Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Man sex obsessed with brother's girlfriend ends in murder

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

A 21-year-old mom of three, Stephanie Eldredge, disappears from her home leaving her infant daughter alone. Her cellphone, key, and even her shoes are still in the apartment. Her body is later found bound in electrical tape inside a blanket in the foothill of Idaho Falls. What happened to Stephanie?Joining Nancy Grace today: Kathleen Murphy - North Carolina, Family Attorney, www.ncdomesticlaw.com  Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, www.drbethanymarshall.com, New Netflix show: 'Bling Empire'  Greg Smith - Special Deputy Sheriff, Johnson County Sheriff's Office (Kansas), Executive Director of the Kelsey Smith Foundation, www.kelseysarmy.com  Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet" featured on "Poisonous Liaisons" on True Crime Network Eric Grossarth - Reporter, East Idaho News dot com, Instagram/Twitter: @EricGrossarth Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A gorgeous young mom, Stephanie Eldridge, seemingly vanishes into thin air. Where is Stephanie? What happened? What a horrible question to be asking. What if you come home from work one day or like me and suddenly David's just gone and there's no trace and I see his cell phone and his car keys sitting there. So where is he? What do you do when that happens? Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

The 21-year-old disappeared from her Idaho Falls apartment. She was just a beautiful, beautiful young lady. The mother of four vanished on a warm August night. Her baby left behind in the apartment along with Stephanie's phone, car keys, purse, and shoes. There was several items that was left behind that indicated that there was foul play involved. Well, I guess so. Guys, you're hearing our good friend Nate Eaton, EastIdahoNews.com. Yeah, none of that makes sense. Who would leave the baby at home unattended with the cell phone, the car keys,

the purse, and the shoes all still there? Of course, most women have more than one pair of shoes. That doesn't tell me anything. But the baby speaks volumes. With me, an all-star panel to try to apply logic to an illogical situation in the search for 21-year-old Stephanie Eldridge, beautiful on the outside and the inside. Kathleen Murphy, veteran trial lawyer, joining me out of North

Carolina. You can find her at ncdomesticlaw.com. That's a mystery to me. Why do they call husbands and wives fighting like two wet cats in a barrel domestic? That's for you, Kathleen, not for me. I prefer something with yellow crime scene tape around it. Dr. Bethany Marshall, renowned psychoanalyst joining us from L.A. She's at drbethanymarshall.com, and she's a star in a new Netflix hit, Bling Empire. Greg Smith, you know his name well. Special Deputy Sheriff, Johnson County Sheriff's Office. Executive Director of the Kelsey Smith Foundation. You can find that at kelseysarmy.com. I've learned a lot there, Greg Smith. Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville

State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, star of a new hit series on the True Crime Network, Poisonous Liaisons, Death Investigator. Joining me, Joseph Scott Morgan. But first, straight out to our friend Eric Grossarth, joining us from eastidahonews.com. You can find him on Insta and Twitter at Eric Grossarth. Eric, let's just start at the beginning. Tell me about Idaho Falls. Idaho Falls is just a nice, calm, quiet community. Lots of families, kids running around in the streets. It's not a place that bad things happen. I mean, people by the last census. And, you know, Dr. Bethany Marshall and Joe Scott Morgan, you've heard me talk ad nauseum about our family's last RV trip where we retraced the Lewis and Clark Trail. Yes, we did. This is part of that. So that's how I know a little bit about Idaho Falls. In fact, they have a museum there that's almost

completely dedicated to Lewis and Clark. And if you remember, the significance of this is Lewis and Clark went through the wilderness to get from A to B, and they went through Idaho Falls. It's absolutely stunning country, but it is country. What does that mean to me? Dr. Bethany Marshall, as we're talking about the disappearance of a young woman, it means low crime rate. You're going to have a lot higher crime rate and possibility of kidnap, rape, disappearance. If you're in a concentrated area like New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, Philly, but in Idaho Falls, not a lot of people just vanish into thin air, Bethany. Nancy, do you know what else it means? It means families who stay together, not to cast dispersions on big cities,

but this is not a place where a woman has an Internet affair or, you know, meet somebody on the street. i don't know what you're talking about because women get online and look in small communities and meet these horrible people i mean yes what are you saying that you can't fall in love online if you live in a small town that's just absolutely not true i guess what i'm saying, Nancy, is that I'm going to get it together. Okay. Logic, logic. What I'm trying to say is in small towns, these communities are so close-knit that families tend to be held together by the community. You have your pastor, you have your school teachers, you have your mother-in-law or your sister living down the block.

And even if there's some form of acting out, sure, it can happen in a small town just like it can in a big city. The values, I think, hold people together. And because of that, it's less likely, I believe, I'd have to look at the research, that a woman is just going to meet somebody else and abandon her family. Now, you know what? I'm surprised you fed into that, Dr. Bethany Marshall, because Greg Smith, you know, I never get to disagree with Bethany because she's always right.

But Greg, did you hear what she just said? It's less likely a woman's going to meet someone and run away with them in a small city. But you know what drives me crazy? Every time a woman goes missing, that's the first assumption. She ran off with her new boyfriend. You know what? My grandmother on my father's side used to say, men are like buses. A new one comes along every 15 minutes. No offense, men. Sorry, Joe Scott. Sorry, Greg. Sorry, Eric Grossarth. But I find it really difficult to believe. I mean, look, consider the source. I remember when Drew Peterson said that about his fourth wife, Stacey. Oh, she went off with her boyfriend. She's dead.

Her body has never been found. We hear it over and over. Why is that, Greg? When a woman goes missing, everyone assumes they ran off with a boyfriend. Do they need sex that badly? They have to run away and get it? I mean, I don't think so. You can just run down to the local motel for what? An hour. And be done with it, right? So why do you have to leave your baby behind? Why is that always the first assumption, Greg Smith? Well, I think, I think we're safe to say that leaving a baby behind, that's probably not what happened. That just, that doesn't make sense, particularly from what I was able to find out about her. She has more than one child. So obviously she's a mother that has a family and I don't think that she'd just take off and leave them all behind. And that's, that's in missing

person cases. Has that happened? Yes. Does it happen a lot? No, it really doesn't. I can't really think of that many cases, Greg Smith, special deputy sheriff, Johnson County Sheriff's. You can find him Kelsey's Army dot com. Greg, I can't think of really any cases just off the top of my head now that we're getting into this topic where a mom just left her children to run away with a boyfriend. You're absolutely right. And Dr. Bethany Marshall, the baby is the fly in that ointment. She would never just leave the baby unattended. So there goes that theory. Nancy, there's a baby. There's other children.

But, you know, when women abandon their children, do you know what we see? No. We see baby photos in the dumpster next to the house. We see the woman giving away baby things. Remember all the crimes we've covered where there's infanticide? Not to compare this with infanticide because this would be abandoning the children, not killing them. But there's already a dissociation from the children in advance of leaving them, killing them, moving away with somebody else. There's no indication that this mother was not bonded with her baby. If so, other people would be coming out and saying,

well, she didn't feed the baby or, you know, she went to the pediatrician and, you know, the pediatrician, you know, recommended some kind of a class or course or parenting training or something like that. There is nothing like this. This is a mother who loved her baby and was not planning to separate from baby. That's what makes this case so suspicious. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. To you, Kathleen Murphy, North Carolina trial lawyer. You can find her at ncdomesticlaw.com.

She's just straight off a huge win in court. You know, you got to have some backbone to go in court and fight like a gladiator, Kathleen Murphy. Congratulations on your win. I'm very proud of my win. Yeah, I'm proud for you. But Kathleen, I just want to point out that what we're doing right now, yes, some people, Jackie, may think we're off topic, but this is exactly how cases are discussed at the DA's office, at the homicide investigator's office, at the missing person's office. You talk and it's free flow and you think of all the variants and then somehow you narrow it down to a theory. Would you agree or disagree? I would absolutely agree.

We've been doing this long enough. We get to know the human nature of the type of people that come through the system. I mean, frankly, it is down to human nature. And you have to explore every single detail. You know, we started off with Eric Grossarth with eastidahonews.com talking about where is Idaho Falls. And somehow we got into a one hour stay at a motel in Lewis and Clark. And I don't know what else. And I take full responsibility for that. But as a trial lawyer, I'm taking the fifth. Eric Grossarth, let's just start all over. Let's start with the day that she goes

missing that we know of. Okay. What happened that day? Okay. So Stephanie Eldridge lived in an apartment with her boyfriend, her boyfriend's mother, and her boyfriend's half brother, Kenneth Jones. Now hold on, Jackie. Is it true they were planning a wedding? So yes. So that's her fiance and she lived with her fiance's family. So they were all very, very close. So you've got the mom I know of, you've got the fiance and you've got the brother. Was there anybody else living there beside her baby? From what we have in court documents, that's who lived at the house. Okay. So what happened that day? So what happened that day is Eldridge disappeared. She left her keys, her purse, her shoes, and the baby that we talked about. I hear what you're

saying, Eric Grossar. So she lived there in the apartment. But the day she went missing, we've got to take a look at who is Stephanie Eldridge. Take a listen to our friends at CrimeOnline.com. Stephanie Eldridge had plans. This mother of three wanted her two oldest daughters, who were living with other family members, to join her. Family members say her children were her pride and joy. The 21-year-old was living with her boyfriend, Michael Jimenez, the father of her third child, another girl.

Jimenez's mother and his half-brother also lived in the home. Eldridge's plan for the future also included continuing her education. She was slated to attend Eastern Idaho Technical College in the fall to begin studying to become a dental hygienist. That was because it would allow her to make a nice income to support her family. Her ultimate goal, according to family, was to open her own dance studio. All those plans seemingly go up in smoke when she goes missing. What happened to that day? Take a listen again to our friends at Crime Online. The young mother vanished from her Idaho Falls apartment on a Monday late in August. Jimenez said the last time he saw his fiance

was around 6 a.m. when he left for work. She called him around 9 a.m. to say she was not feeling well. When Jimenez tried to call her back, she didn't answer. Her boyfriend's mother, Lynette Thiessen, came home around 12 30 that afternoon. What she found was disturbing. The four-month-old baby girl was home alone. Elder did cell phone, car keys, purse, and even her shoes were still there. Investigators believed foul play was involved, but couldn't prove it. So let me understand the timeline. To Eric Grossarth joining us, eastidonews.com. Eric, the fiance leaves for work. She, Stephanie, is still there with the baby. She talks to him at 9 a.m., we think, I guess by cell phone.

Then at 1230 at lunchtime, the future mother-in-law comes home and finds the baby unattended and Stephanie gone. Do I have the timeline correct? Yeah, that is what happened. She was home with this baby. And sometime that morning when the family left the home, she vanished. Stephanie vanished from the home. They find the baby there. And it wasn't one of these mothers like we've talked about that would just leave her child here in the house. She was wanting to care for her children.

I mean, that was her pride and joy, was her daughters. And so it was just mysterious to them. Investigators quickly believed that foul play was involved, but they weren't able to prove anything. Let me ask you about Michael Jimenez. He's also the father of the baby girl. Now, how old was the baby girl, Eric Grossarth? She was very, very, very young. I believe she was around four months. So given that to you, Kathleen Murphy, a four-month-old baby left at home, so we know for at least three and a half hours,

because the fiancé spoke to her at nine, the future mother-in-law gets home at 1230. So in those three and a half hours, Stephanie Eldridge seemingly vanishes into thin air. You can tell, Kathleen, when a baby has been unattended. Explain. You can tell when a baby's been unattended for a minute at that age. They are so needing the holding of the parent, the feeding, the burping, the cuddling. It's just such an obvious situation that this woman has disappeared. I mean, when these police officers or whoever came into the apartment to find this woman missing probably were able to

immediately tell that this child had been abandoned. Well, I'm sure the mother-in-law realized because the baby hadn't been changed or taken care of. So let me understand something. Eric Grosser, according to reports, the boyfriend, Michael Jimenez, says he hears from her at 9 o'clock by cell. But when everyone gets home, her cell phone is right there. Correct? Correct. The cell phone was in the apartment along with her purse, keys, and the baby. The boyfriend, Michael Jimenez, Eric Grosser, do we know where he worked?

I mean, did he punch a clock? Can we make sure he was where he said he was? Investigators said that the boyfriend and the mother were both cooperative, forthcoming, and they were able to determine that they were being truthful when they spoke with investigators that morning when she disappeared. To you, Greg Smith, Special Deputy Sheriff of Johnson County Sheriff's Office in Kansas, when the cops come out at the get-go and say, boyfriend, fiance, husband, whoever the man is in the life is being cooperative, that is a big sign to me. Normally, they won't say anything like that if that male in the family is under suspicion.

Well, it is kind of telling that he was willing to cooperate. I know a lot of families, when they find themselves in an unfortunate situation like this, one of the things that they are kind of upset about is the way that they're treated by police because a lot of times it is a family member or somebody that's close to the person that committed the offense but i've heard a lot of families complain to me and say you know why do they do that why are they why do they come down on us and i explain that the dynamics are usually such that it is somebody that the person knows and that the best thing you can do is cooperate with the investigation so that they can clear you and move on and find the person who really did it. So that's pretty telling that he was willing to do that. Guys, Greg Smith is not just a special deputy sheriff at Johnson County

and executive director of Kelsey Smith Foundation. He is a crime victim. His daughter, Kelsey, was kidnapped and murdered, and that propelled him to his life's work of helping other people. You know, Greg, I've spoken to our friend Mark Klass many, many times about when his daughter, you know, Mark is the founder of Klass Kids Foundation, when his daughter Polly went missing at a sleepover in her own home. Mark was divorced from the mom and lived nearby.

The first thing cops did was race to Mark Klass's home, search it. They wanted DNA. They wanted fingerprints. They wanted everything from him. And you know what he did? He said, fine, search my car, search my office, search my home, take my blood, take my DNA, take my fingerprints, anything, just find my daughter. He understood what you just said. Statistically, the person you're looking at is within the family and is a male. So by cooperating, you advance the police search for whoever took Stephanie Eldridge. Did that happen when Kelsey went missing?

Did cops want to know, hey, where were you? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we had we had found her car and called the police. They came out and. Oh, I bet they were on you like a cheap suit if you found her car. Yeah, actually, they were good. I mean, I was a police officer. I knew a lot of the officers that were on the scene. So there wasn't a lot of that. But eventually we were asked to come into the station, my wife and I, and put in an interview room and left alone for 15 or 20 minutes. And I looked at my wife because I knew they were watching this,

and I said, you know why we're in here, don't you? They think we're suspects. So as soon as they come back, we'll tell them everything that happened and get this over with so they can find the right person. And no more than probably 30 seconds after I said that, the detective walked in. We had our conversation that we needed to have, and they were out the door looking for who really killed Kelsey.

So Eric Grosser of EastSideHoe News.com, that tells me a lot that they came out right at the get go and state that the fiance is actually cooperating. A young mom vanishing from her apartment on a Monday late in August. She calls the fiance around nine o'clock. He saw her at 6 a.m. when he left for work, and she wasn't feeling well. But when he tried to call her back, she didn't answer. The boyfriend's mom, Lynette Thiessen, came home, and what she found was very upsetting. The four-month-old baby was unattended. Eldridge's cell phone, car keys, purse, and even her shoes were still there. Straight out to Dr. Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst joining us from LA.

Then I'm going to follow up with our forensics expert, Joseph Scott Morgan. You know, at first when I saw that her shoes were still there, I went, well, you know, women have a lot of shoes. That means nothing. That's not true. Because the other day, my son went into our pantry, saw our kitchen, and that's where I keep my favorite tennis shoes and my cowboy boots, which I wear both of them all the time. He goes, Mom, your cowboy boots have been in here for like four days straight. Why aren't you wearing them? And this is a 13-year-old boy who knows nothing about design or shoes.

And I said, I hurt my ankle, sweetheart. That's why I'm wearing my tennis shoes every day. So it does matter if you have a favorite pair of shoes. People notice and there, I assume by her purse or cell phone and her keys were her shoes. So it does matter. It's very individual to the person. It's very individual, Nancy. These kinds of behavioral, physical cues are vital. The first time I ever met you at CNN, you were wearing your cowboy boots. The second time, you were wearing your cowboy boots.

The third time, you were wearing your cowboy boots. I'm assuming, I'm hearing today that you still have those cowboy boots or a new pair, but think about it. It's the same pair. Once you break them in, it's like a baseball glove. Once you break it in, you're together for life. That's right. I love those cowboy boots shoe closet the size of a small bedroom.

We're talking a 21-year-old with a four-month-old, likely struggling financially, as we all did when we were 21 years old, trying to work her way through school. A young woman like that will only have a few pairs of shoes, and anything amiss in that apartment is going to be noticed, especially the child. I was thinking about this four-month-old baby being left for three and a half hours. Nancy, babies, you know, as one of the other guests were saying, they need to be picked up, hugged, swaddled. This baby was probably very dysregulated at this point, screaming, crying, soiling the diapers. I'm sure when the mother, future mother-in-law walked in and saw this scene, that her heart dropped. Like she knew something was amiss.

This was a vast departure from how this young woman lived her life. You know, Joe Scott Morgan, we're talking about the shoes and the cell phone and the keys. I think I've told you I was investigating a serial killer. And in the end, I managed to get him on one murder. And it was of a Jane Doe. And there was a vital piece of evidence. It was one earring. And I thought, and I thought, and had help thinking about the location of the earring, how the earring got there. What did that

mean in the way that the crime unfolded? One clue like that may mean nothing to somebody else, but it could mean volumes if it's analyzed correctly. If you were in that apartment, Joe Scott, and you had reason to believe this was the last place that she was known to be safe, what would you be looking for? Well, you know, I teach my students, Nancy, as crime scene investigators, one thing you look for is not just evidence of a struggle. You look for absence of a struggle as well. So just because things are negative or positive in crime scene investigation does not make it a bad thing because you can eliminate certain things. I think a big question is here, how is a young lady of this age lured out of an apartment with a four-month-old in the apartment? How do you get her out of the door and there's no signs of forced entry or struggle? So that tells me that someone had to have access to her because, you know, what we're hearing now relative to what the police found, quote unquote, found when they got there, they're not saying they found broken furniture or busted out glass or, you know, somebody kicked

the door in or anything like that. What they're saying is we have the presence of shoes. We have the presence of keys. We have presence of wallet and we have the presence of a baby, but we don't have the person that's missing. So I've got a four-month-old granddaughter, all right? I get to watch her regularly, which is one of the greatest gifts I've ever had. I've got to tell you, and this goes for my wife as well, if somebody tried to separate me from that baby, okay, it would take very large, strong men, a huge battalion of them to put any kind of distance between me and that child. So as an investigator, I'm thinking the individual or the rationale for her leaving the apartment must have been something that felt at least remotely comfortable or safe for her.

Because you don't have any evidence of struggle here. But what we do have is an abandoned girl. You know, I find it significant, Eric Grossarth, EastIdahoNews.com, that it was Jimenez that called police and reported her missing. I mean, think back on it. When Scott Peterson realized Lacey was missing, he didn't call police. He called her parents. Very often, we see the perp who's ultimately held responsible.

They're not the ones that call police. In this case, isn't it true the fiance, Michael Jimenez, called police to report her missing? Yeah. He called police. He's like, hey, she's gone. I don't know where she is. Can you help me find her? So it's very telling. He was, again, cooperative, forthcoming that she disappeared. He pervert would want to put as much time as possible between the murder or the kidnap and police finding out about it. Because delay, delay, delay is a defendant's best, best friend. So the search was on until, take a listen to what Anthony Congie at KIDK Channel 3 has to say.

On April 23rd, a repairman working on windmills stumbled across the remains and reported it to authorities. Ever since then, police had a good idea of who the remains were. There was evidence at the scene and information that we'd gained throughout the investigation that led us to believe that the remains were those of Stephanie. And so we've already been working on it as if they were Stephanie. The Idaho Falls Police Department received confirmation through a positive dental ID made by a forensic odontologist. And take a listen to our friends at Crime Online. Stephanie Eldridge's badly decomposed remains were found in a shallow grave

in the foothills east of Idaho Falls. The body was wrapped in a blanket and her wrists were bound by electrical tape. Eldridge's grandfather told the East Idaho News that the remains were so decomposed that forensic evidence wasn't able to determine the cause of death or even a suspect. In fact, the body had to be identified by dental records. Then, Idaho Falls Police Detective Jessica Marley was assigned. She began working the case full time. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. To Eric Grosser of EastIdahoNews.com, where was her body found in relation to the apartment?

She's wrapped in a blanket, and I would want to find out where the blanket came from. Did it come from the apartment? And her wrists were bound. She was in windmill areas. A windmill worker is the one who discovered her and reported the body found. Where was she found in relation to the apartment, Eric? So this is an area, I'd say, 15, 20 minutes east of Idaho Falls. This is where it gets rural.

There's not many houses out there. There's the windmills out there, and windmill workers go out there regularly. People are out there hunting. It's an area that people don't go very often. It's not populated. It's dark in the morning at night. So it is essentially the middle of nowhere as close as you can get to town. And her wrists were bound with duct tape? Electrical tape. That is correct. Wrists were bound as well as her face. Let me follow up on that. Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics,

her face and head and her wrists were bound with electrical tape. She was so decomposed, she had to be identified through her dental records. What does that tell you? Well, when I hear hands, feet, face that are bound with this electrical tape, it gives me an indication that restraint is involved. This is not like a packaging event. Like I've worked a lot of cases where people will take tape and wrap bodies up, say, for instance, in a blanket. But if what they're saying is accurate, that means that she may have been bound and gagged. So that tells me that at that moment in time when this occurred, she was probably alive. They wanted to be able to muffle any kind of screams or sounds that are coming out of her

mouth. But Nancy, this is the beauty part about tape from an investigative standpoint. There's something that are referred to as plastic prints. And when you have a medium like tape, if everybody at home, all of our listeners will just take a piece of tape at some point in time. And on the adherent side, I'm not the side where the adhesive is. I'm not talking about the smooth, the sticky side. Place your thumb on there, okay? Place your thumb on there, and you can actually have a latent print that is what we refer to as a plastic print. It's different than having to dust for it necessarily, and you can leave that print. Nancy, I've seen cases with plastic prints in particular, and you can get them in oil and grease and that sort of thing,

where a print will survive literally for years and years in that. So that's a juicy piece of evidence. And if they're using as much tape as Eric has alluded to, that means that it exponentially increases the opportunity that you can potentially recover a print off this. And also, what's the nature of the tape? Who manufactured it? How's it been cut? What was it cut with? And what's the width? Because there's different sizes of electrical tape, okay? And there's different qualities. So all of that is key information. To you, Dr. Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst joining us out of Beverly Hills. Dr. Bethany, what does it tell you when a victim's face has been bound?

When you duct tape a person's face, you are cold-blooded. You have no remorse. You do not care for the victim. You're literally defacing them. You know, Nancy, we talk so many times about the fact that even in death, often a victim will have a blanket placed over them or their head put on a pillow. Yes, like in Tottenham where Kaylee was wrapped in a blanket, similar to this as well. What does that mean to you? Well, to me, there's at least some act of kindness towards the victim at the very end.

I don't know about kindness when you just duct tape somebody's mouth and nose and face and eyes. I don't know about kindness, but it tells me this. It's somebody that's been in that home. That's what it tells me. That's right. Then the investigation hit a dead end. Take a listen to our friend Nate Eaton at East Idaho News. Stephanie's family thinks about her constantly,

and now they're hoping this new Idaho cold cases deck of playing cards will lead to a break in the case. The cards are being distributed among prisoners and jail inmates throughout Idaho with the idea that these photos may get someone to talk. The hope is to elicit new tips from the inmate population because, as we know, inmates like to talk about each other's crimes, sometimes brag about each other's crimes, half the day playing cards. Cold case card decks have been used in prison systems in other states, and law enforcement say they can be an effective tool in solving crimes. There's a lot of chatter that comes from the prison system, and if anybody wouldn't know, it'd probably be the inmate. Stephanie's family says if the cards help close any case, it's worth it. And they look forward to the day when whoever killed their precious girl is found.

Cold case playing cards, like a deck of cards. But let me understand, Eric Grossarth, East Idaho News. So they're cards with, for instance, a picture of the victim on one side and like the name, I guess, they're like milk carton photos, except they're on playing cards. And they somehow get distributed behind bars and the hope that the inmates will start discussing the case is yes, no. Yeah, that is exactly what it is. Around here, a lot of the cold cases have been put on the playing cards and they get distributed to the prisons. And thankfully, since those were put out in 2016, several of these cases have been solved, not all of them from tips in the jail and prisons. But yes, they do have the picture on there,

a little detail about the name, where they disappeared, and how long they've been searching. Very, very ingenious. So the claim decks are disseminated into jails and prisons with the hope that someone will say something, somebody will start bragging, and boy, were they right. Take a listen to our friends at CrimeOnline.com. Police had a suspect in mind from the day Stephanie Eldridge disappeared, her boyfriend's stepbrother, Kenneth Jones. During the initial investigation, the boyfriend, Jimenez, and his mother cooperated with authorities.

Their stories stayed consistent. But Jones' story changed more than once. Two years after the mom of three disappeared, Jones was arrested for an unrelated crime, and while in jail, Jones reportedly told his cellmate that he had violently killed Eldridge. Jones said that he and Eldridge had been in a fight, and he pushed her, and Eldridge hit her head. Jones said he panicked and hid the body. But the case still went cold, as investigators did not believe the jailhouse confession was enough to charge him with murder. And that is so true. Kathleen Murphy, North

Carolina family lawyer at ncdomesticlaw.com. It is not only interpreted through our constitution, through case law, but crime 101 in law school, you cannot, under our law, convict someone with a confession alone. There's got to be substantial corroborating evidence, yes? Yes. Guys, what do we know about this brother-in-law-to-be? Who is this guy? Take a listen to our friends at CrimeOnline.com. Kenneth Jones had a long criminal history beginning with the DUI arrest. From there,

misdemeanor drug and resisting arrest charges were brought against him. Then he was charged with a felony, third-degree arson. Court records show police responding to a report of harassment. At the same time and same location, a call came in about a suicidal man threatening to burn down his mother's home. Police believe he was the same man who was sending the harassing text messages. The person who reported the harassment told police she was in fear for her safety and her child. The victim said Jones had been living with her and her fiance, but Jones and the man got into an argument and a fight broke out and Jones threatened to burn down the house. The victim said she and her daughter left for a

while, but when she returned, Jones told her he had started a fire. She had better call the fire department. Inside, the woman found a pile of clothes burning. So Eric Grossarth, let me understand. What we know now is that the brother-in-law-to-be gave multiple stories about what happened to Stephanie Eldridge after his brother left the apartment that morning. He told one person that he pushed her in the middle of an argument. She, quote, hit her head. And instead of calling 911, he bound and gagged her with duct tape and hit her body. That he choked her dead, that's story number two, and bound and gagged her with duct tape and hit her body. And he told people that she was his girlfriend.

Are all of those stories, did they all come out of his mouth? You know, there's even more stories that came out of his mouth that day as well he actually told investigators that he used eldridge's phone went to work came back for a little bit uh watched the child while eldridge left then she came back and he went back to work all of this before noon so he said he was going back and forth uh that morning uh one time he said he went and bought some weed off of a friend. And that friend said he never saw Jones that day. And then his boss said he never showed up to work. So there was all sorts of stories floating around out of Jones' mouth of what happened that day.

And so it made investigators very, very suspicious early on of him because he couldn't give a straight story. You know, to you, Dr. Bethany Marshall, why do suspects even talk and they give conflicting stories? Is it they just can't keep their story straight? Nancy, I think there's something about that criminal mindset, that particular type of psychopathology, which is a fancy word for psychological disturbance, that causes an interference in what we call big picture thinking, cause and effect. It comes from the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain just behind the forehead. It's the part of you that learns from mistakes, is able to plan ahead. It teaches you how to read the room and see what other people,

see in yourself what other people see in you. This guy didn't have any of that. He was in his own little world thinking that everybody would believe whatever he said. And you know that thing about going to get weed? I, you know, weed was probably the only part of that story that was true. Except cannabis makes you passive. So it's unlikely that somebody using cannabis is going to kill somebody. Maybe... Why do you call it cannabis? Why don't you just say pot? You know, because I have addicts in my practice, and I think that it's better to use the technical

term. So go ahead, put perfume on the pig. And I don't know everything that you're just saying, but I do know this. When someone starts changing their story around the time someone goes missing and their body's found in a windmill field, that's suspect number one. Well, I know you're not going to be surprised to hear this. Hour cut 10. Take a listen. With the amended information, then you do have, as we just talked about, count one Eric Grosshearth, this guy, after all those years watching the family twist and turn, suffer, the children grow up without a mom, not knowing really what happened to her, he finally pleads guilty. What's his sentence?

Yeah, so he pled guilty and just recently got sentenced 10 to 21 years in prison when he do all the math on those charges. So he gets at least a decade in prison when pleading guilty to that voluntary manslaughter charge, as well as the alteration of evidence and then the obstruction charge. And this happened 13 years after Stephanie. That little baby girl, the other children are all grown up without mommy now. And finally he comes clean,

as clean as he can. 21 years for him. But life without a parole with the death of their mother for her three children. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.