Crime Junkie - MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Davina Buff Jones

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

When Officer Davina Buff Jones is found dead in the middle of her shift on Bald Head Island, those in power are quick to rule her death a suicide. But the more her family learns about the circumstances surrounding her death, the more certain they are that someone got away with murder. If you have any information about Dee's death, you can submit a tip to the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Department at [phone].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/mysterious-death-davina-buff-jones/

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Delia D'Ambra. You guys, I had to bring Delia back for this one, because if anyone knows how to talk about fishy-as-hell investigations that happen in North Carolina, it's our girl Delia. And you guys, this one, this one is a doozy. I mean, I even went back and forth with the title trying to decide if this is a mysterious death or a full-blown conspiracy.

But I'll let you guys be the judge. This is the story of Davina Buff-Jones. It's a little after 11.45 p.m. on Friday, October 22, 1999. And a police officer named Keith Kane is in the middle of his overnight shift on Bald Head Island in North Carolina. He's sitting at the police station finishing his dinner while his partner, Davina Buff-Jones, who he and everyone else just calls D, is out on patrol. Now, it's been a pretty normal night so far, and both of them are anticipating

a quiet evening in the small, wealthy community that they patrol. Yeah, so this area is about five hours south of where I grew up, and it's really similar to my hometown in that I can't imagine a lot of the calls would be for anything other than, yeah, like a stolen golf cart or kids vandalizing or some sort of drunk driving incident. So I'd imagine really, really small stuff. Yeah, and that's normally what it is for them. But tonight is about to be very different,

because suddenly over the radio, Keith hears D call into dispatch. And what she says gets him up out of his seat and running to the Chevy Blazer that he's driving for the night. D gives her number 4206. And when dispatch confirms, she replies, quote, 10-4, show me out with three, stand by please. Which in layman's terms means that she's out there with three people. And then a few seconds later, she comes back on.

And I don't even have a gun to wrap all of it up. Right? Come on. Now, I know this is a little difficult to understand, but what she just said was, quote, there ain't no reason to have a gun here on Bald Head Island, OK? You want to put down the gun? Come on, do me the favor and put down the gun.

And then that's followed by that terrible high-pitched screech, like some sort of frequency interference. The dispatcher calls out her number several more times, but D doesn't respond. Now, at this point, Keith is already in his car, and he asked the dispatcher if she ever gave her location, because he wants to go find her. But dispatch says no.

And so Keith is left to just drive back and forth across the small town looking for his partner. Finally, seven minutes after D's last transmission, he spots taillights by the old Baldi lighthouse, which is this pretty popular tourist attraction. It sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, and when he pulls up, he spots the pickup truck that D was driving back into a nearby alley.

So according to a book titled Out With Three by a friend of D's who uses the pseudonym Elaine Buff, Keith gets out, grabs his flashlight, and he approaches her truck. Now, he sees that it's still running. Her parking lights are on, but there is no D. So he starts sweeping the area looking for her, occasionally radioing back to dispatch to keep them updated.

But after a few minutes, he has no luck, so he decides to head back to her truck just in case he missed something. And when he gets back, he spots something that he didn't see the first time, D's flashlight sitting on the passenger seat. Now, he knows that she wouldn't have gotten out of the truck without it, and so when he spots it,

it confirms his fear that something bad has happened to his partner. So he pairs into the darkness one more time. And this time, his light falls on something lying on the side of the road. At first, he thinks it's a pile of trash and leaves, but when he looks closer, he realizes it's D. She's lying on her stomach with her head turned to the left

and her handgun lying underneath her right hand. When Keith approaches her, he sees that her eyes are slightly open and there is a huge pool of blood underneath her head. Although in the dark, he can't exactly tell where it's coming from. He bends down to check her pulse, but he doesn't find one. And so he radios in that there's an officer down.

And so the dispatcher starts calling an emergency personnel, including the fire chief and police chief. Keith leaves D and repositions his vehicle to make it easier for emergency vehicles to get in there. And that's when he has this thought that makes his blood run cold. He realizes that whoever shot D might still be out there in the shadows waiting for more people to pass by.

And so instead of going back to D to start CPR or any kind of other life-saving measures, he positions himself on the passenger side of his blazer, kind of like opening the door and getting into its crease for protection until backup arrives. See, that's what I don't understand. To me, for him to take that position, he doesn't see anything that makes him feel

that there is a present threat. So the fact that he's just leaving her there and hiding, I don't understand that. That doesn't make sense. I don't either. I don't either because when I was originally looking at this case doing the research, I'm like, you were already walking around.

Everything was fine. There's no one in sight. You've been out there for a few minutes at this point. And usually, again, I'm going off of TV here, but usually you see when officers get in that position behind their door, that's when someone has a firearm actively coming after you. Your partner is laying potentially dead,

potentially in need of life-saving measures, and you're hiding until everyone gets there? Yeah. And then also when it talks about him repositioning his car, I understand he wanted to make way for what other emergency vehicles would come, but wouldn't he use his headlights to shine into the darkness, hopefully to identify some sort of clear and present threat?

I don't know, man. I have a lot of questions. So many questions. You're going to have more. Again, this is just the beginning. So at 12.06 a.m., Fire Chief Kent Brown is actually the first to arrive at the scene. And here's what, again, I think is also bizarre.

He joins Keith, like, crouched behind the door. What? Yeah, like, in my mind, I don't know if they're thinking this is just some active shooter who's, like, picking out random people. Yes. Again, that doesn't line up with Dee's call in. Like, I'm with three people, put that gun down.

I don't know why, and you would think, like, if there was a random shooter who's just picking off lone people in the dark, okay, you've got people, like, swarming to this area. Now, that person is long gone. Why are these two people still hiding behind the door? Yeah, a bad guy is not going to put himself in the middle of some sort of major police response.

Again, unless you're looking at an active shooter situation, which clearly this has very, very little indications of. He would, yeah, this person would have shot you when you were looking around for Dee. So either way, they're both sitting in this crease of the car. Keith is filling him in on what's going on, tells him that he couldn't find a pulse, but he says that he's not really sure

if he's correct anymore. He's so shaken by this whole thing that he thinks he could have maybe missed her pulse entirely. But Chief Brown is more concerned still about someone else being out there, and so he decides to treat the area as what he calls a hot zone, meaning that they need to proceed

like there is someone armed and dangerous in the area. Now, who gives the order for what happens next is a little unclear. According to Elaine's book, the paramedics arrive, and Chief Brown decides to have them remove Dee's body from the scene so they can examine her in a safer location. But according to an episode of Still a Mystery,

the sheriff of Brunswick County, this guy, Ronald Hewitt arrives and he gives the order to move her. Again, I'm not sure which is correct, but regardless of who makes the decision, the paramedics do as they're told, and they take Dee from the scene to awaiting ambulance, which speeds away towards the marina

to wait for a ferry so they can then transport Dee to a hospital on the mainland, which I also never thought about, like don't get hurt on an island, oh my God. Yeah, so that's exactly how it's like in a lot of places that I'm from, is you either have like a helicopter who comes and like touches down and gets you,

or you have to take a ferry, and yeah, it gets really complicated very easily. But I think there's two things that we need to discuss here, which is, first, Keith says that he was too afraid, and so is the fire chief, they're too afraid to like go check for her pulse and like do CPR or anything. Yet they're willing to let these paramedics

just like roll on out there in the middle of this quote, hot zone, and like, you know, do their thing, and apparently they face no threat. So like that, that's strange to me. Like if the cops want to keep themselves safe, like are they just letting these paramedics just like roll the dice?

Well, the thing that I don't know is like at that point, now that the paramedics are there, are there so many people and lights and sirens that they're confident this person is gone? But you're right, it doesn't like fully sit right with me. I don't know the details of like how this exactly unfolded. And then my other thing is that

they remove her body right away. Now I understand that, and I've seen that with even cases that I've investigated, where they are attempting life-saving measures, and so they are trying to rush them, but I think it's pretty clear in this case that she was deceased, or very little signs of life, and...

Well, I have to imagine, I have to imagine again, Keith is like, you know, he's in the heat of it, he's like, I can't remember if there's a pulse or not, like I don't even know which way is up, my partner is down, I'm terrified. But you would think that before the paramedics, like lift her and take her away

that they would have checked for a pulse, and if there was nothing they could do, why remove her? Or again, are we going back to like, everyone is so scared, they're literally just like, heave her on this pallet or whatever, and let's run, I don't know. My thing is that Keith clearly thought

that there was a person or persons who had done this to Dee. So that right there constitutes a crime scene for whatever factors. So the fact that they're moving her, I think, is a very bad choice because they're clearly anticipating it's a homicide or an attempted homicide at that. But again, I could also say it would be

possibly a good choice if there were any signs of life, like I get that they wanted to help her, but it is just very, very unfortunate. Okay, but you said something interesting there, that like Keith had to be thinking this is a crime scene. And again, if they're trying to save Dee's life, that is one thing. But what he does next does not make sense with that.

So once Dee is out of the scene, Keith decides to go in and remove Dee's gun from the scene. So he's too afraid to like go check for pulse. Now he says he does it because he's still worried that there might be someone else out there who could get it. So he like rushes from behind his car, truck, whatever, grabs the gun, takes it back to his vehicle, and at first places it on the ground,

but then shortly after he moves it to the floorboard to keep it safe. But again, this does not make sense to me. Like at this point, there's got to be a ton of people there. People already went and removed Dee. What part of this crime scene are you preserving and why are you so afraid that you can't check on your partner but not so afraid that you can go take her gun from the scene?

Does that make sense at all? No, it doesn't make any sense. I think when I go back to what this agency's size was, their experience, like these are telltale signs of someone who does not know what they are doing. This is someone who probably has never worked a crime scene or a homicide, certainly not of someone close to them. And so like I do think this is probably a really clear example

of just incompetence and sort of ignorance that you just don't know. So yeah, you could say maybe it's nefarious for some reason, like this kind of like bumbling of evidence, like, you know, moving it more than once. My question though is, you know, he's touching it, right? Like I guarantee he's not wearing any sort of gloves. No, he wasn't.

He was wearing no gloves. So he's ruining any chance to like gather fingerprints. Like again, the scene at this point is like severely compromised. But to your point, like we said at the top, right, these people on this like super wealthy island, they're not seeing homicide investigations. Like it's kids are out drunk, kids are vandalizing this. The golf cart got stolen, whatever.

But I don't know. Again, your profession is law enforcement. I think not moving the murder weapon once, but like twice. Like it feels a little intuitive. Sketch. It does. It's very sketch. So while Keith and Chief Brown are waiting for backup, the paramedics examine Dee's head wound more closely

while they're there at the marina. They find a single gunshot wound on the very back of her head, right at the center of her skull. Since she was laying on the right side of her face. Remember, she's like facing left. She has a lot of blood pooled there. But the only injury they find is that single bullet hole. Now they were never able to find any signs of life.

So just to be sure, they run two EKGs to check for a heartbeat. But when both tests show that she's flatlined, she's pronounced dead. But here's the thing. Before the ferry arrives and she can be transported to the hospital, a group of civilians happen upon her body. See, they had been at a local restaurant and had heard the gunshot. So they were actually evacuated to the ferry landing

so that they could leave the island. So they are there when the paramedics arrive and a few of them actually see her body lying uncovered after she's pronounced dead. And you might be wondering, because I certainly was, if she's been pronounced dead, why is her body not in a body bag to again preserve evidence? Why is she just like in the open for people to actually see?

Well, the answer's a little unclear here as well. Elaine's book says that EMS didn't have a body bag. So once she was pronounced dead, they covered her with a sheet. But again, when the civilians see her, she isn't covered. And by the time the ferry gets there, EMS realizes that, you know, she probably shouldn't make the trip to the mainland just there out in the open because exposing her to all of the elements

is going to contaminate any evidence still left on her body. So at that point, they take two sheets and basically like sandwich her between them for the ferry ride. So because of this, to me, it sounds like she was never really covered with that first sheet at all or maybe she was and then uncovered. I cannot be sure. But once these body arrives at the hospital,

the medical examiner makes a preliminary report before the pathologist starts the autopsy. But right away, he makes several mistakes that just don't make any sense. First, he significantly overestimates her height and weight. And we're not talking like a few inches or a few pounds here. D is just under 5 feet tall and weighs less than 100 pounds. But this ME notes her as being 5'4 and 140 pounds, which like, I don't know, I'm not an ME,

but you don't like eyeball that stuff, right? Don't they have like a scale? I don't understand how this happens. Yeah. I mean, every ME or forensic pathologist that I've ever interviewed, I mean, they have like a measuring tape. They measure the body when it comes in. And like, again, like sometimes there's variations

because after you die, like, you know, things do happen with like the way your body's positioned and things like that. So your height can be like a slightly bit off or like even weight, you know, depending on if someone's like, you know, 40 pounds. But like, no, like in my mind, I'm looking at this. I'm just going like this guy's scale is either just not calibrated properly

or to play devil's advocate, whoever in, you know, in her life that like said, she is this small, this tiny, like maybe that was slightly off. And then like the truth is somewhere in between. But like, I don't know. I feel like it's just really kind of shoddy measurements. Yeah. And we all know you've dealt with some interesting Emmys in your day.

Oh, yes. So it's not always on the up and up. But here's the most significant mistake that is made. And it comes when he notes the location of the gunshot wound on her head. Again, the only injury she actually has is that single entry wound on the very back of her skull. There's no exit wound. But the Emmy notes the entry wound as being on the right side of her head

just underneath her ear and completely makes up an exit wound that just isn't there. Now, all of this false information does end up getting fixed when her autopsy is performed later that morning. But it ends up having devastating consequences because when the news of that incorrect location of the gunshot wound, and again, this is where I'm like, was this dude just eyeballing stuff because I know the blood was on that side of her face.

But like, there's no hole. Yeah. Making up an exit wound, like, I mean, that's like basic, basic observance, especially to a skull because you do have these sort of flat bones that clearly show entry and exit. And this is what I can't write off as even you being just bad at your job. Like this, I don't know. This feels wrong in all of the worst ways.

So again, when this news comes out of this incorrect location, so people start hearing, I don't know how they're hearing, but this word is getting around that she was shot on her right side below her ear. And the investigators end up hearing this. So some people start to think that this might not have been a murder, but rather D died by suicide. But here's the thing, this scene back on Bald Head Island doesn't quite support that. And what they find there leaves them with more questions than answers.

At the crime scene, there are three groups of law enforcement officials working to process it. See, the Bald Head Police Department is too small to run the investigation on their own. So it falls to the Brunswick County Sheriff's Department and the State Bureau of Investigation, or SBI. Right off the bat, investigators at the scene find the pool of blood from where D's head had been, as well as drops of blood in between that pool and her truck. Now, they also find some blood on the left side of her truck and the back tailgate. They actually find a bloody handprint there.

So, Delia, again, what do you expect would be done with this scene? I would expect them to collect that blood to see what blood is hers. If there's foreign blood there, take some sort of impression of that bloody handprint or at least photograph it. I mean, all of the things that you're trained to do, right? Cool, cool, cool. Well, none of that happens. They don't collect any samples to test because as the rumor of suicide is making its way to all of the investigators, they just assume that all of that blood is hers. But what about the handprint on the back of the truck? Like, is she getting her own blood on her

and then making this handprint and then walking and dying a couple of feet away? This is what I don't understand. So, there's these drops of blood between her and the truck, the bloody handprint. And again, she is said to have had the gun right underneath her hands. You would imagine if she shot herself, again, not on the side, but in the back of the head, shot herself and fell right there. Did she walk to the truck, touch the truck, go back to where she was? Where she fell is supposed to have been where she was shot. None of this makes sense. Now, the one thing I'm not sure of is I can't tell if the handprint is taken and analyzed in any way.

I couldn't find any more mention of what happens to it in our source material. But again, the fact that none of this evidence is taken for testing is baffling to me. Yeah, so based on research that I've done and my experience with the NCSBI and local law enforcement in North Carolina, and particularly with homicides in the 90s in North Carolina. You have a very specific niche. Yeah, it's very, very specific. But I can tell you that if you listen to season one or season two of Counter Clock, this is par for the course. The absence of doing what you expect to be done with a very bloody crime scene or even a minimally bloody crime scene, a lot of that stuff was just not habit of these agencies to do.

Again, that goes from local all the way up to state, and there's case after case after case that I could tell you about. So to me, this doesn't necessarily surprise me knowing what I know, but it is surprising in the grand landscape of what law enforcement should be doing. Again, all the more reason I'm so glad that you came on for this episode, because again, as an outsider looking in, I'm looking at this, and I don't care that it's 99 or whatever, all of this seems like something you would just know. Even the layman crime junkie knows to do this stuff. And then especially, you want to excuse away, okay, the Bald Head Island, people, they don't see this, you bring an SBI. It is really easy for my head to go down some wild conspiracy paths. But you're saying you've seen this over and over again, and they're not covering up every murder.

At some point, people are just bad at their job back then? Yeah, I've lived in the conspiracy, and I've come out the other side and just realized that maybe it isn't conspiracy, maybe it truly just comes down to just really, really poor police work, and that's just so tragic. Yeah, well, unfortunately, this isn't the only thing that gets overlooked, because there is also what looks like drag marks going from Dee's truck to where her body was found, which might explain the blood droplets, but again, does not totally align with this idea of suicide. Elaine explains in her book that they kind of look like they were made by someone dragging their heels or toes on the ground, but these marks are a source of contention too, because while some of the investigators include them in their reports, others just don't even mention them at all, and so the significance of them kind of just gets lost in the shuffle.

So it's like one person saw them, wrote it in their report, the other person didn't? Yeah. So it's like, not everyone's property. Were they there or not? Yeah, and were they there the whole time, or did something happen as this scene was so messy and she's being taken away? Like, because it wasn't documented properly, no one can say if they mean anything at all. Well, and something just popped into my head too. We said the paramedics came out there.

I wonder if they wheeled a gurney, and a gurney makes tracks? I don't know, that just popped into my head too. Well, and again, I don't know what the scene was like. If everyone truly thought there was an active shooter, did they pick her up and drag her away just to get to safety themselves? No idea. Now, the last thing they find is a spent shell casing a few feet away from where Dee's body was. It's consistent with the type of bullet that the officers on Bald Head use, and it was laying, this is important, it's laying almost parallel to a nearby white picket fence.

But what's interesting is that as crime scene texts are taking photos of it, something happens to it. Because you've got photos where it's again parallel to the fence, but then at some point it had to have been moved, because then there's pictures where it's perpendicular to the fence, like pointing away from it. I can't find who moves it, why it gets moved. Again, you should never be like trying to get the good light, this is like a crime scene, not a photo shoot. But in combination with everything else they're doing, or rather aren't doing, it botches the scene. Now, they do at least collect the bullet, as well as Dee's gun, which is still sitting on the floorboard of Keith's vehicle, and they're both sent off to the crime lab for testing.

As the scene is being processed, if you want to call it being processed, Keith is being interviewed to get a sense of what he and Dee's evening had been like. But he said it was normal, he and Dee met on the ferry right over to the island, and before they had even started their shift, they found three men drinking on the ferry, and that's not allowed, they asked them to pour out their drinks, they did, no big deal, whatever. Now, once they got to the station, they did some paperwork, and then they went on patrol. Now, the only call they got that night was from a manager at a nearby restaurant who asked if they could assist in escorting some guests back to their house because their golf cart had gone missing,

and the manager didn't think it was anything nefarious, like, he doesn't think someone stole it on purpose, someone probably just took it by mistake, but they wanted to make sure that these guests got home safely. But weirdly, again, I don't think this is connected to anything, but by the time he and Dee got there, the restaurant was closed, there's like no one in sight for them to take home, who knows what happened to these people, whatever. Now, once they left there, they decided to head over to the old Baldi lighthouse. Again, this is what ends up being the crime scene, because they had seen a golf cart there parked, like, sometime earlier, and they thought it could be related to the missing one. But when they get there, they didn't find anything, so then they went back to the station, did some more paperwork,

and eventually, Dee said that she was going to go out on patrol again. So what stands out to me is that they get this call to go to the restaurant to help these people with their stolen golf cart. It takes them, I guess, a long amount of time to get there, the restaurant's closed, and then after that, they go out looking for the missing golf cart. But it seems like when they got to the restaurant, it's closed, that that case just, like, doesn't matter. I mean, there's nothing to investigate, there's no one to help. So why are you going around the island, going to the lighthouse in particular, where you think you saw a golf cart? Like, even if you find a stolen golf cart, you don't even know who to tell that you found it, because at the restaurant, you never met them.

Yeah, I know I was like, this doesn't have anything to do with it, but my head's, like, spiraling, too. Because I can't, again, you're talking about an island, I actually can't imagine it took them very long to even get to the restaurant. So what were they doing? I don't have the details, not even what were they doing, but like, was there even really this, these people, or was this call not real? Did they really see a golf, is Keith the one that said he saw a golf cart and he's bringing her out there for some reason? Again, Keith has never been implicated in anything ever. I just, something about this doesn't feel right either, for them to go looking at the one place where she ends up dead later is strange, right? Yeah, the sequence of events just feel strange to me because it doesn't really add up.

Again, does that mean it's related at all to what happened today? I don't know, but I would have a really hard time, like, digesting this if I was, you know, an investigator from the NCSBI and be like, okay, take me through your timeline and then not have questions. I would have questions. And not that they didn't, right? Like, we don't have the full reports. Like, they may have asked the questions and gotten very succinct answers that made sense. I don't know. So anyways, where we left off, they're back at the station and Dee is saying that she's going to go out on patrol again.

Now, this is something that actually stands out to investigators because she wasn't supposed to go out on patrol alone. You see, Dee hadn't been particularly well-liked among the other officers and residents on Bald Head. She was known for having this very black and white view when it came to law enforcement. Either you were breaking the law or you weren't. And in her mind, nobody got special treatment if they were caught doing something that they shouldn't. Which didn't quite sit well with the wealthy residents and tourists who weren't too happy with Dee when she would refuse to just look the other way. Listen, Delia, you and I grew up, I think poor is the appropriate word for both of us. Like, our parents worked hard.

We knew nothing was going to be handed to us. And we knew that there were consequences for our actions. And it can be a different world for people with money, I'm learning. Yeah, and particularly in that kind of environment where you're looking at people who kind of have this sense of entitlement. I literally can say this, having grown up in a very similar community. Like, there is this sense of entitlement of like, you know, the haves and the have-nots. And, you know, there are people that have more money and they don't want to be chastised for what are crimes like, you know, drinking and driving or whatever it is. The destruction of property.

And they don't want someone who's going to come in and be like, nope, this is the law. It's black and white. There's no good old boy system. So, yeah, there is tension. And I could see where that really kind of, she had to, you know, rub the wrong way, some of those people on the island. Yeah, and because in Dee's mind, she's like, everyone should be treated the same. And she felt like she finally had the power to make it an even playing field for everyone. She didn't care if you were rich or poor.

She just cared if you were doing what you're supposed to be doing, following the rules. But girl learned a hard lesson in politics. She'd only been at the department for like 10 months, but in that time, she had multiple complaints filed against her. So in order to appease everyone, the police chief ordered that she couldn't go out on patrols alone. Basically, she had to like be with someone else who knew how the game worked. But despite this, Keith let her go out on her own anyway that night. And the next time he heard from her was when she was radioing to dispatch about confronting three people. So once Keith gets through his story, the investigators collect his clothing for evidence and decide to let him go home.

They're still waiting on the results of Dee's autopsy at this point. So in the meantime, they have the task of going and informing her family about her death. Dee's parents, Harriet and Loy, are understandably devastated when the investigators knock on their door and tell them what happened. At this point, all they can really offer them as far as details go is that she was shot, but as of right now, they don't know who pulled the trigger. The investigators tell them that they want to go to Dee's house to look for anything that might help them decipher what happened to her that night, and her parents agree. She also has two dogs, and knowing that she's not coming home, they want to make sure that they're there and safe. So they all head over to the house. But when they go inside, something stands out to police right away.

According to an article for the Charlotte magazine by Adam Rue, there's a pair of shoes propping open her back door and a gray plastic tar covering it like a tent so that the dogs can get in and out as they wanted. Now, when they ask her parents about it, they say that they've never seen this before, and even though it's new, they don't seem to think that it's a big deal. But to the investigators, they think it tells a different story, since her parents are saying that they haven't seen it before. Granted, I don't know how often her parents are at her house when she's gone, so caveat there. But since their parents are saying, you know, we don't know that she did this, we've never seen this before, they think that she might have left the door open because she wasn't planning on coming back, and she wanted to make sure that her dogs were taken care of. See, that's a stretch to me. Like, if law enforcement's looking at a tarp over an open door and they're like, see, that's evidence she never intended to come home, what?

No, you can't say that. And also, like, it's, say she took her own life, it's not like she's doing it in a way where her body isn't going to be found for a long time. Like, she's radioing in, making sure, like, she's going to be found. Someone's going to go take care of your dogs that same night, right? And if she was somebody who was like, I know I'm not coming back, I'm going to do this, you know, it's my own choice. Like, if she really loved her dogs so much, like, I would think if I'm going to, she would like, leave them with a friend or leave them with her parents. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that to me would be more indicative of like, oh, maybe never, she was never going to come back for them.

But like, a tarp over a door with shoes propping up and like, please, no. Yeah. As far as the rest of the house, like, they don't find a note or anything like that. So this tarp thing may have no correlation to her death whatsoever. But they don't have time to dwell on that propped open door too much because by the time they're finished at her house, these autopsy results are in. The pathologist determined that Dee died from a gunshot wound to the back of the head. And based on the skin and skull fractures around the wound, the gun would have been like right up against her head when the trigger was pulled. Other than the bullet wound, the only other injury is a small bruise on her right arm, but they can't even determine what that injury came from.

Or if it even has anything to do with her death, like it could have been before. And there's no signs of a struggle, like no, no scrapes or scratches on her face or no defensive wounds. What they keep coming back to is they're assuming if she's standing that she would have had scrapes and scratches as she like falls onto the pavement after being shot. But I guess in my mind, I think you could say that about anything whether she was shot by herself or by someone else. Like I don't know that the lack of that means anything to me. It could fit both scenarios. Someone else shooting her or her shooting herself. It gets brought up a lot though if you look at this case.

I'm like, I don't really understand that, but whatever. Now, unfortunately, based on the autopsy alone, they can't say for sure whether she was murdered or died by suicide. And at this point, news that a police officer has died on Bald Head Island has made its way around the small community. And like any small community, rumors have started swirling about what might have happened. The civilians who saw Dee uncovered on the ferry landing have told their friends and neighbors about what they saw, specifically about the blood that they saw pooled on the side of her head. But there are others that aren't willing to buy this suicide theory so easily. And the thought that there could be a murderer on their island does not sit well with any of the residents.

And so at 11 in the morning on the 23rd, Sheriff Hewitt calls a press conference alongside the Bald Head Island police chief, Karen Grasty. Even though they don't have many answers at this point, they want to try and put the community's mind at ease. But the reaction isn't quite what you'd expect. Instead of pushing for the murderer to be caught, Elaine's book describes the locals pushing for the case to just be closed as quickly as possible so it doesn't disrupt the tourism industry. And with the rumor of suicide already floating around, the thought that an officer might have died by suicide is a lot easier to make go away than a murder. Yeah, and this kind of thing, I feel like we see it so often in cases. I know I've seen that in the cases I've investigated on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. And people get really touchy about how a murder is going to negatively impact the area and business.

But hold the phone. Okay, who cares about making a buck? We have a dead person and there is someone who committed a crime still at large. Like, how that doesn't take precedence in people's mind over like, oh no, people might not come visit the area, just blows my mind. Yeah. Well, it doesn't matter. Like, despite everyone hoping that this would just go away, the police aren't ready to just close the case, at least not yet. So once this press conference comes to a close, Chief Grasty heads back to the crime scene to continue the investigation. But what she finds completely shocks her. Delia, when she walks up to the crime scene, there is no crime scene. Wait, do you mean like everyone's just gone or like everything's gone?

No, no, no. I mean, you wouldn't know anything happened here. Because even that pool of blood is gone. Chief Grasty finds out that it has been completely hosed down with a fire hose. And on top of all of it, the crime scene is now open to the public as if nothing happened there. What? That boils my blood. What? Same. Chief Grasty is furious. And so she asks around to see who gave the order to have this scene cleaned. Because keep in mind, Dee hasn't even been dead for 12 hours at this point. They haven't even ruled out homicide as her manner of death.

So she asked the officer who is put in charge of the scene, like, it's your job to monitor this scene. You had one job. You had one job. She asked him, okay, who said to hose this down? He says he has no idea. So then she asked the fire chief whose fire truck was the one that hosed everything down. He says he has no idea. Oh, blame game. No one ever confesses to being the one who ordered the scene cleaned. But in her book, Elaine says that next to the old Baldy lighthouse is this chapel.

And that Sunday morning, there was supposed to be a wedding schedule for this really high profile family on the island. So even though it's never been proven, she speculates that the scene was hosed down so it wouldn't disrupt the wedding. What? Yeah. And unfortunately, this really sums up the feeling around Dee's death over the first few days. A murder investigation isn't something that the locals want to have to deal with. It would hurt the tourism industry. Like, let's just pretend it didn't happen, basically. So now that the scene is completely destroyed, the investigators are left with the very few pieces of physical evidence that they've already collected,

which is really just the gun and the shell casing. But it's going to take weeks for the crime lab to get results on those. So in the meantime, they start trying to piece together Dee's final days and they ask the public to come forward with any information that they have that could help them. But Dee's family already actually has someone in mind that they want investigators to look into. It's a guy named William Hewitt. He was an ex-boyfriend who used to be a detective with the Brunswick County Sheriff's Department. And also just so happens to be the sheriff's nephew. Yeah, I was going to say that last name, Hewitt.

Sounds familiar, right? Now, he's working with SBI now and wouldn't you know it, he was actually called to the scene the night of her death. Okay, that right there is a very clear conflict of interest to me. And I've seen this, again, I like go back to counterclock investigations where I like I've experienced this. Yeah, if there's like a family member or someone who like is tied to the victim or victims of a crime, like they should not be handling any part of an investigation. Even peripherally, like even if they're just there to just like lend aid, like no, they need to be gone. And so this kind of thing to me like is just it just reeks of like, again, small town, like nobody's doing what should be done. And it just, it just, it's so icky to me.

Well, when they learn more about this guy, Dee's family says that he was a little too obsessive, sometimes showing up to her house without warning. And they kind of described him as a quote unquote loose cannon. Now, when investigators talk to him directly, he explains that he and Dee's relationship was pretty turbulent, but that they'd broken up a while ago and things had been better between them recently. But he does bring up an incident that happened just a few weeks before her death that tells investigators things weren't all sunshine and rainbows in her personal life. According for that same article for the Charlotte magazine by Adam Ru, William says that Dee called him one night and during that conversation, she made a comment about wanting to harm herself. Now, he was worried enough that he said he seriously contemplated driving to her house to check on her, but Hurricane Irene was rolling in and he deemed that it would be too dangerous. So he said he kept her on the phone for like another hour just to be safe, make sure she was fine, calm down. And then he said, after this, everything seemed to be okay.

So he just kind of let it go. Now, when they ask William where he was on the night that Dee died, he said that he was at home watching TV and then he went over to a friend's house before he was called in to assist on Bald Head Island. Now, that time span from when he says he starts watching TV again alone to when he goes and sees his friend is about a two and a half hour window. And it's interesting to note that from where his house was to where Dee was killed is just a seven minute ride by boat. And he would have had access to a boat because he just so happened to be fixing a boat up for someone that he knew. Now, here's the frustrating thing. Beyond Will's initial conversation with investigators, I can't find anything about whether or not he was cleared right away. I mean, I'd like to think investigators did their due diligence and tried to verify his story, but there's nothing out there with any more details about the investigation into him specifically.

And this is obviously super frustrating because even though Will's alibi seems like one that police should maybe take a second look at, I mean, you're alone for two and a half hours. Like basically when this crime is happening, as far as I can tell, again, I don't have everything, but it doesn't seem like they do. Maybe that's because everything he said fits into what they're already trying to prove. They think Dee shot herself. Will tells them that she had been suicidal before. Like, good enough. Thanks for giving us a plausible story. A person who otherwise would normally be a prime person of interest. We will take your word for it and move on. But thankfully, they actually don't just close the case quite yet.

They do talk to more and more people who knew Dee and over the following weeks, they get a fuller picture of who she was. One of the people that they talk to is another one of her exes, this guy named Scott Monzon. He's a fellow police officer who works on Oak Island, which is about an hours-long journey west from Bald Head. He tells investigators that they had an on-again, off-again relationship and at the time they were off, but still on speaking terms. Scott even says that on the day she died, they spoke on the phone three times. During all three of their conversations that day, Dee wanted to make sure that they were still friends despite not being together anymore. Yeah, I mean, I understand, like, keeping, like, a peaceful, cordial relationship with an ex or even an on-and-off-again ex, but, like, three times in one day and, like, you're not even together.

Like, I don't know. That doesn't feel awesome. Her last call to him was less than an hour before she died, and he remembers thinking that she sounded uncharacteristically quiet, but there wasn't anything that she said in that call that made him worry. In fact, when they hung up, he clearly remembers her saying, talk to you later. Now, he also said that their relationship wasn't an easy one. In fact, just two nights before she died, Dee called him and asked him to come over to her house, and when he arrived, she was, like, wasted. He says that drinking at all was really out of character for her, so being completely hammered was super concerning. She wasn't acting like herself.

She was saying over and over again that she just wanted to talk. But in that state, like, he knew there's no way that they were going to have any kind of productive conversation. So eventually, he was able to get her to calm down and go to bed. But when he tried to leave, I guess she got up and followed him home. And over the course of the night, she was driving back and forth between her house and his house several times. And finally, he actually called the police and asked them to warn Dee. Like, you got to stay off the roads, and that's the only time that she stopped. So, again, I know they were on and off again based on, like, her calling him and trying to have this conversation,

her calling him over and over, are we still friends? It sounds like maybe she still wanted him in her life. Yeah, there's clearly, like, something going on between them. It seems like maybe a little bit one-sided for her. I mean, again, like, her behavior patterns of using alcohol when clearly that wasn't something common for her. I mean, it seemed like she was definitely going through something. But something that really strikes me is, I mean, he's saying that this happened two nights before she died. So, like, it's one thing if it's, like, in the months leading up.

But, like, two nights before, like, she was clearly, like, struggling or going through something. Which only gives law enforcement more fuel to, like, support their suicide theory. But, I mean, all of these things you have to take into, like, they say, like, victimology, right? Like, this is all part of that information. Now, Scott was working at the time of Dee's death, and so he's ruled out almost immediately. But there's no shortage of people for them to look into. Because remember, Dee wasn't well-liked among the Bald Head residents. And so they take a look at everyone that she had given a citation to recently,

as well as all of the people who had filed a complaint against her. They even look into the three guys that were drinking on the ferry. Which I find interesting, because if you remember, her call was about being out there with three. But one by one, all of those people are cleared. Now, one of the last people that comes on their radar is an EMS worker named Mike Ilvento. According to the episode of Still a Mystery on Investigation Discovery, Dee actually had a pending sexual harassment case against him at the time of her death. You want to talk about things happening in her life right before.

But now that she's gone, this case is closed. And while it seems like a promising lead, it actually doesn't go anywhere. Because Mike was also on duty when she died, and his co-workers can back up his alibi. So to their investigation, he's just another dead end. And I know we don't know this, but my mind starts to go, he's on duty. He is a paramedic, EMS. There's only a certain number of those that got dispatched to her death. Was he there?

He's not sus in that way, but in my mind, I'm like, hold on. There's only a small pool of EMS that came there. So listen, at this point, as investigators are learning more and more about Dee, these incidents that are happening right before her death, they start to lean more and more into the theory that she died by suicide. Even though her family insists that that's not something she would do. Sure, she had her struggles, but she was managing them by seeking treatment. I mean, her family even brings up the fact that there was this to-do list

that they found while searching her home after she died. And it's like halfway through. So to them, that indicates that she was planning to come back home. She literally, quite literally, had things to do. And there's something else that they point to that in their minds means something sinister could have happened to her. Loy says that the week she died, she told him that she was going to be looking into drug activity on the island, which she was actually really excited about.

She'd even scheduled an upcoming meeting with an investigator who handled narcotics cases. He says that she wouldn't take her own life when she was on the brink of doing something that she thought was really important. I mean, this could be career making for her. She's had all these citations. Like, in her mind, she probably thought she was going to turn around her career. Yeah, she was probably, you know, getting tired of handing out, like, drinking tickets. Yeah, I'm going to do something big.

Like, she wants to do something that, like, will make an impact. Here's the thing. When Scott speaks to investigators again, he backs up this story about the drug bust. This isn't only coming from her family. He says that Dee told him about it a few months ago, that she had suspected that there was drug activity going on at the lighthouse, where she was eventually killed, and she wanted to make a bust. So again, not only is everyone pointing to this as a reason that she wouldn't kill herself.

Again, she's trying to do some big things. She's trying to make a name for herself. It's also like, hello, motive anyone? I mean, to me, at least it seems like looking into the island's drug activity might be key to figuring out what happened to her. But as far as I can tell, the investigators don't look into what Scott and Loy said any further. And they're even less inclined to go down any other roads when the crime lab calls. They have the results of some of the testing that they did on the bullet that killed Dee.

They say that the bullet that killed her was fired from her own gun. And at that point, that's enough for them. This combined with everything they learned about her life, the investigators put together a report so the district attorney can make the final ruling. Now, the DA's name is Rex Gore, and six weeks after Dee's death, he releases a statement with his final ruling and claims that all the evidence points to her dying by suicide. But just a second here, I want to think about this just so people can understand. When it says the DA made a final ruling, like...

I've never heard that. All he's doing is saying, law enforcement brought me this case, brought me their findings, and I am choosing not to move forward with criminal charges. So I think a lot of times when we hear this, people think, like, oh, the DA has this, like, okay, you know, like, yes, this is exactly the truth. No, all they're saying is, is that I'm taking what law enforcement gave me and choosing to move forward or not. And in this case, clearly he just agreed with law enforcement and didn't pursue criminal charges. And there are times where DA's do disagree and pursue criminal charges or tell law enforcement,

no, go back, I don't think you have your facts right, you know, that sort of thing. But yeah, just wanted to point that out. Now, to the buffs, this decision is unacceptable. There are just too many holes in the investigation for them, too many people that they don't feel like were fully vetted. And they take issue with the DA's comments on the report itself because there are things that are in the report that they know aren't true. Like, for one, the DA says that the gun was in Dee's right hand, even though Keith insisted that it was just under her hand. Like, her hand was resting on top of it, which is small but makes a big difference.

The DA also doesn't take any issue with the location of the gunshot wound. In fact, he says that it's consistent with female suicide victims. And that's one of the main issues that Dee's family has with this ruling. They don't understand how she could have reached to the back of her head with the gun. And what they keep coming back to, again, I know we already talked about this and we're like, I think there would have been scrapes no matter what the scenario is, but they kind of offer up this alternative scenario where she is forced down on the ground, maybe on her knees before she was shot. Again, back of the head execution style.

And they're saying like, she was so low to the ground that that's why it didn't happen. Again, I think this can go both ways. If she took her own life, she can kneel if she wants to. I think the location in the back of the head, I don't have statistics on this. You know, the DA is saying this is how females are more likely to shoot themselves. I don't know if that's realistic or not. I mean, yeah, there are some things out there that say, OK, female victims do not want to shoot themselves in the front of their face, right?

But I mean, my thing is just like the physics of this, right? Like trying to pull the trigger again, I don't want to get into the graphicness of it. But in my mind, I just, it does not make sense to me. And again, you combine that with all the things we talked about earlier about the blooded, the crime scene, like it just... You would think that the second you do that and pull the trigger, wouldn't the gun fall behind you as opposed to like keeping it in your hand, then your hand falling next to you and then it being under your hand? Yeah, it being, and again, like if we had like photos of this, right?

This, you know, that would be awesome. But like, you know, your hand laying on top of a firearm or like in the actual, you know, components of it is very different. And again, to your point, it's different when someone is like deceased or dying. Like it's very hard to be, you know, have dexterity in your fingers to get in that position. But it's not if it's just, you know, put underneath your hand potentially by someone else. Like, so yeah, there's a lot of things with it that I'm just like, how does the physics work with this? It doesn't make sense.

And then mind you, again, we've got to have blood droplets back to the truck, the hamper on the truck, all of it. Yeah. Now, one of the main points of frustration as well is the fact that the DA didn't wait until all of the results were back from the crime lab to make their ruling. They just had the ballistics analysis back, but they were still waiting on, they had, I guess done some fingerprint analysis from her weapon, because again, that was pretty much the only thing they took into evidence. So they didn't have any kind of analysis about the fingerprint.

So you'd think they'd want that to be like, oh, it was only her fingerprints on the gun that like, but they, they were willing to say nope, suicide before that came in. So over the following months, her family kind of waits, they're hoping that the last few tests are going to bring up something that will get the DA to look at this case again. But when the results finally do come back, they actually shock everyone. The crime lab wasn't able to find any prints on Dee's gun. None, not hers, not Keith's, which seems almost impossible, right? Like if they're claiming that Dee died by suicide, she can't wipe her own gun down.

And we know that Keith touched it twice. So wouldn't you at least expect to find his prints on the gun? But they're saying there's nothing. Yeah. I mean, the fact that there are no fingerprints, you know, it's one of those things where you look at a crime scene and you go, okay, it's not just what is there. It's what's absent from the crime scene. And that can tell you so much. And so in my mind, I'm thinking there's only a couple reasons for this,

which is the gun is wiped, right? Which is, you know, could lead to a lot of theories or in the handling of it between the lab, between Keith. Like it does get wiped or something like that. But again, the absence of her prints on a gun that that law enforcement is saying she used to take her own life. That does not add up. To me, that is a problem. I mean, she's holding it. She's holstering it. She's taking it off.

And I know she obviously, you know, she's an officer. I'm sure she practiced like good gun safety and she cleaned it. Now, the only thing I don't know is like there have been times before where I've seen something like this. And then I actually like, I get more information from an officer lab, whatever. And they're like, it's not that it was like wiped clean. It's just there are no usable prints. Everything's like smudgy and it's not even a partial or whatever. Again, I don't, I don't know, but it feels so bizarre to me.

But that of D and Keith, who we both knew handled that gun right before, that we didn't even get a single partial anywhere on it is, I think, bizarre. Now, D's family hopes that this is going to be enough for law enforcement to at least admit that there's something fishy going on here. But the ruling doesn't change. And as far as the investigators are concerned, the case is closed. But the Buff family is not about to accept that D died by suicide, not when the investigation has been this sloppy. So they look for other avenues to get her death investigated and they land on one thing.

D's death benefits. You see, when an officer is killed in the line of duty, their family is entitled to certain benefits. But those benefits aren't offered when the officer dies by suicide. So if they can fight for those benefits, then the DA and the investigators are going to have to defend their ruling. And what's more, the Buffs can bring in their own team to cross examine them. So basically, if they can prove that it wasn't suicide, then they think they can get a homicide investigation happening, basically get her case reopened. But that's not an overnight process.

And so over the following few years, the Buffs put together everything they need to fight. In October of 2003, the Buffs present their case to the North Carolina Industrial Commission. During the hearings, they bring in multiple experts to help build their case, including a clinical psychologist to do what's called a psychological autopsy, basically an analysis of what D's mental state would have been at the time of her death. So this man, Dr. Alan Berman, testifies that he doesn't believe she would have seriously wanted to harm herself at the time of her death. He references her plans for the future, that to-do list, her behavior that day. And sure, she might have been having a rough time, but he says that doesn't mean she wanted to harm herself.

They also bring in three people, all similar size to D, to try and recreate how she could have maneuvered the gun to the back of her head. All three of these people have trouble getting to that exact spot where the gunshot wound was, which to the Buffs proves that she couldn't have pulled the trigger herself. Now, the decision to remove D from the scene is also heavily criticized at these hearings. They argue that there was no apparent danger to any of the other law enforcement officers there, and treating this area as a hot zone didn't make any sense. Because they point out the stuff that we did earlier, like Keith had been walking around totally unharmed before he found her. And when Chief Brown and EMS arrived, they weren't targeted either.

So by removing D's body from the scene, they lost valuable evidence that could have been used to determine her manner of death. And there's so much more in this hearing that they criticize, like the dismissal of the drag marks, the blood by D's truck, and that handprint that was seen on the back tailgate. But the opposition tries to defend their decision by saying that the drag marks were probably just the result of some nearby construction. Again, they don't even try and put it on EMS like we did, yeah. Wait, but some of the blood drops they said were disturbed by the drag marks. So was there someone doing construction while there's blood? Maybe, I don't know, maybe, I can't remember if we mentioned that, but like, hold up, that doesn't make sense.

And they say that the blood was probably just D's, so they didn't need to test it. Again, to me, that's not defending yourself, that's just being like, yeah, we made assumptions, and we were just sticking by them. Yeah, it's the truth. And they never do come up with an explanation for how the bloody handprint even got there, or even who's it was. And frustratingly, we're never going to know who's it was, because they didn't bother preserving it. Finally, at the end of the commission hearings, D's death is ruled undetermined. According to an article by Nicole Conkel for WECT News 6, the commission states that the condition of the scene makes it impossible for them to definitively rule her death a suicide,

and so the buffs are to be awarded her death benefits. Now, obviously, this isn't quite the ruling that the buffs were after, they were looking for homicide, but at least by getting an undetermined ruling, all of the evidence that was gathered can't be destroyed, they have to preserve it. Now, right after the ruling, the North Carolina Department of Justice appeals the decision, which then sends the case to a three-person panel to be reviewed, but ultimately, the decision is upheld, and the buffs are granted D's death benefits, as well as an additional $147,000. For some reason, though, I guess not super surprising to me, probably not to you either, we've seen all of this happen, the case is never ordered to be reopened.

In 2005, the DA does conduct an internal review of the case and actually brings in everyone involved so they can go over every piece of information that everyone has, and at the end of this meeting, they turn it all over to the SPI, and in turn, the SPI takes almost a year to go through all of the original case files, track down leads that weren't investigated at the time, but in May 2006, they actually agree with the original ruling of suicide. And it's actually when they conduct their investigation that they finally come up with an explanation for the blood on D's truck. You're gonna love this.

So they say that it got there when Keith was trying to secure the scene. Keith? It's Keith the whole time? What is it? Because keep in mind, Keith never talked about getting blood on him or touching D's truck after he found her. And again, it would have been super easy to test and be like, yeah, that's mine. Okay, cool, fingerprint. I don't know. To have this be an answer so many years later, when the guy was the first one to find her at the scene, and I don't know if they're saying the droplets are him too, so he goes over to her and then runs back,

but he ran to his car, not her truck. This is what I do not understand. So if they're saying that as their rationale, like, okay, he did say at one point, he told the fire chief, like, I tried to check for a pulse. I don't even know if I got her pulse. Like, so that tells me he may have come in contact with her and blood. Like, so I'm not saying that that can't be true. But then to your point, like, if he then got blood on her vehicle in these places,

I would also venture to assume that he would have gotten blood on his own vehicle when he's crouched in the crease and when he's picking up her gun, like, if his hands have, like, any trace of blood on him. So, like, to me, just, I don't know, this feels very convenient. Yeah, and you think there would have been, like, someone noting be like, hey, the guy that found her, even though he's his partner, has, like, blood all over him on his hands, like, his whole hand. He would have said that. So it seems that SBI kind of has an explanation for everything. And they don't even stop there.

They go so far as to claim that Dee actually orchestrated the scene to make it look like she'd been murdered so that her family could get her death benefits, which I don't think makes any sense. It's not like she had kids to look after. I mean, and aside from this just being really offensive in nature. It's almost like victim blaming in a very, like, in a very passive, like, hmm, probably this is what the case was with her. Like, I don't like that at all. And to me, there's just still, there's too many things that don't make sense about the scene.

Like, why is that gun completely clear of the prints? Without more information, I can't explain away the blood droplets and the handprint. There are so many questions. Again, who are these three? And I know they're saying she orchestrated it. She's, like, pretending she's out there. The placement of the gun, the fact that it didn't fall behind her and to her side, there is something more going on here.

But I'm not an expert. And the SBI concludes by saying that the case should stay closed. And for seven years, that's how it stays. That is, until 2012, when a new district attorney named John David is elected. According to an article for WWAY3 News, he announces that he has reopened the case. And he's brought in five retired FBI agents that have no connection to Bald Head to conduct a review, which I think is, like, the best thing you could have done. Unfortunately, though, he says that after an extensive review process,

even the investigators, these guys that were brought in, they can't agree on what happened. But ultimately, he says he's convinced that ruling her death a suicide is not the way to go. And so the case will stay open for as long as it needs to, though, while that's a good thing, just keeping a case open and no one looking at it, what good does that really do? Yeah, I mean, it's good in one sense that it's like, okay, maybe if another DA comes along or someone else comes along that wants to, you know, dig into it. But, yeah, it really does just leave it in this strange limbo, you know, no man's land. And that's, like, worse, almost, I feel like.

Can I give you my, like, one last wild conspiracy thought about this? Please do. So this case, like, I feel like I didn't really start hearing about it until, like, this 2000, honestly, like, 12, 15, whatever. So I think it was a very localized thing for a long time. What if? Zero proof to back this up. This is me speculating only.

What if, as people started getting interested in this and more and more people started poking around? When a case is closed, you know the record should be available to people. What if it's reopened not as a way to get her case reinvestigated because that's not what's happening? What if it's reopened as a way to make sure that no one gets to see these reports and stuff that you and I are talking about? Like, I can't tell you about the fingerprint. I can't tell you about the books. I can't see it. And so we're all left to, like, run in circles without actually being able to, like, get to the bottom of it

because maybe there is something to get to the bottom of. Yeah, I think to that point, if law enforcement or a DA's office leaves a case opened, it triggers a lot of exemptions for the records. And so if they did that to create a barrier to have someone come in and get to the truth. Yeah, I mean, yes, there's a world in which that's possible. However, my, you know, my issue with that is like, they did bring in these kind of third party people that would have been privy. I would imagine would have been privy to some of those intimate details that aren't public knowledge. And if they still were like, oh, this is baffling. I don't know.

And you would hope that if there was something shady going on, like they're waving the flag, being like something terrible happened here. I don't know. My conspiracy theory is lack of conspiracy theory and is more of, I think this is just really, really shoddy police work. I think these are people that didn't know what they were doing. And I think in my mind that this is very, very much potentially a murder in so many ways. And there were, there were some tunnel vision that came into play and all of those factors like, oh, it is just like the worst kind of ending to a story. If you even call that an ending. Well, hopefully it's not the end, but it is where the case stands today.

There are still so many questions surrounding her death. But even though it's been over 20 years, her family still deserves to know what happened to her. So if you have any information about the death of Davina Buff Jones, you can submit a tip to the Brunswick County Sheriff's Department at 910-253-2777. You can find all of the pictures and source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. And if you want to hear other wild stories from North Carolina in the 90s, you should listen to Countdown. Season one and two.

But there are four seasons to binge and all of them are incredible. Crimejunkie is an audio check production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?