Crime Junkie - BONUS: Possible Bell Victims

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

After Larry Gene Bell is arrested, investigators dive into his past and uncover three unsolved cases that are eerily like the two he’s convicted of. In this bonus episode, we cover the stories of the three women who detectives believe were killed by Bell.If you have any information about the disappearance of Denise Porch, Sandee Cornett or the murder of Beth Hagen, you can call Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/audio-extra-possible-bell-victims/ 

Hi, crime jankies. Just me, Ashley Flowers, dropping in your feed on a Sunday for a little celebratory surprise. I am really grateful to all of you who have been showing up for me and buying my book All Good People Here. I am extra grateful for those of you who have been leaving reviews wherever you bought it or on Goodreads and telling your friends to read the book so you can talk about it. I didn't know how to thank you properly, podcast style, other than giving you a little extra content.

So I wanted to give you the audio extra to last week's episode that was originally behind our paywall in the fan club. I have never seen you guys go so wild for a case like you did last week. So many of you said that it was probably your favorite episode of all time and I'd love to take credit, but I know it was probably Mr. Mindhunter John Douglas Sir who brought the magic. Now you'll still get a brand new full episode tomorrow morning, so just sit back and enjoy this extra surprise.

And again, thank you so much for your incredible outpouring of support on my first novel All Good People Here. I mean, I knew you guys would have my back, but man, you never cease to amaze me. I love you all. Thank you. Hi, Crime Genkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers and this is the bonus episode that we're releasing along with our wide release episode about Sherry Smith and Deborah Helmick. So if this is the first time you're hearing those names, you got to go back and listen

to that episode first because you'll be completely lost if you don't. And trust me, this is a story you do not want to miss. So when we left off, I talked about how there are three more missing and murdered women who police think could be connected to Larry Jean Bell. And even though he was never officially charged with any of these crimes, the similarities are just too strong not to at least talk about. These are the stories of Denise Porch, Beth Hagen, and Sandy Cornette. It's about 8 p.m. on Thursday, July 31, 1975, and a young man named Dean Porch is pulling

into the parking lot of his apartment complex in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's arriving home from work and he's expecting to have a normal night with his wife, Denise. As he walks up to their apartment, he sees a note on the door from Denise saying that she's out showing an apartment to a potential renter. She actually works as the resident manager there at their complex, so she'll often leave notes like this, especially if she thinks she's going to be gone past her usual hours. So Dean unlocks the door and goes in, but once he's inside, he notices some things are just out of place.

For one, both the TV and the air conditioning are on, which is unusual because they always turn everything off when no one's there. And next, he notices that Denise's purse is sitting on the dining room table, and even when she's showing apartments in her own complex, she usually takes that with her. But listen, he's already got it in his head that she's working late, so he's not really worried, especially when he checks her belongings and sees that the only things that are missing are a set of apartment keys and her notebook, the one that she uses to keep track of all the vacant apartments.

So these things being gone kind of track with where she's supposed to be. Just to be on the safe side, though, he heads downstairs to the model apartment that doubles as Denise's office, but she's not there either. By now, it's eight in the evening, and there's just this uneasiness that comes over him because even though they haven't been married long, he knows her routines and habits by now. And if she's not home and she's not in the model apartment, then where is she? And I mean, he saw her car in the parking lot, so it's not like she could be out running errands or something.

Dean decides to walk over to the apartment of the assistant resident manager, a woman named Pam Rig, thinking maybe she could have gone there after she finished the showing. But when Pam opens the door and he asks about Denise, she tells him that she hasn't seen Denise since like 3.30 that afternoon. According to an article by Roger McKeel for the Charlotte Observer, she says that a little after three, she saw Denise driving away from the model apartment towards another one of the buildings in the complex with a young man in her passenger seat. She assumed that she was just like showing this guy around, and sure enough, like 10-15

minutes later, she saw Denise driving back the way she came. Now, I'm not sure if the guy was still with her. There wasn't really anything in my research about that, but she hasn't seen her since. Dean isn't feeling any better by hearing this, but before he completely freaks out, he goes around to a few of their friends' apartments to see if Denise could be there. But one by one by one, he comes up empty. And finally, after he checks with their last friends, he makes the decision to call the police and report her missing.

When police arrive at their apartment, Dean stresses that it's not like his wife to just up and leave without telling anyone. And between the TV and the air conditioning left on, her car in the parking lot and her purse still sitting right here inside, he thinks that something terrible has happened to her. Unfortunately, the police actually agree, and so they call in backup and start searching for her that very evening. They organize a search of the entire complex, as well as a few surrounding fields.

And as the night goes on, they have about 25 people looking for Denise. As those physical searches are getting underway, investigators asked Dean about their life together. Because, listen, crime junkies didn't invent the husband always did it, the husbands did. But Dean says that things were good, they were actually great even. They had just celebrated their one-year wedding anniversary, and even though they were both only 21, they had been together since they were 16 and they had never had any major problems. By the time the investigators are finished talking to Dean, they're confident that

he didn't have anything to do with Denise's disappearance. But as the sun rises that next morning, they're at a bit of a loss. They think that Denise was most likely abducted even though there's no sign of foul play at the apartment, but if that was the case, they think that someone had to have heard or seen something. I mean, it was the middle of the day. But when they go door to door, asking residents if they have any information, they only come up with one lead that kind of tracks with what Dean heard from Pam.

Someone says they saw Denise showing an apartment to two men sometime between 2 and 3 o'clock, but nothing about it stood out as suspicious. I'm not even sure if they could give a description of the men they saw, because I can't find anything in my research stating what these two guys look like. So later that morning, the police issue a nationwide missing person report, hoping that the publicity will drum up some new leads. And sure enough, over the next week, more people start coming forward with tips. Jack Horan reported for the Charlotte Observer that another resident at the apartment complex

saw Denise walking out of the model apartment with a man towards a dark-colored sedan at 3.20 that Thursday afternoon. He says he didn't really get a good look at the guy, but he looked like he was maybe in his mid-20s, had dark hair, and was well-dressed. And then an employee at a nearby gas station calls and says that he gave directions to the apartment complex to two guys driving a dark sedan on the day that Denise went missing. Then another witness comes forward with what feels like their first really solid lead. A woman calls and tells police that on the day that Denise went missing, she was driving

along Interstate 77, which is a major highway that runs through Charlotte when she saw a woman who she says looks like Denise running down the road and chasing her was a man in a dark sedan. She describes the man as white with tanned skin, dark hair, and a slender build. And she didn't see what happened afterwards, but she was sure it was Denise that she saw. This is the first tip that places Denise outside of the apartment complex, and the description of the guy is detailed enough that they feel that the tip is credible. But here's the thing, the person who called in the tip said that they had other people

in the car with them, and when investigators go to corroborate the sighting with those other people, no one else remembers seeing a woman running down the highway. And that doesn't seem like a thing that you would just miss, though to be fair, no one's really paying attention to the road like the driver usually, like if it's not my job to keep the car on the road and everyone alive, my head is in space. So unless the woman like pointed it out to them, which I definitely would have, maybe they just didn't catch it. So police aren't 100% sure what to believe about this.

So while they don't completely discount the woman's story, they do take it with a grain of salt. Finally, about a week after Denise went missing, they get a tip from another resident who describes seeing the same man. Her name is Gail Lucas, and she says that about 2.30 that Thursday, her doorbell rang. And when she opened it, she came face to face with a man who matches the description that they're getting over and over again, this well-dressed man, tanskin, dark hair, although this time she describes him as having a mustache.

Gail says that as soon as the man saw her, he apologized and said that it was the wrong apartment, and then he left right after that, and she didn't really think anything of it until she saw him a little later that day, sitting in a dark sedan. So this is the guy, right? I can't remember the last time we had a story where all the witnesses' accounts matched to a freaking T minus this mustache, but honestly, I'll take it. So they got to find him now. To try and get the public to help them with their search, they get a sketch artist to

work with Gail to create a composite of what this guy looked like. And by the time they're done, they have two sketches, one with a mustache and one without, since none of the other witnesses seem to remember him having one. They push both of these out to the media who blasted across front pages of local newspapers the very next day, and sure enough, they get a call from the man claiming to be the guy in the sketch. He identifies himself as Steve Caldwell, and he says that he did visit the apartment complex on the day that Denise went missing, but he was only there to see a co-worker.

So the police ask him to come down to the station and give a statement, and when he pulls up, sure enough, dude's driving a dark sedan, the same car that almost every witness has seen. And again, he matches the physical description of the man that witnesses saw, too. He just doesn't have a mustache. He says that he did get to the complex at about five, not two-thirty, like Gail said, and accidentally went to the wrong apartment before he found his way to the person that he was actually there to see.

He also says that he didn't see Denise at all while he was there. And according to an article by Ron Alridge for the Charlotte Observer, the co-worker corroborates his story and his timeline of events. So eventually, he's cleared, although they do continue distributing the sketch of the man with the mustache just in case Steve isn't the same guy. Over that week, ground searches for Denise continue, and tips keep rolling in. A reward of $5,000 is established, which gets more people calling, but every single tip just leads to a dead end.

That is, until August 10th, when Denise's uncle, Powell, gets an unexpected phone call. It's a man saying that he has Denise, and he'll release her if he gets $50,000, which accounting for inflation would be over a quarter of a million dollars today. After he makes the demand, he hangs up, and Powell calls the police right away to report what just happened. But the investigators aren't sure of the legitimacy of this call from the start. I mean, again, it's been over a week since Denise went missing, and since the call are waited until after the reward was established, they think that whoever he is, he probably

is just taking advantage of the family's pain for financial gain. Also, the fact that he called Denise's uncle backs up that theory because his contact information is what they had published when the reward was announced. But just to be sure, and to catch any more calls that might come in, they put taps on all of the family's phones, again, just in case this guy calls back. And call back he does. He calls Powell several more times over the next month, and Denise's mom starts getting ransom letters as well.

Dean even reports getting a phone call from a man who tells him, quote, I hate to tell you this, but your wife's dead. And just as a side note, I mean, to me, if this doesn't sound like Larry Jean Bell, I don't know what does. I know asking for ransom isn't something that he was known to do, but there is just something about this call, specifically this one that stands out from the others, and I have not been able to get over it. Now, fortunately, after a few more calls, the man stays on the phone long enough for

them to trace the call to a telephone booth about an hour away. Of course, no one can get there quick enough to catch the guy in the act, sounding familiar. But they stake out the phone booth, and on September 10th, they catch someone making get another call to terrorize the family. But the guy making the call isn't Larry Jean Bell. It's a man named Edsel Brown. He's 51 years old, and when they arrest him and take him in for questioning, he denies having anything to do with Denise's disappearance.

And the more they look into him, the clearer it becomes that he's not an abductor. He's just a terrible, freaking person trying to get money out of a grieving family. And so, according to an article by Dennis Rogers for the Charlotte News, he is charged with multiple counts of extortion on both the federal and state levels. But frustratingly after this, the investigation stalls. Over the following months, police received tips about sightings of Denise throughout the Carolinas. They even get a tip about a guy in Texas who may have had something to do with her disappearance

because they, of course, follow up with each tip that they get, but time after time, they're left no closer to finding her. And again, her case goes cold. And that's how it stays. That is until Larry Jean Bell is arrested. The investigators on Denise's case got contacted by law enforcement working Larry's case. And after learning all about him and his MO, they think that he could be a possible suspect. See, when they were looking into Larry's past, they learned that he was living just

300 yards, yards people, from Denise's apartment complex at the time she disappeared. And the way she disappeared in the middle of the day out of the blue, it just fits. Now, they did get to ask Larry Jean Bell about Denise, but he denies having anything to do with her disappearance. And he kept denying all the way up to his execution. As far as I can tell, there hasn't been any physical evidence to support the theory that he killed her. But you can't ignore the similarities between her disappearance and Sherry's and Deborah's

murders. And listen, I am still hung up on that call that Dean got, because even though police caught the guy making the ransom demands, who's to say that there weren't two or that particular call couldn't have been from Larry? I don't know, I know I could totally be reaching here, but I feel like I can't be the only one who's thinking this. Despite this possible connection, Denise's case remains cold to this very day. But her family isn't the only one in the Charlotte area that doesn't have answers.

And the next story I want to tell you is eerily similar in all the worst ways. The next case that I want to talk about that could be connected to Larry Jean Bell is one that has very little reporting for it. And so it's going to be a lot shorter, but I think that just means it's that much more important to talk about because maybe if this case had gotten some, you know, even close to the amount of media attention as Denise, Sherry or Deborah, it could have been solved by now. So this story starts on the evening of December 18th, 1980.

So just to put it in perspective, this is a little over five years after Denise vanished, but this would be about five years before Sherry would eventually be abducted. So on this day, a man is walking in the woods just south of Charlotte, North Carolina looking for greenery that he can use to decorate for Christmas. And as he's walking, he spots something on the ground ahead of him. And when he goes to check it out, he is shocked to find a set of bones. Now, I'm not sure how many or which bones there are, but right away he realizes that they aren't from an animal.

So he runs and calls the police to report what he found. When police arrive and start inspecting the remains, they suspect foul play from the beginning because they spot an electrical cord still wrapped around this person's neck. As far as I can tell, though, they don't find anything else there at the scene that could give them any clue as to who this person is or even how long they've been there. When they take the remains back to their crime lab for analysis, they find that they're likely the remains of a young female, probably in her teens or maybe early twenties, but they don't learn anything else, notably her cause of death.

The cord around her neck indicates that she was strangled, but since the remains are completely skeletonized, they can't say that for sure. So even have a chance at finding out who killed this young woman, police first need to know who she is. So they start looking through local missing persons reports and comparing dental records when possible. It takes a few weeks, but finally in January, they get a match. And according to an article for the Charlotte Observer, the woman is identified as 17-year-old

Beth Hagan. When the investigators go to tell Beth's parents that they found her, they learn that the last time she had been seen was either August 11th or 12th of that same year, depending on which source you read. Her parents were the ones who actually reported her missing, although the actual timeline for when they filed the report is a little murky, too. Some sources say that she was reported missing on August 12th, but some say that the report wasn't actually filed until September 22nd.

I also can't find anything about the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, like where she was last seen, who she could have been with, I mean, there is nothing out there. And the actual investigation into her murder isn't well reported on either. At the time, I know police investigated several suspects, but I can't find any details about who they were or if they ruled them out. From what I can tell, the biggest lead that they ever got was when Larry Jean Bell was arrested. Because just like in Denise's case, when the investigators on Larry's case were looking

into his background and seeing if they could potentially connect him to anything else, they learned that he was living just a mile from where Beth's body was found. And she was a young blonde, so she fits his victim profile. Now, I can't find anything about whether they asked him about Beth specifically, like they did with Denise. I mean, I would imagine they did. But I do know that he never confessed to her murder by the time he was executed. And I wish I had more information to share about her, but it's all I can find.

Like I said, her story is massively underreported, and even though it's possible that Larry was the one who killed her, her family shouldn't have to settle for it's possible. They deserve to know exactly what happened to her. And so does the next family that I want to talk about. The next story starts four years after Beth was found. It's the evening of Sunday, November 18th, 1984, and a man named Michael Jeffcoat is working at Liberty Life Insurance. It's pretty late in the evening.

He got to work at 6.30 p.m. for his overnight shift, and so when he gets a moment, he calls home to talk to his fiance, Sandy. The phone rings and rings, but she doesn't pick up. Not a big deal. It's late. She's probably just gone to bed. The next morning, he's surprised to get a call from her co-worker saying that she didn't show up for work that morning.

Sandy also works in insurance. She's an adjuster at Gay and Taylor, Inc., and she is not the type of person to be a no-call-no show. So Michael calls one of Sandy's neighbors and asks him to go check on her. I'm not sure if Michael was worried at this point, but by the time the neighbor reports back, what he learns sends him into a full panic. The neighbor says that Sandy's car was still parked in the driveway, but she walked through the front door no problem because it was unlocked, which is a huge red flag because Sandy always

kept the doors locked. Inside, she didn't see anything out of the ordinary until she got to her bedroom. There, she found the contents of Sandy's purse dumped out on her bed, along with papers from her work. She said the TV at the end of the bed was left on, but despite all these signs that it seems like someone was just there, the neighbor could not find Sandy anywhere. So once he hangs up with the neighbor, Michael decides to call the police and report his fiance missing.

Later that same day, officers arrive at her house. And according to an article by Tex O'Neill and Pam Kelly for the Charlotte News, the whole scene tells them something is so wrong. It seems like Sandy just disappeared. Her keys and her driver's license are still in the house. There's no sign of Fort's entry. Only outside doors or windows, and it doesn't look like there was a struggle either. She is gone, literally just like evaporated into thin air.

So the police have Michael come back to the house and from what he can tell, the only missing items are her credit card and an audio recorder that she used for work. Now again, even though there are no signs of foul play, the police open an investigation into her disappearance. And the first person, obviously they talk to is Michael. They want to get a sense of who Sandy is, what their relationship is like, but he tells them that nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The two had spent the weekend with Sandy's parents to celebrate Thanksgiving early.

They got back to Sandy's house, you know, Sunday evening, they had dinner, and when Michael left for work at 6.30, everything was normal. He insists that disappearing like this is not something she would do. And as far as he knows, there isn't even anyone who would want to hurt her. She's also not someone who would just like open the doors to strangers, especially if she was home alone. And all of their neighbors and friends back him up. No one has anything bad to say about him or Sandy or even the two of them together.

And Sandy was super safety conscious, so police start to develop a theory that she was likely abducted by someone that she knew, someone she might have let into her house. They also think that since the voice recorder was missing, there might have been something on there that the abductor didn't want to leave behind. But despite this theory, they struggled to come up with a lead over the first few days. There is very little evidence in the house, and even though they talked to all of Sandy's neighbors, no one reports seeing or hearing anything suspicious. But then police get an eerie call three days later.

It's someone from Sandy's bank who's like, yes, someone just called here and gave us Sandy's account number and asked what the balance was in her account. They said that the voice sounded female, but right away the investigators don't think Sandy was the one who called. See, she kept meticulous records, so she wouldn't have needed to call her bank to check on her balance. You know, though, in my mind, there's like a thousand options. Is she being held and like forced to call so that the person can hear what her balance

is? Is someone pretending to be her? I have no idea. And as if this isn't confusing enough, then her credit card actually gets used, not once, but twice. Used on November 18th at 11.55 p.m. and on the 20th, it gets used four times throughout the day. Eyewitnesses at both scenes where the credit card was used reported seeing two people,

a man and a woman. The man is described like 5'10", clean shaven and driving a dark four-door car, maybe a Ford, but they can't be sure. They say that the woman is actually driving separately and she's described as about 5'7", with shoulder-length brown hair and driving a light compact car with North Carolina tags. Even though Sandy is a little taller than 5'7", she does match the rest of the description. And so the police think that the woman might be her, especially since whoever has her cards needs to know her pin in order to withdraw cash.

Now just as I know, all of my sources say credit card, but like I kind of got hung up on this because if she needed a pin to make withdraws, I associate that more with like a debit card. I tried to do some digging to figure out if you needed a pin for credit cards back in the day, but I couldn't find anything. I don't know that it matters too much. It was a debit card or a credit card, whatever. Anyway, they can't really be sure it's Sandy.

And even though this seems like a solid lead, Sandy's bank account is never accessed again. So despite their best efforts, police aren't able to track down the man and woman who used her card. And it's at this point that her case goes cold. That is, until you guessed it, Larry is arrested. And they learned something that's becoming a pattern. He lived just four miles away from her house, but it gets even a little more wild than that. He actually knew her and had actually been inside her home before.

According to an article for the Charlotte News, Sandy had met Larry through a former boyfriend and he had been over to her house for a birthday party like a few years before, not recently, but a while before. But you know, enough that he's been there, he probably knew where she lived. He probably knew the layout of her house. And this actually fits with the investigator's original theory about who might have taken her. She would have potentially opened the door to someone she knew, not a stranger, but

to her, Larry wasn't a stranger. Once they learn about this connection, they arrange an interview with Larry, which takes place on July 14th, 1985. In this meeting, Larry admits that he knows something about Sandy's disappearance and he says, God will probably let him say where her body is. He also tells them that when they find her, she'll have her hands folded like she's praying, which is a super eerie connection to Sherry Smith. But despite this creepy detail, Larry doesn't outright admit to the murder and he doesn't

tell them where her body is. Since he won't give them a straight answer, the investigators at the time think that he was just kind of stringing them along for his own benefit and trying to get some leverage that he could use to avoid the death penalty. And really, as time goes on, they start to doubt his involvement completely. But then in 1992, they get a tip that actually corroborates his claims. A man calls police and tells them that eight years ago, he and a friend were hitchhiking when Larry picked them up, drove them to a well in Cherokee County, South Carolina,

and told them that he had dumped two bodies down there. Now this is a completely bonkers story when I heard it. I was like, why wouldn't you call the police, I don't know, eight years ago? But whatever, this is the only lead that they've gotten in a while. So just in case they contact the person that the tipster was with, and this person is another person who confirms the story, heard the story, and also didn't call eight years ago. So police find this well, and they organize a huge search of the well itself and the surrounding area.

They are hoping to find Sandy, or maybe even Denise, but inside they only find animal bones. After this tip, Sandy's case goes back to being cold. Larry Jean Bell was executed without ever having confessed to Sandy's abduction and assumed murder, or Beth's, or Denise's. Even though there are so many similarities between the three that make police think he could have been involved, without a confession or any evidence, they're stuck trying to piece together theories and coincidences. But even though all three of these cases are cold, there is always hope that police will

get the tip that they need to crack them, even all these years later. So if you have any information about Denise's disappearance, Sandy's disappearance, and Beth's murder, you can call Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600. You can find all of the source material for this episode on our blog post at crimejunkiepodcast.com. And if you're one of like the eight crime junkies who hasn't picked up a copy of my new book yet, all good people here, run, don't walk, because everyone is already talking about the explosive twists and turns and that ending. Trust me, you don't want to be spoiled.

You can get it wherever books or audiobooks are sold. Crime Junkie is an audio check production. So what do you think, Chuck? Did you approve?