was all I could think about, my poor kid and what kind of horror she went through. But you just want to find out who did it. It was all I could think about, day and night. Some of them theorized that Melinda Perry killed her to finish the fight. And then once that had happened, that she had

thrown her body on the fire. I never actually saw Melinda fight anybody, so I don't know if that was true, but it's possible. Melinda Perry has a reputation of being a troublemaker, according to the police. And with the information that they've been given, she becomes their number one suspect. She's brought in for questioning, and the police ask her where she was the night Pam was killed. And if she had a fight with Pam. This is on the wall of pits, right? Yes.

Okay. I haven't been to the pits in like two months. Because every time I go out there, cowgirls start stuffing up to me. We've had witnesses that have seen you at the pit on Friday night. I'd say it's a lie because I was not at the pits. Tell us about the fight you got into with Pam. I didn't get in a fight with Pam. I've never been in a fight with Pam.

I didn't tell anybody I did. Some people that's very close to you told us that you got in a fight with her. Nope, I sure did not. The conflicting stories lead the detectives to ask the Yavapai County attorney to convene a grand jury. They've heard enough times that Melinda Perry was responsible for Pam's death that they were going to compel witnesses to tell the truth under oath. So they started this investigative grand jury. They interviewed Melinda Perry, and then they interviewed several other subjects

to get to the truth of Pam's killing. The grand jury hearing is held on August 10th, 1989, 10 months after Pam was killed. Melinda tells the grand jury the same thing she told the police, that she had nothing to do with Pam's murder. Melinda's alibi was strong. She had been out at a party with local musicians

before going back to their motel room. Despite her denials, the grand jury reaches a shocking conclusion four months after Melissa had testified that they think she lied under oath. The investigative grand jury ended up indicting Melinda Perry for perjury, essentially because she didn't confess to killing Pam and made no progress in getting any further into the investigation as to what happened to Pam.

Melinda is adamant that she had nothing to do with the crime, and further investigation shows that the people who corroborated her alibi had signed the ledger at the American Motel on the night of the murder. On December 20th, 1989, Melinda is sentenced to 41 days in jail for contempt of court and failure to pay fines. The perjury charges are dropped the following year,

but no new leads emerge, and the case slowly goes cold. Two years and nine months after Pam Pitt's murder, another shocking discovery is made. Some students are exploring a mine out on Iron Springs Road, some 20 miles from Prescott, on May 25, 1991. As the students are looking around, they stumble upon a body in a vertical mine shaft and report it to the police. The victim had been shot in the head.

He's soon identified as Ray Clerks. Ray was the boyfriend of Pam's roommate, Shelly Norgard. To me, if you think that's a coincidence, there's something wrong with you, you know? Ray Clerks, a student pilot, had moved in with Shelly Norgaard in April 1989 after one year of dating. His brother, Bernard, remembers how passionate Ray was. Ray liked flying. Since I've known him, that's all he's wanted to do is fly. Ray and Shelly, they both like automobiles, working on cars.

He was pretty laid back. He had a sense of humor. We spent most of our time in the garage working on airplanes and things like that. So that stuff he took very seriously. Every time I see a plane fly overhead, I think of Ray. It's the spring of 1991, and Ray begins looking for work in California after earning his aviation degree. Ray is making inquiries at the John Wayne Airport to see if he can get an instructor's job to get his qualifications so he could work with airlines. But he suddenly cuts his trip to Orange County short and tells his family that he needs to go back to Prescott. He says he's moving back to Orange County.

He says, I'm going to go pack up my things and I'll be back. A couple of weeks went by, we haven't heard from Ray. So my oldest brother, Benny, started making phone calls to Shelly. Shelly tells Ray's family that he has gotten a job flying a plane to Mexico, and he had left really early that morning. Ray's family tries again a few days later, but Shelly's response is always the same. Okay, well, have him call us.

A couple of days later, hey, did you have Ray call us? Well, he's not here, he's doing this. He's flying an airplane over here. I mean, this dragged on for weeks, and we felt that he was always getting the runaround. On May 28th, Ray's brothers are so concerned, they call the authorities in Prescott. I don't remember who the sheriff was.

He goes, well, what'd your brother look like? Why would you be asking us that? Well, we pulled a body out of a mine shaft that's been there for a while. I think you two need to come down to Prescott as soon as you can. So we packed up that day and we were on the road to Prescott.

As we started talking to the police officers, I started to get more and more nervous about it. I said, well, we can't show you the body because it's very decayed, but we can show you what he was wearing. I was, yeah, that's his stuff. I was just numb. The investigation is already underway.

The officers noticed suspicious activity in Ray's bank account. Money had been withdrawn by his girlfriend while he was missing. The police compare tire tracks found at the entrance to the mine to a pickup truck that Shelly had recently borrowed, and it's a match. Shelly was interviewed. At the time of her interview in the mine, to a pickup truck that Shelly had recently borrowed, and it's a match. Shelly was interviewed. At the time of her interview in the house, they found blood, and at a certain point, they walked up to her car and could immediately smell, I think they documented it as the smell of death. They found blood in the trunk of her car that ended up being, you know, the same type as Ray's. Detectives also find a 9mm Luger revolver

under the front seat of the car, so there's enough evidence to charge Shelly with murder. Nine days after Ray's body was found in the mineshaft outside of Prescott, Shelly Norgard pleads not guilty to the charge she's facing. She denied that she had anything to do with his disappearance or murder. She continued with the story that he had gotten a job flying to Mexico.

The evidence begins to mount against Shelley. Ballistics analysis shows that her gun is the same caliber as the weapon used to kill Ray Clerks. And when Shelley is confronted with the case against her, she finally admits what she has done. In June 1993, Shelly Norgard pleads guilty to Ray Clerks' murder. At Shelly's sentencing, her attorney had prepared a statement as to what had occurred. A large part of it was that Ray was moving. He was leaving the relationship, which enraged Shelly.

They were out stargazing, and Ray was laying on top of the car, and Shelly, in her fit of rage, grabbed the gun that was on the floorboard of her car and shot him in the head. I'm Lola. And I'm Megan. And we're the hosts of Trust Me, cults, extreme belief, and manipulation. We both have childhood cult experiences, and we're here to debunk the myths about people who join them and show that anyone can be manipulated. Our past interviews include survivors and former members of the Manson family, NXIVM, MS-13, Teal Swan, Heaven's Gate, Children of God, and the Branch Davidians.

Join us every week as we help you spot the red flags. Get new episodes of Trust Me every Wednesday on Podcast One or wherever you get your podcasts. Shelly's story about killing Ray is believable. The facts and circumstances around it, I don't believe it. I believe she killed Ray in the apartment. And then Ray's body was in the trunk of that car and it sat out there until Shelly was able to borrow a four-wheel drive truck, go to her car, remove Ray's body, put it in the truck,

drive it up the mountain to that mine shaft. Shelly is sentenced to 20 years in prison without the possibility of parole. She's given credit for the two years she's already served while awaiting trial, and her release date is scheduled for 2011. But with the person who provided Shelly's alibi for Pam Pitt's murder now dead, a chain of events is triggered, and the investigation into Pam's murder heats up.

Shelly's conviction in Ray's death now paints Shelly in a whole different light. She was a very young, cute, blonde girl who was kind of small, and it's hard to see somebody like that as a killer. Fast forward, and now suddenly she is a convicted killer, so obviously now she looks like more of a suspect in Pam's disappearance and death than she did in 1988. I was going down Interstate 17, heading north, and I turned the local radio station on,

and they said that Shelly Norgart was arrested for the murder of her boyfriend, Raymond Clerks. I listened to some of the things the police report had on the news, and it was identical to what she pulled with Pam. She called Raymond's parents and said, gee, I'm worried about Raymond. He didn't come home. I don't know where he's at.

I'm worried about him. I haven't heard from him. She called them several times, telling them the same exact story she told me about Pam. There were a couple other things that were said that were similar to Pam's case. And when I heard that, the light came on. I said to myself, this is too much to be a coincidence,

because there were several things she did. She was driving his car around, taking money out of his bank account. You know, and all the time, she knew what happened to him. She shot him in the head, and his body was dumped down a mine shaft out here by Granite Mountain. I called the police, and I said, I think you guys need to look into this.

And they said, we're going to be questioning her and interrogating her, and we'll let you know if we find out anything. Despite the cloud of suspicion hanging over Shelly Norgard, she completes her sentence in 2011 and moves to Nevada, where she gets married and tries to forget her past. But newly appointed Yavapai Sheriff's Lieutenant Tom Boltz is not about to let that happen. The first time I became aware of the Pam Pitts cold case, I realized the sheer volume of information that had been gathered in the early stages of that case

and came to a conclusion it was untenable to have somebody work on that cold case and then current cases. The case is assigned to Captain Victor Dart, who sifts through the original case file looking for something solid to go on. There had to be something we missed. So from day one, that was it. What did we miss? What do we have that will provide us the clue we need to solve this case?

In cold cases, the older they are, typically, the more we need to solve this case. In cold cases, the older they are typically, the more material is generated in that case. So just the organization of all the photographs, the thousands of pages of reports, that's one problem. Finding your witnesses was another issue. Finding the law enforcement officers that were involved is another problem, especially in this case 30 years later. In 2016, the investigators finally catch a break when they listen to the calls recorded by the Arizona Department of Corrections from Shelly's time behind bars.

A series of calls between Shelly and her father catch their attention because Shelly's father expressed concern that she would be immediately arrested after her release. Shelly's father kept referring to that night, meaning the night Pam went missing. Well, that's what I've been thinking for 20 years, but then I don't know exactly. You've never told me what actually happened. I'm kind of up in the air again.

Shelly's answer is disturbing, to say the least. I had a moment. I had a huge moment. It's enough of an admission for Captain Dart to seek an indictment from the county attorney, and he was finally able to tell Paul Pitts that they have caught the person responsible for his daughter's death. I got a phone call from Detective Dart. He said, tomorrow we are going to Reno, Nevada area. And he says, we're going to arrest Shelly Norgart. I thought it was a miracle. I think it was probably one of the best moments of my life. It's now June 5th, 2017, 29 years after Pam's murder, and Captain Dart brings Shelley Norgard in for questioning in Reno.

Ms. Norgard? Yes. Sergeant Dart. It's Armand now. Okay, Ms. Armand, go down to the seat. I'd like to talk to you about 1988. Am I under arrest? You are under arrest for murder of Pamela Pitts.

Shelly Norgaard, now known as Shelly Harmon, is charged with the first-degree murder of Pamela Pitts. But Pam's family is warned that they could be in for a lengthy legal battle. They've been waiting 30 years by this point, and they are just excited that they might see some justice served. But it won't be easy. Anytime we take a case to court, especially a murder case, the defense is going to make a lot of motions, they're going to ask for a lot of hearings. They're trying to get all of that evidence precluded, and then you don't have a case at all. At a hearing on May 28, 2019, Shelley's legal team attempts to take away the prosecution's

most effective weapon by getting the information about Shelley's conviction for Ray Clerk's murder, deemed inadmissible at the trial. There are numerous similarities between the two cases. In both cases, they were roommates. They were sharing bank accounts. In both cases, there was evidence of the body having been stored before it was discovered. We knew that if we won that hearing,

it was going to make convicting Shelly and Pam's murder much easier. Her attorney argues that just because she had killed one person, it did not mean that she had killed another. The judge decides to rule in the defense's favor, and the evidence is thrown out, meaning that the jury will not hear about Shelley's criminal past. Anybody who's done felony cases knows about Rule 404B, and that is a rule of law that the courts use

to evaluate whether or not a prior bad act can come into the current trial. Typically, in my experience, most prior bad acts don't come into the current trial. That really worried me because that was the absolute key to tying Shelly to Pam's murder. A year passes and the Pitts family has to weigh their options and decide what the best course of action would be to get justice. We got together with the prosecutor, had a trial date set, and we said, okay, if we went to trial today, what are the chances that we're going to get a conviction? All it would take was for one juror to say, no, I don't believe she's guilty,

and she would have walked free as if it never happened. What we decided on as a family, and I've taken a lot of criticism for this, is that we would offer her a plea deal where if she confessed to the crime and gave us the details of what happened and why, that she would be released on time served. It was more important to get the confession and the conviction behind Shelly's name than it was for the time. On March 1st, 2021, Shelly accepts the plea deal and admits that she killed Pam Pitts 33 years earlier. Shelly confesses that she was upset with Pam because their checking account was overdrawn and that she was upset that Pam was moving back home. Shelly knew she couldn't afford the rent on her own, and she had nowhere else to go.

So she went looking for Pam on September 16, 1988, and made her way to Gordo's pit, where she knew Pam could often be found partying. Shelly confronted Pam, and they ended up in a fight. Shelly says she just lost it. She said, I punched her and knocked her down and got on top of her, and I just kept punching and punching and punching

until she stopped breathing. Shelly says that she heard voices approaching and realized that Pam wasn't moving, so she left. She doesn't mention anything about the way Pam's body was found. I don't feel that what Shelly stated in her allocution was genuine. She didn't have to say what happened afterwards, so we're led to believe that Shelly just left Pam's body out there and that somebody else came along and burned it and, you know, desecrated her body.

I mean, it doesn't add up. She gave no other details, and we were not allowed to ask any questions. So the legal handcuffs, I felt, were put on us. Of course, if it were up to me, she'd be in prison for the rest of her life. But we don't live in a perfect world. She's a two-time convicted murderer.

And my advice to her husband is sleep with one eye open. We got justice for Pam. And so we have to be satisfied with that. I've always got her in the back of my mind. And I think about her every single day. But I also think that she would want us to be happy and have productive lives. You don't want to ever forget your loved ones,

but you also have to find a way to live with it because we have a life to live and just live it better and live it for them. Cold Case Files is hosted by Paula Barrows. It's produced by the Law and Crime Network and written by Eileen McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson. Our composer is Blake Maples. For A&E, our senior producer is John Thrasher and our supervising producer is McKamey Lynn. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz,

Maite Cueva, and Peter Tarshis. This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series, Cold Case Files. For more Cold Case Files, visit aetv.com. All this month, celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with Pluto TV. Watch movies with the biggest stars like Eugenio Derbez in No Eres Tú, Soy Yo and Luis Gerardo Méndez and Camino a Marte. Plus, Pluto TV has thousands more movies and TV shows and over 45 channels in Spanish, all for free. So download the Pluto TV app on all your favorite devices

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