Cold Case Files - Kidnapped

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

In 1991, an eight-year-old boy is kidnapped from home while his mother is at church. Police believe the kidnapper is someone close to the family, but rule out all the obvious suspects. Despite years going by, ransom notes, and briefcase full of cash, and the lack of a body keep the mother's hope alive. Check out our great sponsors! Madison Reed: Go to Madison-Reed.com and get 10% off PLUS free shipping on your first color kit with code CCF Nutrafol: Go to Nutrafol.com and use code COLDCASE to get 20% off Plus FREE shipping on EVERY order! Skillz: Win cash playing games you love! Go to skillz.com/ccf -- Must be 18 or older, terms and conditions apply, not available in all states, prizes may vary, winning is not guaranteed. See website for details Sweaty Betty: Go to SweatyBetty.com/coldcase and use code COLDCASE at checkout to get 20% off your purchase!

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. October 13th, 1991, was Karen Choice's birthday. Karen, a mother of four, was enjoying the silence and a cup of coffee before heading off to church. She decided on this particular day not to wake the children before she left. A few minutes after the church services started, Karen received a call from home. Chad, her 8-year-old son, was missing. We were just looking up to see if he was just playing a joke on us, and we were walking around the house, looking up in the trees to see if he was just playing a joke on us,

and we were walking around the house, looking up in the trees to see if he was there. But all in the same time, there was just something that just kept, I just had this feeling something was wrong. One-third of all murder cases in America remain open. 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. After discovering that her 8-year-old son Chad was missing,

and after conducting a search of the house to ensure that the playful child wasn't just playing an untimely game of hide-and-seek, Karen Choice called the police. Sergeant Bill Goking was dispatched to the Choice family's home. He noticed almost immediately that the scene of Chad's disappearance lacked any signs of a break-in or a struggle. Here's Sergeant Goking. We didn't see anything like a forced entry, any blood trails, any signs of ransacking, things that would be indicative of a crime scene. Based on his analysis of the scene, Sergeant Goking suggests that maybe Chad had run away,

but his mother was not convinced. This is Karen's choice. That basically was not Chad, because as mischievous as he was, and full of life, and loved playing, he was still a mama's baby. And he would stick close to home. He would go to the apartments to play with his friends. He would go to the playground. But he didn't venture too far out from home. Karen believed that someone had taken her son. And with each passing hour, her dread intensified.

Devastation, fear starts to set in, and you're wondering what is going on, who is he with? Because I knew it's dark now and that's he's ready to come home Karen spends the next two days waiting by the phone hoping that someone will call with information about Chad that call never comes Karen was contacted in the form of a letter addressed to Karen's brother who was also Chad's uncle, Greg Sterling. The letter wasn't mailed, though.

It was left on the front steps of the family business. A funeral home. The letter says, The letter demands that $10,000 be delivered, and he'll be a memory. The letter demands that $10,000 be delivered to a Greyhound bus station. It concluded, P.S. If we don't show, that means we heard something from our inside contact. Could even be your own family.

Be careful. At this point, the police officially label this case as a kidnapping and invite the FBI to join the investigation. Agent Jeff Block from the FBI joins the investigation with a clear idea of where they should begin. The fact that there was not visible signs of break-in led us to believe that there's a good chance that someone close to the family or in the family was somehow involved. The magnifying glasses turned to Chad's uncle, Greg Sterling. The man had received the ransom note. It turned out that Uncle Greg had been a part of what the police called the drug scene for several years. Investigators didn't necessarily think that Greg Sterling had taken Chad. However, they did believe that Greg's actions could have led to

Chad's kidnapping. Investigators speculate that Sterling might have needed money to pay for his drug habit. Perhaps out of desperation, he was using his nephew to extort money from the family. Greg Sterling denies any kind of involvement in the kidnapping, and he even offers to help the investigation in a pretty unusual way. He gives them a briefcase, full of cash. On the day of the money drop at the Greyhound station, police prepare themselves, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. There were detectives everywhere, hiding in bushes, sitting in parked cars,

and posing as travelers waiting for their buses. Among them was Sergeant Goking. We waited and waited and waited and nothing happened. This concern started to rise that the person that the note mentioned that would be close to the investigation, close to the family, may be the person actually in the bus station with the money. An hour after the designated time, the briefcase still sat on the bus station floor, untouched. The police are convinced more than ever that someone close to Chad was involved in the crime.

To test their theory, the police asked Chad's family and friends to take a polygraph test. Only one family member showed signs of deception on the polygraph. Greg Sterling. There was no actual evidence that Greg Sterling was involved in his nephew's kidnapping, even though police believed he was somehow tied to the crime. Not having any leads, the case starts to go cold. This is Agent Block again. Kind of a rule of thumb, and it's not like this in every case, but if you're not on the road towards resolving something in 48 hours, it's going to be difficult to resolve.

Time passes. Days, weeks, months. But there are still no leads and not even a hint as to where Chad's choice could be. His mother was devastated. It was almost like trying to catch your breath and you're basically just out of air. That's just the way it seemed like it was just hard for me to even breathe. I would think about him and it would, it would just like take my breath away. On October 14th, 1992, almost a year to the day after Chad went missing, Karen Choice found a second note. It was 7 3030 a.m., and Karen was leaving for work. She noticed something tucked under her windshield wiper.

There was this note on the windshield. My immediate reaction was fear because I'm looking around and I'm saying, here's someone that has come up to this yard again. But all in the same time, that gave me hope, thinking that, okay, they're ready to bring Chad home now. The typed note was the second contact that the kidnapper had made with the family. The note said that the family had probably suffered enough and that Chad missed them a lot, implying against the odds that Chad was still alive. The letter went on to say that if they wanted to see Chad, they had

one last chance and it would cost them $6,000. This time though, there were no specific instructions about where the money should go. The letter stated, collect the money before next Tuesday and I'll contact you. Here's Agent Block again. It appeared to me that whoever was sending the notes was almost taunting the family, reopening a wound. The letter was passed to forensic experts to check for fingerprints or any other biological evidence that might have been left behind. They didn't find any. So the only thing the family could do was wait for the promised contact. There was this renewal for a brief moment, and then we sat there and we waited and waited

and waited on a call that didn't come through. There would be another lead, but not until 1994. And it would come in an unexpected form. A bank robbery. You know all that time you spend playing your favorite mobile games on your phone? Well, you could have been winning money and prizes. Skills.com turns mobile gaming into cash. I've been playing, and the Hit the Zombies tournament is my personal favorite.

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But one thing is still the same, coloring our hair. The options? Go to a traditional salon and spend tons of time and money, or grab a box of hair color at the drugstore, which always dries out your hair. But now, there's a new way. Right now, go to madison-reed.com and use code CCF to get 10% off plus free shipping on your first color kit. It took a strong woman to shake up the hair coloring world. And Amy Aratt did just that with Madison Reed, the company she named after her daughter. Madison Reed gives you the tools you need so that you can color with

confidence. Get ammonia-free, multi-imensional hair color delivered to your door, starting at $22. Visit madison-reed.com and use code CCF. Cold Case listeners get 10% off plus free shipping on their first color kit. Again, that's madison-reed.com and use code CCF. In 1994, Tyler, Texas had a population of a little more than 76,000 people. It wasn't small, but it also wasn't a booming metropolis. It certainly wasn't the kind of town where bank robberies were expected.

Despite that fact, on July 21, 1994, two men wearing masks and pointing guns robbed the United Heritage Federal Credit Union. They left with over $8,000. Detective Bill Horton and FBI agent Jim Mendez worked the case. This is Detective Horton. We had some general suspect information and no evidence that would lead us to anybody in particular. The best lead that investigators had was

a partial license plate number collected from a witness. The number was given to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles to locate potential matches. And they did. When they were finished, the investigators were looking at a list of 400 possible vehicles. 400 cars is a lot of cars to try and sort down, and the state of Texas is a big state. We started in Tyler and started working our way out, looking at, you know, possibles. And as time went on, we still hadn't identified any vehicles that would be good viable leads. That was Agent Mendez, who along with his partner, still had no viable leads three months later,

when the same credit union was robbed again. Again, it's the same thing. Two men come in with their faces covered up, carrying weapons, immediately rush the tellers, catching them off guard, and demand money. Because of the first robbery, the credit unit increased their security. This time, the two suspects were caught on camera. One of the pieces of clothing was fairly unique. The rest of it was pretty nondescript, but one of the subjects was wearing a hooded plaid jacket, and the hood on the jacket was solid gray.

Clips from the surveillance tape were broadcast on the evening news. Officer Luis Correa saw the footage and paid close attention. The masked men on TV were remarkably similar physically to his neighbor, Chris Wells, and his neighbor's friend. Officer Correa had just noticed them walking down the street. Even their clothes were the same as the ones on the video on TV. He also noticed something about their demeanor. Both the young men were looking behind their shoulders and over their shoulders, and every time a car went by, they looked at it, and they acted real nervous.

Officer Correa called his tip into the investigators, and they decided to look into it. Mendez and Horton took a ride to Chris Wells' house and knocked on the door. The door was answered by Chris Wells' brother, Keith. They showed him a picture from the surveillance video. Here's Agent Mendez. We showed him the photograph, and he literally looked at it, and this is a photograph that you can't really make out a whole lot other than that jacket. And he says, that's Chris.

Besides the photo identification, the investigators also noticed that Chris owned a jacket that looked remarkably similar to the one in the video. Wells is arrested and taken to the police station for questioning. Detective Horton conducted the initial interview. Right now we are looking into the robbery of the credit union over here on Oakland Street, the railroad tracks in Houston. I want you to tell us what you know about it. He confronts Chris Wells with a video and he starts to confess. He confessed to both credit union robberies and then identifies two accomplices, Gene Lindsey and Pat Horn. He said that Horn was the brains of the operation.

A couple of days later, the investigators bring in Gene Lindsey and he also confesses. But not just about the credit union robberies. He tells Detective Horton about a murder. Here's a clip from the interview. Investigators seem to have solved the case of the bank robberies and now had information about a murder of an old man

that they hadn't even had on their radar. But what about Chad Choice? Where's the connection? Does he get justice? Let's look a little deeper. On October 5th of 1994, a month before the bank robbery, a man named J.C. Levasseur was selling fruit at a roadside stand. He was 80 years old. Officer Melody McKay had stopped in to see him that very morning. I stopped and talked to him because it was payday, and I said, well, I'll be back. I got to get my check cashed, and I'll have some money, and I'll come back and get my produce. That was the last time Officer McKay spoke with Mr. Levasseur. When she returned as promised, he'd gone missing. I was looking around his stand to see if there was anything unusual,

and his fruit was still there. There was still some money under a rock. Didn't show any real signs of struggle. And they said, well, his truck is parked down here almost in the middle of the road. And at the time, something was wrong. She found his truck about a mile from the fruit stand. It was empty, and the keys were missing. Officer McKay was then notified by a bystander that there was something in the woods that she needed to see. The bystander led her down a dirt path. So I walked down there, and the minute I saw the clothes and everything,

I knew immediately it was Mr. Levasseur. That was kind of tough, you know, to have talked to somebody that morning, and now you find him dead on the ground. She calls her backup and secures the scene. J.C. Levasseur had died from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. He had the money he'd made at the fruit stand that day

still in his pockets. Investigators were at a loss for motive. Why would someone kill an 80-year-old man and leave his money in his pockets? They theorized that the perpetrator might have been attempting to steal his truck. That theory solidified when they received some tips that two men had been seen that day struggling to get the standard transmission car out of first gear. This is Lieutenant Jason Waller with their descriptions. Two young black males, one taller than the other, then the taller one being thinner, the other one kind of being a little stocky, a little darker complected. We've got a physical description. If we could just find pictures, put faces, you know, together, that we might be able to identify them, at least

to go question them. The dots were connected when Gene Lindsay was interviewed a month later in connection with the credit union robberies. Here's some audio from that interview between Gene Lindsay and Detective Horton. Told Chris to let the man go. Uh-huh. Chris said he had to show him something. He had to what? Had to show him something. Show him something? Yep. Told the man that we had a friend dying there.

We want him to take him up there. Once they got him out of the truck, Chris Wallace decided to murder him. He didn't want any witnesses. Gene Lindsey went on with the story of the man's murder. He said, motherfucker, you're going to die. No man said that? Chris.

Chris said that. Okay. I told him, no man, no man. What'd the man do? He tried to take out running. When Chris said that, he took off running? Yeah. He did?

Mr. Levasseur apparently began to beg, offering money and his truck in exchange for his life. Then he ran as fast as his 80-year-old legs would take him. But the younger Chris Wells caught up and shot him close range in the back of the head. It's a tragic story. And Chris Wells, Gene Lindsey, and Pat Horn were all arrested on charges of capital murder, each facing possible death for the murder of Mr. Levasseur. But how does this relate to Chad Choice, the kidnapped eight-year-old? While the three young men awaited the trial, Pat Horn received an unexpected package in the mail.

Inside was a human leg bone belonging to a young boy. October of 1995 marked the four-year anniversary of Chad Choice's kidnapping on his mother Karen's birthday. A day formerly celebrated came to represent loss and devastation. There was no cake and no candles. Though the wish she would have made is clear. I just kept saying no. This could be the one that they're wrong about. He could still be there.

He's still out there. And I'm going to still actively search, no matter what the stats are saying. In October of 1995, Karen Joyce found something outside her home, but this time it was more than a note on a windshield. Inside of a paper bag placed on her doorstep was a small human skull. This gruesome discovery forced Karen to face facts she'd been pushing away

and let go of any hope she'd hold on to. I didn't want to believe it. There was this part of me that was saying, this may be, but I'm saying no. No, this is not Chad. Chad is still alive. Along with this goal was a note with a message. You only paid part, so here is a part. Who could be this demonic to do something like this and then to place it on the family's doorstep? Control of your hair growth isn't given, it's taken.

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Investigators then turn to the University of North Texas and an anthropologist named Dr. Harold Gilking. He collects the skull and also the most recent picture of Chad Choice. He'd hoped to use the dental records, but Chad didn't have any. He then goes to work in his lab. Sometimes, and particularly in the case of children, when there is not much of a medical or dental record, we might resort to other techniques. For example, if we think we know who the remains represent, we might ask for photographs of the individual and we might attempt to do some sort of comparison between the skeletal remains and a photograph. He places skull in what appeared to be a box of sand and turns on a video camera that's connected to his

computer. He overlays the image of Chad onto the image of the skull. We burn an image of the photograph into memory in the computer, and we gradually bring in the skull to see if we can fit it into that picture. Working with multiple pictures, Dr. Eel King determines that the skull from the bag belongs to Chad. Though Karen Choice's logical mind knew she was unlikely to see her son alive again, her emotional mind was overwhelmed with the way that Chad's death had been confirmed. Who leaves the skull of a murdered child on his mother's doorstep? Who is this person? And I mean, I think that there was an anger that

rose up in me that I had never felt before. The skull was the first lead that investigators had come across in five years. The second piece of evidence, and the connection between the cases, came from a jail cell in Texas. Pat Horn sits in a cell contemplating his potential fate, a death sentence for two robberies and a murder. He breaks under the pressure and decides he wants a deal. He mentions a name, Chad Choice. He's in a very dangerous light at this point because we're conversing with him.

We're talking to him, and now Chad Choice's name has come up, and that has really got our interest. That was Detective Horton. Pat Horn lived in the same neighborhood as the Choice family, and that it really got our interest. That was Detective Horton. Pat Horn lived in the same neighborhood as the Choice family, and he knew them. He also claimed to know that the boy had been killed by two local drug dealers with the street names Paco and Carlos. We are hopeful because he had told us something that we highly suspected all along. Knowing Pat, though, we were not totally convinced that what he was telling us was all of the truth.

The investigators look into Paco and Carlos, but they have confirmed alibis for that night. Team is about to dismiss Horn. He just doesn't seem credible. But then something changes their mind. A leg bone. The jailers intercept this package that was sent to Pat Horn. They find what appears to be a leg bone and also a note threatening him

that if he gives any information about Chad Choice that they'll kill him or kill his family. The bone is confirmed to belong to Chad. But who sent it? Pat Horn says it was Paco and Carlos, but the investigators don't believe him. They think Horn knows more than he's saying. Here's FBI agent Jim Wilkins again. I think one thing that made us doubt Pat Horn

was knowing just how much he was involved with these guys because Pat had a reputation of exaggerating and trying to build up his own self-importance. He really opens the door wide as far as us looking at him as being involved in this, certainly more so than he tells us. Months after the leg bone was confirmed to be Chad's, Pat Horn continues to deny any further knowledge about the disappearance. Then he gets an unexpected visitor, Karen Choice.

She'd known Pat as a kid in the neighborhood since he was five. Here's a clip from that interaction. Pat, I got to know. Like a child in a classroom, Pat Horn lowered his head and stayed silent. Detective Horn took on one more opportunity to try and compel Pat Horn to share what he knew about Chad's death. You know, you talk like you're some sort of badass. You put your own ass there when you took her boy. You shouldn't have took her boy. You don't know about it. It doesn't work, though, and Karen Choice leaves without the answers she'd come to find.

He did not want to tell me anything, and it was almost like he did not know who I was. I was just somebody that just came in, you know, and interrupted his life. A week later, still afraid for his own life, Pat Horn calls the investigators again to offer up some more information. He said he had witnessed the murder, and Paco and Carlos had ordered him to dig a grave. He claims to know where Chad's buried.

He tells us. He says, see, you know, basically I'm a victim in this crime as well. All I did was help bury the child. I didn't have any other involvement in it, and now they're threatening me because of my knowledge of what they did. According to Pat Horn, Chad Choice had been buried in Horn's own backyard. At 4 p.m. on May 31, law enforcement started to dig. FBI agent Jim Wilkins is at the scene. Some of the agents and officers dug down.

They hit a plastic bag and dug a little more and found bones, found clothing. The clothes and remains of a young boy are discovered, along with some.80 caliber shell casings. Likely the shots that had killed Chad. His remains are quickly identified, and Chad's mom gets the phone call that she'd been both waiting for and dreading for more than five years. All of the years of hoping, you know, that he would come home, at that very moment, you know, it was over. And I would never see him as that little boy, you know, again. And it truly tore my heart completely. Meanwhile, Pat Horn runs his deal.

He says that he shared all he knew and that his information had led them to the body. The detectives were not in a bargaining mood. Not everybody has a body buried in their backyard and then hides it for years. So we were still very suspicious of him and not totally satisfied that he was giving us all of the truth. Investigators theorize that Pat Horn is the killer, but there's not enough evidence to charge him. They talk to his brother, Keaton, who's also incarcerated at the time. We seized an opportunity when he was in custody in Athens and really conducted a hard interview with him. And he chose to come forward.

Keith and Dahl's investigators that he had dug up the leg bone, written a threatening note, and sent the package to his brother Pat in jail. He'd done all of this for one reason. Pat Horn had asked him to. What Keaton did was show us that Paco and Collar had not reached out to Pat to threaten him, that Pat had reached out to himself basically to make it look like he was being threatened, which was a very, very important, you know, break on the case. Patrick Horn was charged with the murder of Chad Choice, along with the murder of an 80-year-old fruit vendor and two bank robberies.

On September 24, 1999, a jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death by lethal injection. Karen Choice did not take any comfort in that decision. And I have to say, and a lot of people don't agree with me, I basically don't believe in the death penalty. Padhorn's death is not going to bring Chad back. I would like for him to close his eyes and see Chad's face, you know, and realize not only did he take my baby's life, you know,

but his is over as far as anything that he could do successfully. Maybe it will give him time to think about the habit and the hurt that he has torn through this family. In 2005, a federal court decided that Pat Horn would not be put to death for Chad's murder. Horn had been 17 in 1991 when he murdered Chad,

making him ineligible for the death penalty. He's currently being held in a federal prison in Atlanta. In 2003, after a mix-up in the paperwork needed for releasing Chad's bone from evidence, they're finally returned to the family, and Karen is able to lay her son's remains to rest

in the family plot. Karen Choice created a service ministry in Tyler. She wanted to help people in trouble. What we're trying to do is to help people, men, women, and children that find themselves in a crisis of whatever kind it may be, if it's homelessness, if it's substance abuse, if it's sexual assault, battery. And we started a home called Chad's House. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn, Scott Brody, and Steve Delamater.

Our executive producer is Ted Butler. We're distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by the godfather of Cold Case Files, Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case F files at AETV.com and by downloading the A&E app.