Cold Case Files - Missing and Murdered

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

A promise is sacred in North American Indigenous Cree culture, and when Cree woman Shirley Soosay vanishes in 1980, her niece, Violet, promises her grandmother that she will bring Shirley home. But, Violet never imagined that the search for her aunt, and justice, would take a lifetime. Check out our great sponsors! Listen to STOLEN HEARTS on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts! You can listen ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. ZocDoc: Go to Zocdoc.com/ccf and download the Zocdoc app for FREE! Compare auto rates with Progressive Insurance! Quote at Progressive.com to join the over 29 million drivers who trust Progressive!

An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Violet Souze. My Cree name is Bisamok Squill, and I need to talk about my auntie Shirley. When Shirley left the reserve, Shirley would write letters home. In 1980, the letters stopped. Over the years, we stopped relying on the police being told that, oh, she's probably just another dead Indian.

Shirley's mother said, promise me you'll find her and bring her home. The Cree name for women is Eskwel, which means the fire keeper. We are the keepers of the culture. When you make a promise in our culture, you have to follow through. 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. Samson Cree Nation is in the center of Alberta between Edmonton and Calgary. We are a population of about 20,000. The values of our people are very strong, and they carry on through generation to generation.

Shirley Sousay was born on the Samson Cree Reserve in Alberta, Canada, in 1945. She was one of eight children. Her niece, Violet, recalls her close relationship with Shirley. Shirley spent a lot of time with me in my early childhood. She always made it fun, and I have memories of her always smiling and laughing. Shirley and her mother were close.

Her mother was a beader. She would make regalia in beadwork for members of our tribe. Shirley's dad had ranched along the Battle River. Shirley helped not only in the household, but outdoors with the cattle and horses. Shirley's father dies following a short and sudden illness in 1959. And life for 14-year-old Shirley becomes very difficult. Maintaining the farm and ranch is tough without the head of the family.

And soon the farm is losing a lot of income. Shirley met her childhood friend Flora Cardinal Northwest when she was 13 years old. Shirley came from a very strong traditional family. She honored her mom. She really worked hard. Shirley has ambitions to move to the city and find a job. Shirley did as much as she could to help out, but there was no steady employment on the reservations here,

and she left the reserve. In the mid-70s, Shirley Sousay moves to Vancouver. She's in her 20s at the time. It wasn't long after that she met a man, and she had two boys. Unfortunately, the relationship breaks down after a few years, and Shirley's ex takes the children. Shirley ends up on the street, and her kids are sent to foster homes. Indigenous women were not seen and respected enough to keep their own children.

She would not ever get to see her boys again. She basically gave up and turned to alcohol and drugs. Flora and Violet remember the change in Shirley's demeanor on the rare occasions they meet. In 1975, we used to go to these dances and Shirley was there. She never moved.

She never blinked her eyes. I said, what's wrong with my friend? Is she sick? She has an addiction. That was the last time I saw Shirley. Shirley's brother passed away two years earlier and Shirley made a decision that she would not be coming back to the reserve.

Shirley would come home from time to time to visit her mother. In 1977, she came home for my father's funeral. I noticed that she was different. I asked her, are you going to stay home now? And she says, no, now that my brother is gone, I don't want to come back. And I might go visit my friends in Seattle. Shirley's mother used to say in Cree, you should stay in one place now because nobody will know you. I said, maybe you can get tattoos, you know, with the name Shirley. She said, yeah, maybe, maybe I will. It was almost like her mother's premonition

that something would happen to Shirley. it's july 15th 1980 in kern county california some field workers are laboring in an almond orchard approximately one mile from highway 99 when they stumble upon a horrific scene the body of a dead woman is curled up in a fetal position. She looks to be around 35 years of age, and she's wearing a pink top, blue jeans, and almost spotless white sneakers. The workers immediately report their finding to the sheriff's office in Kern County. My name is Bill Hacker. I was a senior deputy for the Kern County Sheriff's Department for 30 years. When the homicide detectives arrived on scene, they examined the young lady. They noticed that some of the facial features led them to believe that she may be Native American.

The victim has no jewelry, purse, or identification, and the front of her top is completely saturated in blood. I had never seen a victim that was stabbed that many times. This was not an accident. This suspect meant to kill our victim. In examining the scene, the detectives saw that there were tire tracks, but there was no other footprints. So the investigators theorized that the young lady was killed elsewhere.

It's commonly referred to as a body dump. Without the victim's name or a means of identifying her, the investigators have no idea where to begin looking for witnesses. The woman's body is taken to the coroner's office, and it's determined that she had been raped. Swabs of the semen are collected as evidence. The Jane Doe has two tattoos. One is a rose with the word mother above it, and the words I love you were inked below it. The other is a heart with the name Shirley across it. Above the heart,

it said, I Love You. And below it, it said, Seattle. Ventura County Cold Case Investigator Steve Rhodes describes the difficulty detectives have while investigating the unidentified victim's murder. When we get a Jane Doe case, you have to start at square one. Who was she? Where did she come from? Who is her family? Who can tell us about her? And in this particular case, we had none of that. The police speak with workers at local farms and show them a photograph of the victim. But no one recognizes her. The detectives that were initially investigating this case followed

every lead that came in to them. They run the victim's fingerprints through the fingerprint database, but it's 1980 and they didn't have integrated computer systems or the internet. So they came to a roadblock in the investigation. But media appeals lead to a tip from a woman named Pixie. She asked if the victim had a tattoo of a heart that said Shirley and the word Seattle on it. Our victim did in fact have a tattoo like that. She thought Jane Doe Kern was a waitress in a bar outside of Bakersfield or Delano and thought her name was Becky Ochoa.

However, they were never able to link the victim to a Becky Ochoa. There were no other leads that had come in. Unfortunately, they were not able to identify her victim or a suspect. On July 18, 1980, three days after the woman's body was found in Kern County, another gruesome discovery is made in neighboring Ventura County. Janitors at Westlake High School received a call of a mannequin lying in the parking lot. They got closer and realized it was a young woman, partially disrobed, obvious stab wounds in her upper body.

Her shoes were tossed up on the hillside. Bloody drag marks were seen in the parking lot. She had been brought there in a car and drug up on the hillside where she was found. The second victim has been murdered in the same way as the Jane Doe in Kern County, but the Ventura County investigators are unaware of the similar case. The Kern County detectives are also oblivious to the discovery. When homicide investigators arrived at the Westlake High School parking lot,

they discovered the victim was a Latina female between 25 and 30 years of age. She had on a light-colored top that was soaked in blood. It's obvious that the victim had to put up a fight. Her arms and hands were covered in defensive wounds. But the coroner determines that she was raped before she was killed. The coroner also discovers that the woman had been stabbed approximately 29 times, but without any form of identification

found with the victim. She will be known as Jane Doe Ventura. The investigators have no leads to follow, so the case quickly goes cold. Back in Kern County, the detectives are still trying to identify their Jane Doe victim. Detectives went to a tattoo shop here in Bakersfield and showed a picture of the tattoos. The tattoo artist stated that those tattoos probably came from a skid row area down in Los Angeles that also had a large Native American population living in that area.

It's now January 1981, and the investigators head to Los Angeles to speak to tattoo artists. But none of the people interviewed believed that the tattoos had been done in L.A. By the end of the year, the detectives have followed every lead, but the case inevitably goes cold. You're trying to find a cause for your symptoms. Your leg hurts. You have this cramp on the side of your stomach. You're nauseous.

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She knew something was wrong, something bad had happened. Shirley's mother fears the worst, and after a year and a half of silence, she asks her youngest daughter, Belle, and her granddaughter, Violet, to promise her that they will find Shirley and bring her home. As women, you know, firekeepers, you have to follow it through. I was about 20. At that age, I thought it would be easy.

I didn't think I would get old looking for Shirley. The first trip, driving those 12 hours to Vancouver, I thought, we'll find her. We would save money for gas and lodgings and meals, and then we would go. Every year, Violet and Aunt Belle make the trip from Alberta to Vancouver in search of Shirley.

Shirley is an adult who chose to leave her family farm. The police have more pressing cases to focus on, so her family investigate on their own. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. Where do you look? We covered hostels, we covered hospitals, but we didn't find her. At one point, I hired a couple of former beat cops that used to work on Vancouver East Side. They didn't find her.

I think the realization came that she was no longer with us. We have very few photos of Shirley. Shirley's mother's house burned down. Everything was destroyed. So we relied on the one photo of Shirley where she's wearing an Asian outfit. That was the only one that we used when we showed her picture. After 10 long years of fruitless searching, Violet feels in her heart that Shirley is probably dead.

So she begins looking for her aunt in graveyards in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. We actually walked rows and rows among the gravestones. One day, I seen a grave. It said Shirley Ann, and the same year she was born, we spoke with the caretaker, only to find it wasn't her. In the early 90s, Shirley's mother's health begins to fail. She started having Alzheimer's. It was very, very sad. Her mother passed away in 1992, but we didn't give up. Creator watches and listens to everything. Another decade passes, and in 2003, Kern County establishes a cold case unit.

They revisit the Kern County case and discover that the original investigation had not gone to Seattle despite the victim's tattoo that said Seattle on it. They are eventually able to determine that the tattoos were likely done in Seattle, but no other leads turn up. They ran new inquiries on missing persons and new fingerprint inquiries. They got no results from any of that. After almost 30 years of searching for Shirley together,

tragically, her sister Belle dies in 2011. It was just on me now. I felt the whole world fall on my shoulders. That same year, investigator Steve Rhodes retires from the Sheriff's Department and begins working with the Ventura County District Attorney's Cold Case Unit. Almost immediately, he begins reinvestigating the

Ventura-Jane Doe case. DNA evidence that had been collected in 1980 from the rape kit and from the victim's clothing was submitted to CODIS for analysis using the newer DNA techniques. CODIS is a database of DNA samples from people who have been convicted of crimes. It's a resource that had not been yet established in 1980, but 33 years later the investigators get a hit on the rape kit from Jane Doe Ventura. That DNA match was to a convicted felon named Wilson Schuist. In 2013, Wilson Schuist is locked away behind bars in state prison, serving a life sentence for a string of sexual assaults.

Ventura County District Attorney John Barrick recalls something else was discovered through CODIS. And they also learned that there was a previous CODIS hit for Wilson Schuess to a Jane Doe in Kern County. It turns out that Wilson Schuess is a serial rapist. He was arrested in 1977 for the kidnapping and rape of a young woman who had been left for dead.

He was sentenced to two years in state prison for that crime. And in June 1980, he was released on parole. This piece of information tells the investigators that Schuist was in the area right around the time of the Jane Doe murders. And DNA evidence proves that he had sexual contact with both victims. The detectives know that even with his record of sexual assault, the evidence doesn't prove that he killed the women. On September 17, 2013, Schuist is questioned by the investigators. He denies knowing them,

denies ever seeing the victim. Once they learn that there were two potential victims, it makes that person a serial killer, and it creates a heightened sense of necessity to solve this case. Investigator Rhodes wants more evidence. Steve Rhodes called Kern County Sheriff's Department. He gets their case file,

and he notes that Kern County detectives did interview Wilson in 2008. During his interview, Wilson mentions that he's living with a family called the Bells for approximately one month during the time period when the two victims were found murdered, Steve realized that Kern County detectives had never actually tried to track down the Bell family.

Rhodes begins scouring for phone numbers on the Internet and finds a small town in Oklahoma called Ardmore. Detectives from the local police station are assigned to go speak with the Bells at the address Rhodes provides. The detective knocks on the door and says, do you remember a subject named Wilson Schuess? It's 33 years later. And her eyes light up and she's like, have I got a story for you. grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you can be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance. It's easy and you could

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A woman named Carolyn Bell is eager to speak with the detectives about Wilson Schuist. She tells them that she met Schuist through a prison pen pal program, and he came to stay with her and her three sons during the summer of 1980. In the middle of July, Carolyn had to leave town for a few days and Schuist stayed home with her sons.

When Carolyn comes back, things aren't working out between him and her. She boots him out. Approximately two weeks later, she pulls out the vacuum and her sons say, stop, don't vacuum. And her oldest son informs her that it's full of blood.

The children tell her while she was away, Wilson disappeared for a day or two. And when he came back, he told the kids, hey, I hit a deer and I put the deer in the backseat of my car and it bled all over the place. And so I need you guys to clean it out. The detectives speak with Carolyn's youngest son, Scott. Scott says, is it because of that woman he killed in Bakersfield? Scott told us that Chouest had said he had picked up some broad in a bar,

took her out to the country, and killed her. Chouest told Scott that he then dumped her body in the middle of nowhere. It all came together. This has to be Jane Doe Kern. I came back to California. I'm very, very confident in this case. It's time to take this case to the district attorney for filing.

With the district attorney's approval, the detectives head to Corcoran State Prison to speak with Schuist. They tell him about the DNA evidence and the statements from Carolyn Bell and her sons. Schuist denies any involvement, but not long after the interrogation, heuist is taken to trial and is found guilty of the murders of the Ventura and Kern County Jane Does. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life without the possibility of parole, but we still wanted to know the identity of these victims.

We decided to do something I've never done before or since. We went to Wilson to see if he would tell us. And he told me that he picked up Jane Doe Kern County at a bar in Hanford. He didn't know who she was. I asked him where he got Jane Doe Ventura County from, and he told me he found her hitchhiking in Visalia. I felt it was important to find out who these women were, and I'm sure there's some family out there that are wondering, where did she go? I want to answer that question.

Investigator Rhodes begins working on the notorious Golden State Killer case in 2016. And during the investigation, he heard about genetic genealogy and how it could help them identify the Jane Doe victims. He reaches out to the DNA Doe Project and asks them if they would take the case on. The DNA Doe Project's work is a mix of DNA sequencing, genealogical family trees, and detective work. DNA Doe researcher Trish Hurtubise has helped solve cold cases before,

and the Jane Does in this case resonate with her. My name is Trish Hurtubese has helped solve cold cases before, and the Jane Does in this case resonate with her. My name is Trish Hurtubese, and I am a volunteer investigative genetic genealogist with the DNA Doe Project. It's an organization that works between law enforcement agencies and medical examiner offices. My mother was Chippewa, and that is the culture that I have always associated and medical examiner offices. My mother was Chippewa,

and that is the culture that I have always associated the most with. In the late 60s, my mother gave birth to a baby boy, and this baby was taken away from her. The 60s Scoop was an initiative in Canada to remove Native children from their homes and to place them with non-Native families. Finding out I had a half-brother out there somewhere,

it became my mission to find him. It took over a decade, but the moment I located my half-brother, I was excited, I was happy. What I love about genealogy research is like a puzzle or it's like a mystery. So I am also a team leader for Indigenous cases. We take cold case files where the extra step of the genetics could help bring their name back. I am currently involved

with researching unidentified victims. Indigenous women have been going missing for decades. A mother or a sister would report them missing and law enforcement would try to justify why they went missing. They ran away or they're into prostitution. We're dealing with remains that have been discovered decades ago, and now we have the technology to be able to revisit and say, is their DNA on file? It's now 2020 in Princeton, British Columbia, and Trish and DNA Doe Project sketch artist,

Carl Koppelman, get to work on the Kern County Jane Doe case. The team creates a sketch of the unidentified victim and shares it on Facebook to try to reach as many people as possible. Violet Suse has never given up hope that she would find her aunt Shirley, and she had a feeling that a sketch she saw on a news report years earlier was of her aunt. But that victim had called themselves Becky Ochoa. At a conference in 2020, Violet speaks about the promise she had made to find her aunt Shirley. And a few days later, she gets an email from a woman who had been in attendance. She said, look on Facebook. And there was that picture that I seen,

the one that they call Becky Ochoa. And I'm like, oh my God. And I said, I know it's her. I know it is her. And then when I seen the tattoos, I couldn't believe it. The person from Jane Doe Project asked me to upload my DNA. She said, it's her. I cried. I laughed.

I mean, it was just crazy. A lot of emotions. Yeah. When I found out that it was Shirley, my sister, her daughter, and my daughter, we traveled down to California, and we met up with the local elders there, and we did a little ceremony for her. In July 2021, 41 years after the murder, Kern County Jane Doe was identified as Shirley Suse.

Wilson Shua's second victim is not yet identified. Investigator Steve Rhodes has his own promise he hopes to keep. When I heard that we had identified Shirley, I felt so good for Violet, but we're still trying to identify Jane Doe Ventura County. With the DNA Doe Project, we have traced her family line out of Guatemala into New Mexico, and it's starting to look like she might have ties to the Los Angeles area. I believe we're very close to finding out who she is. To give back her name, it just ends a pledge that I had made to all my victims.

I'm going to do my best to seek justice for you, and that's my service to my community. Anyone with information pertaining to the Jane Doe Ventura County case is asked to contact the Ventura County District Attorney's Office at 805-654-2500. Shirley's loved ones hope that her remains can be brought to the reservation for a proper native burial. For every nation members in our community, wherever they've journeyed home to the spirit world,

we always bring them home. We need to honor her with our traditional ceremonies and to send her back to Mother Earth and for her to rest in peace. Shirley's mom said, find her and bring her home. Bringing her home, When that is complete, then I'll feel that my promise is completed. 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. To be continued... get married or Idris Elba and Gabrielle Union in the Tyler Perry directed film Daddy's Little Girls. Plus, Pluto TV has hundreds of channels with thousands more movies and TV shows available on live and on demand.

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