Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Cold Case: The strange death of Mindy Lee

Episode Date: April 28, 2017

Mindy Lee’s mysterious death is a cold case in more than one sense. The mom’s frozen corpse was found five days after friends told police she jump out of their truck, leaving her young daughter behind, and ran into woods wearing no shoes and light clothing in 25-degree weather in the shadow of Colorado’s Pike’s Peak in 2010. Private detective Bobby Brown began working the case amid Lee’s mother’s concern about the police probe. Nancy Grace talks to Brown in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Mindy's friends called saying Mindy ran off without shoes and a jacket. The red flag started coming. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Family and friends started searching immediately. A police officer found her body here behind Woodland Park High School five days after Mindy disappeared. It's in the exact same spot where friends and family say they searched several times. She was my only child. She was my world. I want answers. So Vicki turned to a team of private investigators, former homicide detective Bobby Brown. There was not a doubt in my mind that there was a serious problem in this case. What happened to Mindy Lee? How was she killed?

It remains a mystery. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. With me, a special guest to tell the story of cold case Mindy Lee's murder in Colorado is our special guest, Bobby Brown, no relation, as I'd like to say, former homicide investigator, detective, and now Cracker Jack PI. You may have seen him on Dog the Bounty Hunter. He still gets stopped on the street all the time for that, but in my mind and from where I'm coming, you're more famous to me for all the homicides you investigated and solved.

Bobby, thank you for being with us. Well, thank you for having me. It's a real honor to have you on. The Manitow Springs mom's body was found, but autopsy couldn't be performed for days because her body was completely frozen after exposure to freezing temperatures and snow. She disappeared. It was on a Friday night. She's just 33 years old. Friends say she was in their pickup and just inexplicably jumped from the pickup near a Woodland Park high school. Now, she's shoeless.

She's got on a black shirt and red pants. Something's not right. Let's go to Bobby Brown. Bobby, let's start at the beginning. What happened? Well, it was the night before Thanksgiving on November 26, 2010. And it was strange because Mindy Lee had made a phone call to her mother. It was about 6.30 p.m. And Mindy had placed a call to her mom. And in the phone call, all she could hear Mindy say was, Mom, Mom, like that she was whispering and that she was, you know, actually trying to get help from her mom.

She sounded very, very distressed. Unfortunately, that was the last time that her mom, Vicki White, that she heard from Mindy Lee. And then as it progressed, and I'll just kind of fast forward and you can stop me. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Bobby, I don't want you to fast forward because I'm just imagining from a mother's point of view, hearing your child on the other end going, mom, mom, mom. And for the rest of your life, you wonder,

what could I have done to help her, to save my child? Exactly. And that haunts Vicki to this very, very day. And let me tell you, Vicki and Mindy Lee were extremely close. She had two children. And matter of fact, the oldest, Amber, she is now 21 years old. And she is at her sights are to go into the FBI. And that's so she's doing all the work because what this case has done to her. And she has worked extremely close over the last six-plus years of coming to my office and literally sitting down trying to, you know, she talks to her grandma, Vicki, all the time and trying to piece together what could have happened.

Well, that night after Vicki got the call, Mom, Mom, just the whisper, you know, she knew instantly. Bobby, Bobby. She knew that something was wrong. That is really getting to me, to get that phone call, Mom, Mom. And you can tell, I can tell in my children's voice whether they're upset, whether they're hurt, and I can hear them go, Ow, in another room, whether it's serious, whether they're upset whether they're hurt and i can hear them go out in another room whether it's serious whether they're about to cry i mean you just know you know i'm sorry okay go ahead bobby sorry oh no it's amazing that you say that because i have had that conversation with vicki

i could not count how many times that you, she knew that it wasn't that she was sick because then they tried to, people that she was in the vehicle with, tried to say that, well, she had, that she had laryngitis and that they were trying to take her to a emergic care to get her a shot. What? whoa whoa what are they an md a shot of what what kind of shot well did these two think they were going to get her in an emergency care for laryngitis exactly and the the thing is is that from her mom mindy Lee was a cancer survivor and she was born with medical issues at birth and she did. She actually survived cancer, but throughout her life, she had been stuck by so many needles. She absolutely hated, hated the thought of ever getting a shot. And so the theory that they were taking her to get a shot for her

laryngitis was absolutely garbage. That just didn't play. And we, you know, we have to just keep relying on, you know, mom's instincts. And so she knew that, you know, none of this was right. Well, after she didn't hear from Mindy for a few hours, then she did get a phone call from one of the people that was with Mindy. And they told her that Mindy, they tried to take her to the emergent care. She ran out of the emergent care. Well, my investigation proved that because of the cameras and the people that were at the facility, the medical facility, there was nothing, absolutely nothing that showed that they ever went there. There was nobody that there was no, there was absolutely nothing on video.

And there was no one that could say that they even, that anybody came on Thanksgiving Eve. I mean, come on, Bobby Brown. It's Thanksgiving. You don't think the people at the emergency care, or as you're saying, emergicare, would remember her coming in without any shoes on? I mean, my question would be, not whether they're lying,

because A, there had to be some kind of payment. There had to be some kind of a record. Or there had to be some kind of a paper trail that they were there and she was treated. Or security cameras. Or the recollection of a witness, a nurse, a doctor, a secretary, anybody. None of that existed. So the fact that they're lying, to me, that's not a question. The question is, why? Why are they lying? So let's take it from there. So they tell you they went to

Emergecare. There's no record of that. What else do we know, Bobby? There's absolutely no record of that whatsoever. And obviously on Thanksgiving evening, the people that are there, it's a rural community. There's no doubt that that would have been a big deal because supposedly it was like a ruckus that Mindy Lee ran out of the facility. You know, if something like that happened, it would have been captured on video and it would have been something that maybe they would have called the police. You know, hey, I don't know what just happened here. But none of that happened. Well, wait a minute.

That's a whole other thing, Bobby. Because if you've got a patient that runs out, treated or untreated, they probably would have to report it. Because that's not, you know, like at a hospital, they make you go out in a wheelchair. They have all this protocol and procedure. She couldn't just run out and them not report it so i'm back to square one why it's not are they lying it's why are they lying that's where this whole case goes is that then they call and they tell vicky her mom that they had went to house, and it was near, actually above where the Woodland Park High School is, and that they had gone to this house, and that when they pulled in the driveway, that Mindy decided to jump out of the vehicle. She took her shoes off. So she had no socks on, and she allegedly took her shoes off. But here comes

Grandma, again, Vicki, that not only did she leave her shoes allegedly in the car, but she had her four-year-old daughter, Aspen, in the car. There isn't a chance on God's green earth that she would have jumped out of that vehicle and left her daughter in that car with people that supposedly that whatever craziness was going on

there's no way that she would have left her four year old daughter in the car stripped down in freezing temperature, jump out, and supposedly run towards the high school. The husband and wife that were driving the vehicle said that he jumped out and that he tried to chase or follow Mindy to get her back in the car, and that he was gone just a few minutes and said that it was dark and that he couldn't find her.

Well, let me tell you, the terrain where she allegedly got out of the vehicle, the SUV, when she got out of the vehicle and ran towards the high school, I have went up and down that area. We have videotaped it. We've done everything under the sun. And it's a very, very rough terrain. It has broken glass. It's got broken concrete, all kinds of weeds.

You know, it's natural terrain. So there's, you know, there's valleys, there's gullies. And she allegedly is running towards the high school with no shoes or socks on. How can this man not catch she was overweight, she has no shoes or socks on. She's not, you know, ready for the freezing weather. And he can't catch her, but yet he knows which direction she ran. Hold on, Bobby. She doesn't look overweight to me in any pictures. She looks normal. Hey, I've got a question for you. So her four-year-old little girl Aspen was in the car with them. What does the four-year-old say happened? The four-year-old, she has been really guarded

over the years. You know, of course she was, she was very young, but she says that, and it's clearly documented that they quote, they had mom in the back of the SUV. It was a four-door SUV vehicle, and in the cargo part, back by the tailgate door, they had her in the back, and that mom wanted to get out, and they wouldn't let her out. That's, you know, really about all that she remembers. They have purposely not tried to, you know, they've had her, you know, with different, you know, clinical people trying to see if she's holding stuff back in her mind and, you know, how it's affecting her.

And God bless her, you know, now she's 10, 11 years old now. In any event, there's no way that Mindy ran away and that she could not have been caught by this person if it happened the way they said. It's impossible. So I understand, Bobby, what you're saying. The then four-year-old daughter, Amber, said not a lot. For all I know, she has suppressed what she knows or maybe didn't understand what was really going on. But tell me about the discovery of Mindy Lee's body. Let's figure out what we can discern from that. When we start to talk about what could be a possible motive, it gets really convoluted because of the fact that, in my opinion, the entire investigation was just a debacle.

It was a very, very poor investigation from the minute that the Woodland Park Police Department got involved. Why do you say that? Why? Because of the fact that, number one, when the police department met with Vicki White, the mother, for the police to talk to her and explain to her that her daughter is missing and to go through the fact that she supposedly, that they had gone to the medical facility, which they know, we know they didn't.

And the police knew that they didn't because they couldn't, when they went there prior to talking to Vicki, they already knew that nobody there could verify that they had been there. But instead of saying, and I am a former, I was a lieutenant in charge of our homicide bureau at the sheriff's office, instead of saying, calling her up or sending somebody to her house, they call her on the phone, call Vicki on the phone, and they have her meet the driver and his wife and the police department from the Woodland Park Police Department at Loaf and Jug in Woodland Park. And it's only a couple of more blocks over

to the police department where you could sit down and intelligently discuss it with the mother instead of at a damn convenience store where people are walking in and out. And you're trying to tell this lady that her daughter jumped out of a vehicle in freezing weather and she's missing. Well, when they came into, when she walked into the loaf and jug, there's a pair of white canvas tennis shoes on the table. Sitting in the loaf and jug, the police officer from Woodland Park is the police officer, and the driver and his wife of the vehicle.

And there's a pair of tennis shoes. The minute Vicki looks at these tennis shoes, she immediately tells the cop and the other two people, those are not Mindy's. I know my daughter. My daughter would never wear something like that. And those are absolutely, I know what she wears. I see her every day. She does not own a pair of tennis shoes like that.

And the worst part is when I say it was just bungled, after they have their meeting at the loaf and jug, they leave the tennis shoes on the table at loaf and jug. So, I mean, wouldn't they be evidence? Of course they would be evidence. And so all of a sudden Mindy is there, or I mean Vicki is there, and all she knows is that her daughter is missing. The Park Police Department had, during that same time frame,

had their search and rescue come with a dog to search the area to see if the dog could pick up on the scent. There was a house at 1131 Forest Edge. The police dog went to the door and hit on the door. This is their words, that the dog hit on the door of that address 10 separate times, and that's in the police report. That police report that described that was withheld from us, coincidentally, until just less than a year ago.

But nonetheless, the dog hit on that. Then the dog went through the area described by the driver of the vehicle, the man that was driving, where Mindy supposedly ran down the Woodland Park High School football field. The dog went down that direction, didn't go to the field, which was about several hundred yards away, turned around and went back to 1131 Forest Edge and hit on that door again. If you go through the pain of having a dog, well, then wouldn't that house that was vacant at that time, wouldn't that have been something that well hey this is of interest to us it is of huge interest because I can tell you this Bobby every time I brought a dog on as evidence the jury loved it they I have said many

times and I've said it in open court the best witness I ever put on the stand was a dog okay I and I'm just stunned that this evidence wasn't passed down, passed on. I want to get to the discovery of the body. What can you tell me about that, Bobby? The discovery of Mindy Lee's body. One of the first real things that really sent me into the mode that there's a real problem with this because her body was discovered on December 1st, five days after she had been reported missing. And she was found at the football field at Woodland Park High School

by the Woodland Park Police Department high school resource officer. So they knew from the night that she was reported missing that she ran towards that football field. This guy has a job that he's a high school resource officer. If there's a missing person that has gone towards your football field, then wouldn't that have been a focus for five days that, you know, hey, we have to comb this? Well, supposedly they had searched it a number of times, and they never found Mindy Lee. On December 1st, there was a search party that was put together. It was a very organized

search that was to begin at 8.30 a.m. on December 1st. There was over 100 people that had volunteered and were there for the search. At 7.50 a.m. December 1st, the high school school resource officer said that in his report that he went to the high school and that he conducted, in his own words in writing, a grid search of the football field. In less than 15 minutes, he says that he was walking towards a wooden shed, that the gate was open. The football field has a six-foot fence around it, that the gate was open. He walked over by this wooden shed, and he moved several 55-gallon barrels. He's moving these barrels around, and he says he spots a piece of red fabric. And as it had snowed that night, and as he was sweeping this, removing the, sweeping the snow off of the red fabric,

quote, he was able to determine that it was a body. And then he says in his report that there were 10 pieces of six-foot fence that were stacked up against the fence so that that was preventing between the barrels and the fence that Mindy was hidden. Okay, let me ask a question to Alan. Alan, are you getting a good picture of where her body was? And I'm still not sure how it was discovered. Exactly. Alan. It baffles me how her body could have been there covered with snow. How would she possibly have gotten there? 25 degree temperature, no shoes.

Were her feet cut up? I mean, you can't walk in that area without getting sticks sticking in the soles of your feet. The very first thing that when I went to the coroner's office and I requested the crime scene photographs from the crime scene and from the autopsy, the first thing, the very first thing that I wanted to see was the bottoms of both of her feet. I have 8x10 photographs. There is not a cut or a scratch on the bottom of either one of her feet. I know that the autopsy had to be delayed for several days because she was actually frozen. And I think the bottoms of her feet speak volumes were there any obvious signs of trauma like a gunshot or stabbing and i'm wondering if there were a an asphyxiation

if that would have been if that evidence would have been destroyed by her being out in the elements for so long. Let me explain how bizarre. Their investigation says that Mindy Lee climbed over a chain link fence with no shoes or socks in freezing weather. According to Woodland Park Police Department, she climbed back over the six-foot fence, walked almost a mile in freezing weather, much later at night, and no shoes, no socks. She went to McDonald's in Woodland Park and ordered two cheeseburgers. Again, absolutely no video. There's video footage. No Mindy Lee at McDonald's ordering two cheeseburgers that she then supposedly walks back, climbs back over the fence, puts these barrels around her,

eats two cheeseburgers, and sits there and freezes to death. And the cause of death is hypothermia. Where do we stand now? What has become of the two people that were in the car with her when she allegedly jumped out without shoes on, ran across a snowy terrain, and died without a single mark on her feet. Where are these two people? They were allowed to leave.

They were allowed to go home. No, I mean, where are they now? Do we know where they are now? Yes, we do. Bobby, what could possibly have been a motive for them? I thought they were all friends. Supposedly, they were all friends. But when we start to think about a motive, Mindy was not a drug addict by any means.

They tried to portray her that she may have been involved in a lot of methamphetamines. I co-founded the very first narcotics bureau for El Paso County, Colorado in 1972. I've worked around narcotics. I have a lot of knowledge in the narcotics business and I can tell you right now that she showed absolutely no signs of being a meth addict by any means. I mean, she had beautiful teeth. She was, you know, she was not skinny. She did not show any signs of that. With us as a special guest today, it is former homicide detective Bobby Brown joining us from Colorado now, a private investigator. So Bobby, is there any chance, is there any way the death of Mindy Lee can be solved? Absolutely. Her death, it will be solved. Absolutely. But how? You picked a really appropriate time to ask this question because after all these years, less than two weeks ago, I received a tip from an individual that was in jail with another

individual in the state of Texas, there was discussion about another person that died of hypothermia almost exactly two years and four days from when Mindy Lee was found. That was almost the exact same age as Mindy Lee. She was found in freezing temperatures, frozen to death in the driveway at the same street. It's absolutely scary to compare the two of these cases. I am pursuing the Texas lead vengeance as well as other leads that we have discovered recently with a bloodhound. And just the investigation just it never stops and it doesn't slow down. And we keep getting closer and closer. in Colossians. Guys, we are trying our best to shed light on and help solve the death, the mysterious death of a young mother, Mindy Lee in Colorado. None of the facts scenario

given by the two witnesses make any sense to me, nor can it be corroborated. In fact, if anything, it can be disproven from what we know right now. I want to thank our special guest, former homicide investigator Bobby Brown, and of course, Alan Duke. Thank you for being with us as always. I'm Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.