Cold Case Files - Suspicious Minds

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Just after the last day of school in 1984, 15-year-old Reesa Trexler is found murdered in her grandparents' home; for decades, a stalled investigation only fuels the town rumor mill, pointing an accusing finger at Reesa's 13-year-old sister, Jodie. Check out our great sponsors! Clare: Go to Clare.com/coldcase for 10% off your order! ClickUp: Sign up at ClickUp.com and use code "coldcase" to get 15% off their massive Unlimited Plan! KiwiCo: Get your first month of ANY crate line FREE at KiwiCo.com/coldcase  SimpliSafe: Get 40% off your order when you visit SimpliSafe.com/coldcase  June's Journey: Download June’s Journey today! Available on Android and iOS mobile devices, as well as on PC through Facebook Games! Progressive: Quote at Progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive!

An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. Me and my sister shared the same bedroom our whole lives. We were very close. Risa was just a beautiful person, and she had been brutally murdered. I miss Risa every day. But at some point, the police put their focus on one thing,

and that was that I had killed my sister. A 15-year-old girl had been killed, and I thought that soon they were going to catch the person, and it was all going to be over. But it never happened that way. There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America. Each one is a cold case. This is one of those rare stories. It's June 15th, 1984 in Salisbury, a small town in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Salisbury, North Carolina is not a tiny town, but it's small.

Small enough where we could run around and do what we wanted and not have to worry about anything. We had only been out of school one full week. It was a Friday and it was a beautiful day, a hot day in the South. Summer vacation is just getting started for 13-year-old Jodi Trexler and her older sister, 15-year-old Risa. Jodi will be starting high school in the fall and Risa will be a junior. She was the more good-natured person between the two of us. Her side of the bedroom was always the neat side. She always had her bed made, everything stacked up perfect. My side of our room was a mess. She wasn't as wild as I was as a kid. Probably a little typical

sibling jealousy. She was the older sister. She was cool. She was pretty. I mean, sure, I'd get a little jealous if she got to do stuff that I couldn't do. But nothing out of your ordinary, typical sisters. We were very close. One of my favorite memories of Risa to this day is watching thunderstorms. At night, when storms would come, we would cut the lights off and lay in our beds or lay on the floor and watch the storms through the window, the lightning and the thunder.

Like typical teenage sisters, Jodi and Risa had drifted apart a little bit as Risa wanted to hang out less with her baby sister and more with her high school friends. Risa had invited a few friends over to their house and Paul Rogers remembers that day well. Risa and I were in the same grade together, and we lived about a half a mile from each other. Risa had cable. We didn't have cable at my house. We were hanging out, watching MTV, which was very exciting at the time. That was new then. It was just a regular day.

It was comedy of the older sister and the younger sister, like, leave us alone. We're grownups watching TV, having fun. I can actually see Risa in the big chair, kind of balled up with the remote, just running things. We hung out a lot and Risa was just a great friend and loved everyone, and she was so alive and fun and wonderful. Jodi remembers Risa's friend group. Paul was the cool guy from California, had the long hair and skateboarder and punk rock.

Jim, he was the clown. He was very funny. I think he always had a little secret crush on Risa, but I think he knew that that was something that could never be. Salisbury is a tight-knit area that's big on community spirit, but the economic divide between Salisbury's haves and have-nots is hard to ignore. WBTV reporter David Wissonent sheds light on the situation at the time. Salisbury was known for being the home of one of the largest grocery store chains in the country. And there were a lot of folks, particularly in the 80s, that made millions of dollars on the stock from that grocery store chain.

And that's what Salisbury was known for. Jody and Risa live on the wrong side of the tracks, as Paul puts it. It's a poor neighborhood, but most of their family live on the same street, including their grandparents. At 3 p.m., Risa tells her friends that her soaps are about to start, and Paul and Jim decide that is their cue to leave. Paul has to go to work anyway, so they say their goodbyes. A little while later, Jodi realizes that Risa has left the house too, and she thinks that she probably just went next door to their grandparents' house. I decided to walk over, and I walked about halfway, about right past this crank myrtle tree,

and then I realized both the cars were gone. Their front door was closed, so I turned around and walked back home. Jodi assumes her older sister has gone to run some errands with their grandparents and thinks no more of it until 5 p.m. when she hears a scream from next door. It had only been maybe a couple hours from the time our friends left. I was in my room listening to the radio. I think I talked to a couple friends on the telephone.

Where I sat on my bed from that window, I could see my grandparents' house entirely. And that was when I saw my grandfather come running out of the house screaming. So I ran over there, and I ran into the house, into the living room first, and I didn't see anything. I was just looking around everywhere. I still had no idea what was going on. And when I turned a corner and saw into the spare bedroom, it was bloody. It was a mess.

My sister was mostly covered by a blanket, so I could see her hair and part of her face. I remember having to beg a police officer to tell me if she was dead or not. I was in more or less some kind of trance. Jodi and Risa's mother, Vicki Oates, can't forget seeing her daughter's lifeless body in her parents' house. When I got back to the house,

I saw my father standing out on the front porch, and he was screaming, and I just jumped out of the car. I was thinking it was my mother, something that happened to my mother. For some reason, I remember being on my hands and knees. I don't know how I got on my hands and knees, but I remember crawling up to hands and knees. I don't know how I got on my hands and knees. But I remember crawling up to her body, laying there. Just horror, horror.

I still have flashbacks. Her eyes were open. She looked just like a little china doll. And I knew by looking at her eyes that she was gone. I just lost it, got hysterical, and just ran out of the house. I just ran and ran. My brother pulled up beside me in his pickup truck. Then he took me home. When I got back, my house was already full of people,

police cars everywhere. Rowan County Sheriff's Department Detective Rick Thibodeau responds to the call that comes in just after 5 p.m. When he arrives at the scene, he is stunned by what he sees. I walked in there and I was just horrified. She was on the floor, fully nude, multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple stab wounds to her body. There was a stab wound next to the neck and that blade was inside her shoulder, left inside. We found some cement on her right leg. It was highly likely that she'd been assaulted. The thing I'll remember most about this case is seeing a young 15-year-old had a full life and someone to go and brutally kill her and left her like she's a piece of wood. The police office

would be tough, you know, it doesn't let him bother him, you know, and that's not true. I just can't comprehend me driving to my house, and my daughters are at home, and one of them's been murdered. Can you imagine that? No, no way. I mean, that's devastating. Reese's body is taken to the morgue

while Detective Thibodeau and his team search for clues. There's no sign of a forced entry at all, and the fingerprints come back to match those who lived in the house. A hair, believed to have been from an African-American man found on Risa's body, gives some hope. But it's missing the roots, so it has no forensic value. Back then, you could have hairs and fibers, but no DNA back then. We had minimal evidence besides the body itself.

Nothing. Zero. At the morgue, the medical examiner finds multiple stab wounds, three of which were very deep. The final blow had lodged the knife into Reese's shoulder and severed her vertebrae. A vaginal swab picks up traces of semen, along with the semen found on her leg. They knew that there had been intercourse. They never could prove whether it was something consensual or whether she had actually been raped. But I knew my sister. Our family knew her.

We knew she had to have been raped. Nothing had been stolen from the house, and Risa was still wearing her jewelry when she was found. With very little evidence to point to a killer, investigators begin to focus on the last people to see Risa Trexler alive. I knew that someone had killed my sister. I had no idea who. I remember there being so many people. I think a lot of it was just people from the neighborhood that had come idea who. I remember there being so many people.

I think a lot of it was just people from the neighborhood that had come running up. I'm just wondering about everyone. Everyone I saw, I'm wondering, could 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. The investigators start trying to eliminate people from the inquiry, and they head out to find her friends Paul and Jim. I was at work after leaving Reese's house, and all of a sudden the police came in, grabbed me, and started questioning me.

And that's how I found out she'd been murdered. Overwhelmed, shocked, surprised. I don't know how to explain. It's a carefree day, and then boom, you're taken away. Somebody needed to get arrested for this. I was petrified it was going to be me. I was contemplating leaving the country, and I hadn't done anything. That's the level of fear I had.

The police find nothing to link Paul or Jim to the murder, but they never publicly eliminate them from the investigation. If it appears that you can't clear them, they're still suspects. That's why you continue doing the investigation. If it appears that you can't clear them, they're still suspects. That's why you continue doing the investigation. Rumors swirl in the small community of Salisbury. Everyone has a theory as to who killed Risa. That Paul used the sandwich knife to kill Risa. That it had to be the family. That, you know, she had a boyfriend. That my grandfather caught her with someone and got mad. It was a very surreal time because there was so much misinformation.

Rumors are flying around. Fingers are pointing. It was crazy. I even heard rumors about my grandfather, that he had been molesting us, which none of that was true. Our grandfather would have never hurt us in any way whatsoever. Risa's grandfather, Walt Monroe, had found her body, and so he was also questioned. When Walt left, Risa was alive. She was happy and in good spirits. And when he came back,

he found her dead. And when I interviewed him, he was very cooperative. He had a hard time to be interviewed. He was tore up very bad. I mean, it was really sad to see him. When you're kind of accused of being involved with a homicide, it's your granddaughter. It's hard to live with, but he told the truth. And that, to me, just about cleared Walt. Walt was at the grocery store when the murder occurred, and his wife was at the hair salon.

Their alibis were airtight. The toll Risa's murder takes on her family is immeasurable. Not only have they lost a beautiful, kind, and caring girl, but it seems that everyone has fallen under a cloud of suspicion that just won't shift. Four days after the murder, June 19th, Risa's family gathers to say their final goodbyes. There was thousands of people there, people lining the streets.

It was just big to deal. This was one of the biggest things that had ever happened in Salisbury. People that didn't know us, had never heard of us before, wanted to be there. Jim and I were pallbearers. Very somber, somber, angry day.

It was just emotions flying. Risa is buried at Chestnut Hill Cemetery after a service at Messiah Lutheran Church in Salisbury. With thousands of eyes on the family, 13-year-old Jodi holds her emotions back. But WTV reporter David Wissonet remembers how that shifted the suspicion onto the victim's younger sister. So people were looking at this young girl and expecting her to act in a certain way

to mourn the death of her sister. And when she didn't do that, that made her a suspect. And I think maybe police listened to that. They had to pursue every lead they had, and those were the kind of leads they were getting then. Jodi was home alone when her sister was murdered next door, meaning she had no alibi. They were saying in that 45-minute period of time, I was able to go overpower my sister, do the damage that was done to her. I had no wounds, cuts, anything defensive on me. None of it made sense.

The rumors were coming from everywhere. But Risa's best friend, she was a big facilitator of a lot of these rumors. Her mother actually worked for the post office. I know that the detectives spent a lot of time at the post office. They would go up there. They were in close contact with all the reporters. They would tell everyone how I had done it. Everyone begins to suspect that Jodi killed her sister, and the police only fuel the fire by releasing statements that hint towards a female suspect. 13-year-old Jodi is isolated

and ostracized as a result, and the relentless questions and requests from the police become hard to bear. They tried to come up with so many, so many things. They claimed to have found a fingernail broken off that was in the bedroom. Very possibly could have been. My sister and I were in that room all the time. But I was made to give fingernail samples, hair samples, pubic hair samples, saliva samples. That's not something easy for a 13-year-old to have to cope with. And you're wondering, are they going to arrest me and put me in jail? The police suspect that Jodi killed her sister with the help of a male accomplice. Risa and Jodi's mother, Vicki, is conflicted. She's grieving over one daughter's death

and trying hard not to believe that her other daughter could be responsible for it. In the early stages, I trusted the police, but it seemed that they didn't want to do anything except talk to me about Jody. And I started asking Jody the questions that the police asked me. What did you do that day? What did Risa do that day? Until it just got to where she didn't want to talk to me anymore. I knew in my heart that she didn't, but the police put such a doubt in my mind about Jodi that I was almost suicidal. It feels like a betrayal to Jodi, and the relationship becomes increasingly strained

as she's convinced no one believes her. From my point of view, I'm your child. Why can't you believe me? I'm here in front of you telling you, I've told you a million times, you're my mother, you're supposed to believe me. I just couldn't understand that she could be believing the police and all these other people over me. I used to block it out and not think about it. I was a messed up teenager. You lose all your friends,

you start getting into a lot of things. I was angry at my mom, angry at my family, angry at the police, angry at everybody. Jody ran away one time and called me and told me she wasn't going to come back until we could sit down and not have to not me not interrogate her anymore. It tore my relationship with Jody. Things get said that one might take the wrong way,

and the doubt just draws a line between you. Investigators continue to pursue leads for two years, interviewing hundreds of people and exhausting every investigative technique available to them. But they come to a dead end. Despite five witnesses reporting that they saw a black male running from the area, the investigation had seemed to zero in on Jodi Trexler as the only suspect in her sister's murder. Without any closure, Risa's family feels let down by the police. Years go by. The hurt didn't go away. The hurt just stayed. Christmases were very hard. Every holiday was hard, in fact.

I had come to the conclusion that it wasn't going to be solved. I had just about resigned myself to that fact. While the case goes cold, gossip about Jody and her family continues to simmer on. In the absence of someone being arrested, you have to talk about somebody. But there were times over the years that different detectives wanted to look at that case just because it was so high profile. And every time they would do that, when they would go back out and talk to people, rumors would start up again.

Oh, did you hear the police were over there talking to her? Jodi loses faith in the police, as does her family, and the cloud of suspicion follows Jodi for decades. It carried over into my adult life quite a bit. Seems like everywhere I've worked, there's always been someone who would find out who I was, and I've been called axe murderer. I've been called so many names. I've had neighbors scream at me and call me murderer. She was my sister. I loved her very much. By 2010, with the rise of social media,

the gossip about Risa's murder is posted on a global platform. Right after Facebook started getting big, I happened to see different posts about my sister. And they have Facebook groups against me. And Risa's supposed best friend at the time she passed. She was the leader of the Facebook hate group. So I joined it. And then I was kicked out of it.

It's now 2017, and Jodi is determined to clear her name and find the truth about her sister's murder. It just makes you mad when you want to set everyone straight and you want to tell the world this did not happen and you really have no way of making them believe you. It angers you. So many times I'd lay there and think, wow, I wish I could shut some of these people up.

And so one day, Dr. Phil happened to be on TV. I would just see him doing polygraphs on so many people. I just happened to send them an email that I just pretty much spilled out just the situation that my sister had been brutally murdered when we were kids, and I grew up taking the brunt of the blame, and it had affected my life.

I never expected anyone to respond, but they didn't. Jodi and Vicky's relationship has improved over the years, but Vicky is unsure about her daughter going on national television. She fears that it will just drag up all of the bad feelings again. I think it made my mother realize a little bit more just how it felt for me. I've had a lot of resentment towards her over this, but she's still my mother. I love her. Jodi just wants to prove that she did not kill her sister. And in 2018, she undergoes a polygraph examination on the Dr. Phil show. The results show that Jodi had been telling the truth for 34 years,

and the media coverage puts pressure on the local cops in North Carolina to reopen the case. The TV appearance not only prompts the police to reconsider their initial suspicions, but it brings old friends back into Jodi's life and gives people an insight into what she had been carrying for three decades. Paul Rogers lost contact with Jodi in the aftermath of Reese's murder. But he knows what it's like to carry the blame for the unspeakable act. I believed a rumor mill. I thought Jody had done it. That's what the town was telling me.

That's what my parents were telling me. Imagine being in a town of 30,000 people with everyone blaming you. Every restaurant you go into. Everywhere you go and, everywhere you go, and no one supported you for all these years. Reese's murder and the investigation haunted the friends that were with her that day, especially Jim, who found himself struggling with addiction. Hey, Paul, this is Jim.

Going back into another rehab. I love you like a brother. And I hope that we can get past this. And the alcohol and the drugs finally caught up to him. He died when he was like 48 years old. Seeing Jody on TV made Paul realize that the rumors about Reese's death just didn't make sense anymore. And he felt awful for ever believing them.

I wake up and I have a long post, public post on my Facebook from Paul just apologizing. It was just one of the nicest things I had heard from anybody. And I remember talking to Jody on the phone, first time we've talked in 34 years, and I just started apologizing. After we got over the initial, I'm sorry, Jody and I started investigating who we thought could have possibly did it.

We started going old boyfriends, family, neighbors, anyone that would have a reason to kill Risa. While Jodi and Paul conduct their own investigation, the Salisbury police assign a new detective to review the case. Detective Travis Schulenberger reaches out to Jodi within days of the episode airing. Jodi is apprehensive to trust the police again, but she wants to find out who killed her sister, so she agrees to take another polygraph with the police examiner. Jodi passes the polygraph test administered by police. It's enough for the investigators to review the evidence that had been stored away since 1984.

The initial crime scene investigators did an outstanding job not knowing what technology would be available in 2018. But, you know, now we've got a chance. There was semen in the blood on her body. There's semen on the vaginal swab. And we got in touch with North Carolina State Crime Lab and got it submitted. You know, just please let us get a DNA profile. A week later, Detective Schulenberger gets the report that he's been waiting for. A DNA profile was constructed from the semen sample, and investigators searched through the national database looking for a match.

Now, in 2018, DNA technology and databases have come a far way since the murder happened, giving hope to finding true justice in this case. DNA technology and databases have come a far way since the murder happened, giving hope to finding true justice in this case. The DNA profile is returned, and it's clear that it belongs to an African-American male. But no match is found in the police database, so Detective Schulenberger widens the search using the relatively new science of familial DNA testing. And I worked with another crime lab out of state to have the genealogical DNA work done, and they were able to look at relatives. They're able to deduce it down to a specific person. The agonizing wait pays off when the genealogists are able to reverse-engineer the suspect's family tree using public DNA databases.

Parabon Nanolab's chief genetic genealogist, C.C. Moore, works on the case and narrows it down to a man who had no known connection to a who killed her big sister Risa on that summer day 35 years earlier in 1984. 40-year-old Curtis Edward Blair was working at the Frito-Lay factory, just a block away from the murder scene, with direct access to the factory from the street where Risa was killed. Blair remained an enigma for the detectives who tried to track him down. He had lived in Salisbury for a long time before moving to California, so Detective Schulenberger combs through old court records from coast to coast and finds that Blair had a string of arrests in New York and California, including a conviction for assault with a deadly weapon. Just as Reese's family gets closer to justice, a shocking discovery deals a crushing blow.

Curtis Edward Blair died of heart failure in 2004, and the answers to the questions Jody had been waiting decades to ask had died with him. Throughout all of this, she kept thinking, one of these days when it's solved, we're going to get to sit down and look this person in the face and ask some questions, but we don't get to ask a lot of the questions that we really want to know.

We'll never have those answers. Detectives are able to completely clear Jody's name, though. After exhuming Blair's remains, they compare his DNA to the sample found on Reese's body. And it's a definitive match. Now, people who have been under this cloud of suspicion for 35 years are out from under it now, and it's a definitive match. Now people who have been under this cloud of suspicion for 35 years are out from under it now, and it's gone. People in the community can stop talking about this family. They didn't do it. This guy did.

He stole part of my life. It'll never be over, because my daughter died that tragic way, that horrible way, and it'll always be in my mind how she suffered. I'll always think about that. Even though it's solved and questions are answered, that longing for that person just never goes away. I don't like the word closure. It's just something someone made up one day and thought it would give people some relief,

but it doesn't. You know, your sister's still never going to come back. That's never going to change. 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. you