Crime Weekly - S1 Ep17: The Murder of Missy Grubaugh (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Subscribe to our new YouTube Channel!: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_NhRiyowalHnbKjveNQxxA Link to Uplift Desk - http://bit.ly/CrimeWeekly It was just before dawn on April 7th 1994 at the Holly Park apartment complex in Arlington Texas when the residents of one of the buildings were evacuated due to a blazing fire that had started in one of the units. It was a three alarm blaze that damaged eight units and left twenty people displaced, but as the tenants stood outside, huddling together and watching the flames engulf their home, they noticed that someone was missing. 19 year old Missy Grubaugh was not standing amongst them, but her neighbors saw her car in the parking lot. The fire department was able to get the fire under control within an hour so they could locate the source, but they did not anticipate what they would walk in on. Missy was found laying on her bed, naked, and stabbed multiple times through the heart, and police believed that whoever had killed her had started the blaze to cover their tracks and to destroy evidence. In today’s episode we will discuss what happened to Missy, who was just days away from her 20th birthday, and we will find out who did this to her, and why. Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

It was just before dawn on April 7th, 1994, at the Holly Park apartment complex in Arlington, Texas, when the residents of one of the buildings were evacuated due to a blazing fire that had started in one of the units. It was a three-alarm blaze that damaged eight units and left 20 people displaced from their homes. But as the tenants stood outside, huddling together and watching the flames engulf their home, they noticed that someone was missing. 19-year-old Missy Grubau was not standing amongst them, but her neighbors saw her car in the parking lot. The fire department was able to get the fire under control

within an hour or so, and they located the source, but they did not anticipate what they would walk in on. Missy was found lying on her bed, naked and stabbed multiple times through they was found lying on her bed, naked, and stabbed multiple times through the heart and other places on her body, and police believed that whoever had killed her had started the blaze to cover their tracks and to destroy the evidence. In today's episode, we will discuss what happened to Missy, who was just days away from her 20th birthday, and we will find out who did this to her and why.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we're talking about the case of 19-year-old Missy Grubaugh. She was murdered in her own apartment. She was a college student. She had a lot going for her. But I know before we dive in, Derek, you had some housekeeping things you wanted to address. Yeah. And we might have this from time to time, especially when we're going into such detail on these cases. I want to make sure we have it right when we can. And after last week's episode, someone reached out who's in the forensics field about,

you had asked me, listen, there was that fingerprint smudge on Crystal's wrist. Could that be used to identify a person? Could it be used as like a latent print? And I said, it'd be very difficult or highly unlikely. And this person, again, I can't remember her name, but she is a crime scene analysis person. She basically said, you got to remember, yes, it would be hard to lift that print because you don't have any type of substance like an oxide powder or a fluorescent powder on it to lift it. But technically if, if the fingerprint, you know, was sitting on the blood in a certain way where it was kind of just getting on the ridges and then it was applied to Crystal's wrist in a way where it didn't just become one big blob. There is a possibility where you could have some ridge marks in there from the fingerprint. And what you would be able to do is use maybe like a macro lens and really get a detailed photo of that fingerprint. And what you would be able to do is use maybe like a macro lens and really get a detailed photo of that fingerprint. And then you could enhance it in Photoshop tools afterwards to kind of invert it black and white, and then really enhance it to make a comparative analysis between that smudged bloody print and whatever the subject is that you're comparing it to.

The best example I can give of this would be, I've had numerous situations where you have a boot print, someone's outside, it's muddy out, they walk into a home and there's like a partial boot print on the ground. Well, you can enhance it slightly, but what we usually do is not touch it at all and just use a macro lens. You get that boot print and maybe on like a blue floor or something. So it's not that easy to see, but then through Photoshopping tools, you can take out the background, enhance just the ridge marks, and then compare that footprint to whatever shoe you're trying to compare it to. So I just wanted to clear that up because I did make it seem like it couldn't, it couldn't happen under any situation. I was more referring to lifting that bloody print and comparing it, but I'm glad to be corrected. And yes,

very unlikely, but you could possibly potentially use it if it was smudged on her wrist in a certain way that you could possibly see some ridges. So thank you for, this is why we want you guys messaging us. I like the clarification and we're not perfect, so appreciate it. Yeah, that's very interesting. I was wondering how they would have even gotten something like that. But we did talk earlier on the phone about how maybe the blood had dried and the blood had dried in a certain way without smearing. And that would make it obviously a lot easier to distinguish the ridges and things like that. Yeah. And that's kind of where I was going with it. My impression, because we don't have a photo of it, is that this was probably a smudged print. And even if it's just a regular print with just the grease from your, you know, the oils from your fingers, if it's smudged or smeared, it becomes highly

unusable, right? So my, just my perception of what this print would look like on her wrist is just a smudge, like a fingerprint where it's just basically one big blob. And it's not something that's really defined that you could see things. But again, that's an assumption on my part. So I'm more than happy to clarify that today that, hey, listen, in some cases you can use a bloody fingerprint. It doesn't appear that was the case here, though. I also want to mention before we dive in that we got a lot of speak pipes this past week. So we want to encourage you guys to keep sending them. So if you go on our website, CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com,

you can actually leave a speak pipe, which is a voice message, and then we'll be able to hear it. And you never know, your speak pipe could be featured in an episode of Crime Weekly. Yeah, we're loving them, guys. Keep them coming. The accents are great. The positive comments and even just some of the suggestions going forward and case submissions. We're here for all of it. So the one thing I kept seeing is they want you to keep saying your catchphrase on the show. What's your catchphrase? Don't come for me. That's it. That's it. One person was like, it wasn't a speak pipe, but they were like, Stephanie, don't stop using your catchphrase. Don't come for me. That's what I'm here for. Okay. So we actually did get a case recommendation for the podcast,

Phoebe Hansjuck, and I stole it for YouTube. So Derek, don't come for me. There we go. There we go. You got, it's in there. Yeah, I definitely stole it. It was just way too good. It was way too good to, to, I needed pictures and things, you know, Phoebe Hanschuk was such a beautiful young woman. So I really needed, I needed visuals, but that was before I knew we were going to do YouTube. So that I received while doing Breaking Homicide. And I was telling Stephanie about one that we're going to be doing in the next couple of weeks, where I was like packed and ready to go to this hometown. And for reasons outside of my control, we didn't get to go. And so these are cases that, you know, I had spoken to the families about, said I was going to work them and wasn't able to. So we're going to be covering those. So don't be discouraged if we don't do your case right away. We legitimately have no word of a lie. I think the last time I checked like 1300

case submissions that I actually have gone through and made notes on. So we have plenty of cases to cover. But keep sending them. But keep sending them and so Stephanie can steal them. Kind of. Yeah. All right. let's jump in. I want to talk about Missy Grubaugh today. She was actually born on April 26, 1974 in Burleson, Texas. And Burleson is a suburb of Fort Worth. She attended Burleson High School where she played the French horn in the marching band. She was a member of a music sorority, and she was taking honors level courses. Even during high school, Missy was a very hard worker,

and this would follow her throughout her entire life, her entire short life, unfortunately. So during high school, she's taking these honors courses. She's in the marching band. She's doing a bunch of things, and she's still working 20 to 30 hours a week on top of all of that because she wanted to save money for college. And, you know, she was described by many people as incredibly hardworking and focused and driven. And Missy knew that her family didn't have a lot of money. So she wanted to take the burden off of her mother and pay for college herself. So that's why she was working throughout high school. She didn't want her mother to have to pay for college. Missy was also described very, very clearly and very often as a person who would always do the right thing. She

had a very strong moral fiber and she was active in the First Baptist Church of Burleson where she would attend church with her family, but she also worked with children and she taught Bible school. So she's very busy. You know, she's doing a lot of things. Missy was sweet, genuine, and honest. She saw the best in people. And she was also described as being very innocent and naive when it came to, you know, the evils in the world. Missy graduated 22nd in her class in May of 1992. And then she enrolled at the University of Texas in Arlington. And this is only about a half an hour drive away from Burleson, where she grew up. Missy wanted to be a math teacher, and she really wanted to pay her own way, as we've talked about that. And she also wanted to live as an independent adult.

So she didn't want to live at home, even though she could have easily driven from home to school. It wasn't that far. She wanted to live on her own. She wanted to have her own life, have her own money, and make her own way in the world. So she moved into the Holly Park apartment complex, and she started working two jobs to pay for tuition. Now, this was working out, but obviously money, it comes easy, it goes easy. It doesn't really come easy, though, does it? But she she ran out of money and she had to take a semester off from school and then work a lot so that she could save up to pay to return to school for the next semester. Yeah. What an incredible person reading up on her, you know, actually hearing from some of her friends as well, just like an all around great person. I have two daughters and reading about her and how independent she was. And part of the reason she was getting those jobs was to not put that financial burden on her mother. As a father,

myself with two girls, this is someone I would like my daughters to grow up and be like someone who doesn't change who she is for anyone, someone who's independent and is going to make her own way. And, and again, from what I was reading, you know, this was her goal all along was to go to the university of Texas and Arlington. And this was before she even got accepted. Like that was her goal. She had set her mind on it and nothing was going to stop her from accomplishing that. And she did it. So yeah, really, really incredible person. And she did it. So yeah, really, really incredible person. And she's described as this very nice person, this very friendly person, right? But it was also said that she knew what she believed in. Like you said, she knew who she was. And if somebody kind of came into her life and tried to make her second guess who she was or tried to make her go against what

she believed in, she could be very firm and she would stand her ground. So she was a friendly person, a kind person, but she also stood up when she felt it was necessary. And I think that's the best way to be, right? It's okay to be nice, but you don't want to let people shit on you either. And she was not that type of person where she was like, hey, listen, I'm going to treat people the way they treat me. But if you come at me a certain way or disrespect me or disrespect something that I believe in, I'm going to let you know. And I have no issue with that whatsoever. I actually, I love it. I love it. I think that's the way you should be. Very respectable. And Missy would be the person who would say,

I trust everyone until they give me a reason not to. And as we find out in this story, in this case, many people in her life after she moved to Arlington, they gave her a reason not to trust her. And it's unfortunate because she was such a kind person. And it just seemed like she ran into and made acquaintances with the worst kind of people after leaving Burleson and going to Arlington. Yeah, it happens too. And you can be a good person and unfortunately run into individuals who can present themselves as good people initially. And when you have someone like Missy, who again, as we just said, treats people the way they treat her, doesn't judge a book by its cover, and gives people an opportunity to show their true colors. You sometimes have to go through some growing pains before finding out

who a person really is. And that appears to be kind of the story here with Missy. Yeah, it's unfortunate. And I think that's why a lot of people become jaded, right? And they stop trusting people because they've trusted the wrong person too many times. And it's it's sad to think that if Missy had lived, I feel like after what she'd experienced with the people in Arlington or the the men specifically in Arlington that she that she came across, she probably would have become this person who is just feeling, you know, it's not worth it. It's not worth it to trust these people anymore. They just continue to disappoint me. Mm hmm. I agree. So at this time, when she's in Arlington, she's taking a semester off so she can pay for college. She was working up to 60 or 70 hours a

week. And, you know, she's usually getting home very late. I remember when when I was in my 20s, I would work at Perkins and people probably don't even know what Perkins is anymore. But it was like a pancake place. I'd work at Perkins during the day, and then I would go and work at Friendly's at night. So I'd be out of the house from like 6.30 in the morning until 10, 30, 11, 12 at night, you know, just working. And this is very reminiscent to what Missy was doing. She was working a lot. But she and her mother, Patty, were very close. And no matter what the hour was when she got home from work, Missy would call her mother Patty and let her know that she was home and safe, which is, you know, very good thing

to do and responsible. And Missy and Patty had this incredibly close relationship where they talked almost every single day, at least once a day. Yeah, my daughters better do the same when they move out on their own. I want to call every night. So, yeah, I was all I was all for this. I love that. And it just shows how close they were. It does, which makes it even more sad because Missy told her

mother everything it seemed like. And I don't know Missy's mother and there's not much about her out there that you can find out. You can tell she's a good mom. You can tell she loved her daughter. But I also have the feeling that Missy's mother was very similar to Missy where she wouldn't judge you. She wouldn't condemn you for something. You could talk to her. You could be honest with her. And she really was a person that Missy went to, and she told her everything, which is super rare when you're 19 years old. You don't always want to tell your parents everything, but Missy felt safe doing this. And on the night of her death, Missy hung up with her mother around midnight and she was getting ready for bed when she heard a knock on her apartment door. And

whoever was on the other side of that door, she must have known because she let them in. Three hours later, the Arlington police received a call from Missy's downstairs neighbor. Now, this woman said that she'd heard loud noises and the sound of breaking glass upstairs in Missy's apartment, and she thought that maybe there was a robbery going on. So the police were dispatched to this possible robbery, but before they could even arrive, an ambulance with some paramedics, they were driving by the Holly Park Apartments, and they saw smoke and flames coming out of an apartment building. So this ambulance, they pulled up to the building and they were like, this is insane.

You know, this apartment building's on fire, but there's no people outside. Like you would expect to see when a building's on fire. There was no people outside. paramedics assumed that everybody was inside still sleeping and they had no idea that their building was on fire, which is absolutely insane and terrifying to think about. So these paramedics, they laid on their horn, you know, they beep the horn to wake everybody up and then they called the fire department. Yeah. And from what I understand, there were some 911 calls that eventually came in from residents to let, you to let dispatch know there was a fire. It was probably right around the same time that this all went down, right? It concurrently happened.

The one thing that came up that you were just talking about that's new to me is the fact that you're saying, I knew she hung up with her mom around midnight, but you're saying she received a knock at the door. How do we know about that knock? It's just reported that she was in her apartment. She hung up with her mother. She's going to bed. And then somebody arrived at the door. And the police believe that whoever was at the door, they were somebody she knew because there's no sign of forced entry. Yeah.

And so it's more assumption based on what we're going to talk about that obviously someone showed up at her apartment after the phone call because when she was on the phone with her mom, there was nobody else in the apartment as far as her mother knew. Right. And if there was somebody in the apartment, Missy would have told her mother that there was somebody in the apartment. I agree. I agree. And we know what happens in the story. So it's more of an assumption. But yeah, you're right. Someone had to show up at some point and it would be after that, after that call. You're qualifying too much again. Am I? No, I'm just messing with you. I know someone's going to, someone, you just gave someone the opening for it. They're going to, they're going to hit you with it. It's happening. I'll own it. Well, the source of the fire in this building, it was actually discovered

to be Missy's second floor apartment. And so the fire department, they go in, they think they're going to put out a fire and then they find a body inside lying on the bed. And so obviously they had to call the homicide department and the homicide section of the police. Division. Yeah, the homicide division. Yeah. So they didn't know, you know, they had no idea that they were walking in on on the scene of a crime. They just thought they were going to do their job. It's business as usual. And they come across a dead body. And it has to be absolutely horrific. So the homicide detectives were called in.

And it was clear to the first responders, the first people on scene, even before the police got there, it was clear that Missy hadn't been killed by the fire because there was a stab wound. A stab wound that went right through her heart and damaged her left lung. And that led obviously to massive internal bleeding. Now, the police determined that some kind of accelerant had been used. And due to the poor patterns, they were able to identify that the fire had been set purposely. And when I say poor patterns, I mean that somebody had poured some sort of accelerant and they never figured out exactly what the accelerant was that had been

used. The police said they couldn't get enough to test it, but they had started pouring the accelerant in Missy's bedroom on her body. And then they'd poured the accelerant through the bedroom into the living room and then right out the front door. Right. The one report that I read, again, it's still open to some speculation, but first responders and officers could clearly smell the scent of gasoline. But there is some questions about that. Is that that's what it was or not? But yeah, the poor patterns, the smell of gasoline. And for anyone, if you're trying to get a visual, you can definitely look

it up. But also wherever the accelerant was poured, the fire is going to burn hotter. So the damage and the coloration to those areas are going to be very distinct compared to the residual effects of the fire further out. So if you're looking at this, you could fit, you could literally see a trail of where the, the, the liquid, the accelerant had been poured as the offender was pouring it. And those areas will be, they will look different than any other area. So this is something that firefighters are trained to look at. Arson investigators are trained to look at, to retrace the steps of the offender. And just to add to it, as far as how it was so obvious to them, yes, you had the poor patterns.

So you know it's an arson. You have the smell of gasoline and you have the wound to Missy's chest. But it was also about the way she was laying. She was laying on her back. It didn't appear that she was like struggling to find her way through the room because of the smoke or she was sleeping. Um, it appeared that the position that she was in before she obviously expired was the position she was still in. This wasn't a natural position for first responders, specifically firefighters to find a human being after a fire. Usually there's some sign of struggle, some signs of being trapped. It was not the case with Missy.

Yeah, there would be signs that she had tried to escape. Correct. Correct. And she was clearly laying in the bed in a position on her back that was suggestive that something had occurred where she wasn't able to move. And then you clearly have a wound that can be visibly seen to her chest. So it doesn't take a trained investigator to figure that portion of it out. Well, whoever had done this, whoever had killed Missy and set the fire, they'd made a mistake. When they'd left, they'd actually closed

the door of the apartment. And this starved the fire of the oxygen, and oxygen is what fires need to continue burning and to burn stronger. So when they did that, the fire wasn't going to burn as strong as it would have. And we'll come to find that it didn't destroy all the evidence that this individual hoped it would. Missy was found on her back in the bed, and aside from the stab wound that had ended her life, it was clear to see she'd been the victim of a brutal sexual assault. She also had stab wounds to her upper torso, and there was a lot of trauma to her face, including a bruise over her right eye and brow ridge that was consistent with being struck by a fist or a blunt object, as if she'd been beaten. But an autopsy showed that she

had been dead before the fire was set due to the absence of smoke and soot in her lungs. Yes, and also carbon monoxide in her blood. So those are things that you would expect to see with someone who dies of smoke inhalation or even just was alive while the fire was taking place. And that's, again, common sense. If you're in a room filled with smoke or you're in the water and you're still alive and you're drowning, you're going to have those substances in your lungs. She didn't have that, which means that she clearly wasn't breathing when the fire was taking place.

Yeah, it's very similar to a drowning. You can tell if a person went into the water before they were killed or after due to the fact that they had inhaled or hadn't inhaled water. And, you know, it's not that the swallowing. I think that you can find if you put a deceased person in the water, you may find water in their stomach. Yeah. But you won't in their lungs because they weren't taking in breaths. Right. Yep.

I had it happen in the case of breaking homicide. Christopher Jenkins, not to get into a lot, but he had very little water in his lungs. And yet people believe that he jumped into the water and committed suicide or he fell in accidentally. So it doesn't really line up. But one thing to double back on, you and I have talked about this a lot. You brought it up just now as far as the signs of sexual assault and to be really, you know where my perspective of it was, and this is coming from someone who's not a forensic pathologist, my question was, okay, if there's no injuries, take out injuries, there's many cases where forensic pathologists are still ruling that these individuals, these victims were sexually assaulted before their death.

And if there's no signs of violence, no sign of an assault, how are they making this determination? So I reached out to a forensic pathologist. You guys can look her up. Her name's Conti de Alas. She's done over 10,000 autopsies. And I believe she's one of the best pathologists in the world. If you're a fan of breaking homicide, you've seen her multiple times. She's incredible. So I called her and I posed this question to her and she said, the honest truth, Derek, is I never said signs of sexual assault because how would I know that? She said the only times that I would say definitively that I believe there was sexual assault is when it was a young victim, someone who's eight, nine years old, or there's a clear indication that they have no sexual history. And so this seeing the tearing to the vaginal canal would suggest that they were sexually assaulted in

some way. Sometimes she said it's not even penetration. It could be objects, but in many instances, you may not, if you don't have semen and you don't have visible signs of a physical assault, how do you know that this wasn't consensual, right? Because even if there's semen, and Stephanie and I were saying this earlier, you could have a victim who has vaginal tearing, has semen, has some bruising on her thighs and arms. And that person technically, right? I'm not saying it's the case here, could have had sex consensually. And this is just the way they had sex. So to summarize what Conti said, she said, I would just say there are signs that sexual intercourse took place, or there are no signs that sexual intercourse took place. She left it up for

the detectives to decide based on outside circumstances to determine if this was consensual or non-consensual based on the victim's history, their age. In this particular case, it would be their moral background, what they've learned about them. They'll use background information to determine what the likelihood of the sexual intercourse is. How plausible is it that it was voluntary? So it was a really interesting conversation because the truth is there's really no definitive factor that says sexual assault or sex. So when you guys hear that, understand that there's not something definitively in the autopsy report. It's a totality of circumstances that this determination is made.

And we really wanted to ask somebody because we've run into it in so many cases that we've done recently, and we've gone back and forth like, well, how do they know that it's sexual assault as opposed to consensual sex? And not that we're saying these victims had consensual sex with their attackers, but they could have had. Absolutely not. Yeah. They could have had consensual sex earlier during the day with somebody else and it had nothing to do with their attacker. Right. We talk about faith hedge path, you know, and not to go off on a different case, but that's where this all stemmed from this, this conversation that you and I have been having

over the last couple of weeks where it's like, you know, there's semen in faith's case. Um, but we also know that she was seeing multiple people. And the question really becomes, is this semen from someone who she had sex with voluntarily earlier in the day? Or is it from someone who sexually assaulted her before her murder? Big difference. How do you make that differentiation? So the answer is there's, it's kind of subjective. There's not some scientific thing that determines it. And that's what I was looking for because I'm like, hey, if we're missing this, we need to clarify it. So I'm glad, Conti, thank make the investigation so much more difficult. But luckily, like I said, the front door had been closed, so the fire hadn't burned as fiercely as it could have, and it didn't destroy everything that it could have. And the police were able to retrieve what they believed was the murder weapon, and this was a kitchen knife that was found in the sink. And they were also able to save some of Missy's personal papers. And these papers

hadn't been destroyed by the fire either, which is crazy. So I haven't obviously seen inside of the apartment. But what I'm thinking is wherever the accelerant was poured, obviously was burning the hottest, but maybe things on the peripheral were sort of saved for the time being. And the police and the fire department did get there pretty quickly. I did see some crime scene photos. They are available. A couple of documentaries online as well. And the apartment was pretty well burned. The thing about the papers, it appears that they were in a drawer. And so again, to talk to your point about the lack of oxygen in the fire not being able to really spread as much as it could have if the responders hadn't got there as quick as they did. The documents just being inside the drawer protected them long enough for investigators to get them later and have them still be, you know, readable, legible, you know.

That's really great. And but what's not so great is Missy's body, Missy herself. She was so distorted from the fire that she actually had to be identified through dental records. And that meant that any fingerprints or DNA that had been on her would have been destroyed. Luckily, however, they were able to retrieve DNA in the form of a semen that had been left when Missy had been sexually assaulted. So just out of curiosity, though, have you ever worked a case where a fire was involved? Can you speak on the different challenges that might be present when you're doing that? Yeah, I've never had a case where it's been what was believed to be an arson.

It turned out it was a homicide investigation. We've never come across that, thankfully, but I've worked a few different arson investigations and it's usually with the fire marshal. Um, but it's extremely difficult. We usually defer to the fire marshal cause that's what they do every day, all day. And why would I step on him when this is what he does on a daily basis? But, um, in the arson investigations that I've worked, we're mainly looking for the source of the fire, the accelerant used to create it.

Does it appear to be intentional or accidental? We had a fire one time. This is actually the one that people ask me about. We pulled seven people out of the fire. So I was driving by in a patrol car. Um, and another patrolman showed up as well. The house is completely engulfed in flames. Um, no fire alarms going off. So we went in, we ended up finding, uh, seven people inside. One of them was like a five or six year old boy. They were still sleeping in bed while the place was going

up in flames around them. Long story short, we pull them out. Everyone's okay. But we're able to grab surveillance footage from the surrounding area and what we see is an individual walking by with a lighter and this apartment building had a mattress on the front porch that they were getting ready to throw out and luckily the the camera angle picked up this individual taking this this lighter and throwing it on the mattress and he kept walking walking. And shortly after, maybe like a week later, we caught him walking that same area. And guess what? He was walking by the house to admire his work. Why did he do that? Honestly, he never admitted to it. But like I said, we had him

on camera doing it. And he, I think at some point, don't hold me to this, but I believe at some point he said he was smoking a cigarette and he was throwing it out. I believe that's what he told one of our detectives. I was a sergeant at the time. This was 2017. But I've never worked it to the point where like you hit the main source of the investigation is a homicide, which is more important. And then you have this, the fire affecting your ability to investigate the case. Really, really difficult. It's hard to do it under normal circumstances. Now you add this layer to it. It's tough, but should we, you think we should take a quick break before we continue? Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break we were talking about the challenges that an arson can pose to a homicide investigation and one of the things stephanie talked about was the fact that they found a knife in the sink that investigators believe was the murder weapon and i i tend to

i tend to agree um the problem with it because it was an arson, the fire did get to the knife. And although it was still, you could, it was still discernible that it was a knife, any potential DNA. We talked about this the last couple episodes. It's so fragile, any type of DNA or any, any trace evidence that would be on that knife was completely destroyed. So yes, the knife is important, but it's not going to lead us to the suspect. And I thought that was important to point out. And speaking about certain pieces of evidence, it seems that the police did hold a few details about the case back from the press.

So they didn't tell the press everything. And the things that they didn't tell the press were the fact that, you know, they had found the knife. And they also didn't tell the press that Missy had been sexually assaulted. And they call this guilt knowledge evidence. So basically, these are details that only the police and the perpetrator of the crime know. And, you know, obviously, I think if people are, you know, big on true crime, which if you're watching or listening, you probably are. Most people know what this means. But for those who don't, Derek, why is keeping some things private from the press and the public imperative officers involved and how much they divulge to the public and people like ourselves who want to help and want to be a part of this and finding this person. And with guilt knowledge evidence, it's really, it's pretty simple. There's an aspect

of this case that only the investigators and the perpetrator would know. So in this particular case, it's the fact that the only person who knows that the suspect ejaculated is the suspect, right? So if you have somebody come in and they say, listen, I killed her. Um, and this is how I did it. And, and by the way, we did have sex. They might lie and say we had consensual sex, but I ejaculated. So that's something that you guys should be aware of. I don't know if you know that or not. And the detectives will sit there and go, oh, really, you did?

They already know that to be the truth. And the reality is this individual would not know that unless they were telling the truth. And so you can use that as a gauge to determine how valid this person's statement is. And something like that, someone comes in and gives a detail like that, that literally only the investigator and a few other people know about, you're going to take this person serious. And they're probably telling you the truth. And it also helps to take people out of the equation. So if somebody comes in and they confess to it, and like I said, we've talked about this before. I don't know why, but people confess to crimes that they didn't commit all the time.

It's a great point. It's the most insane thing I've ever heard of. I would love to do a psychological study into why people do that. But the police will say, oh, did you guys have sex? And the person will be like, no. And the police will know right off the bat that this isn't the person that they're dealing with. However, I do think that there's a little bit of an issue that I've seen. And as I cover these cases over and over and over again, I notice patterns with this tactic that police use. I think that it can be a little convoluted because they say, oh, you know, we are the only ones who know this information, just us and the perpetrator. But obviously,

police go home, police officers go home, and they talk to their families, and they talk to their wives, and then their wives talk to their friends or the ladies at the beauty salon or their friends at work, and this stuff can get around. So it's not always as much you know, as much of a lock as as as people make it out to seem, I think sometimes because I have seen this backfire where the police will say, oh, we've got our guy. He knows this. Nobody knows this. And then they find out that everybody in town knew it because everybody had been talking. It's completely possible. And it's probably something a defense attorney would use without a doubt.

Um, but it's, it's the best you got. And it's one of those things where, you know, if the, when hypothetically someone comes in and, and let's say they don't confess, let's just say they're being questioned. And during that questioning, they make a spontaneous utterance where they say, yeah, you know, I'm assuming, you know, she was having sex and, you know, then this probably, if I probably went down like this and the detective might say, well, what makes you think they had sex? We didn't mention anything about sex. Now, if down the road, they end up building a case against this person. One of the lines they will say in there, cause I've written it is that this individual, um, presented information that

was never released to the public. And it is our understanding that this information was only known by investigators working this case. But to your point, yeah, could there have been some leaks? But as long as there's nothing in the media, it's not widely distributed. And therefore, it could be used as an element to build your case against someone. So it's a factor. It's not going to be the make or break of this person's conviction. No. Yeah. No, but I would say lack of alibi, this spontaneous utterance, maybe some security

footage, whatever you have, DNA. I mean, if you have DNA, you've got a home run. But let's say, absent of that, you could build a case based on circumstantial evidence that may eventually, because everyone hears circumstantial and that may eventually, you know, because everyone hears circumstantial and they say, oh, well, that's not good enough. Yes, one piece of circumstantial evidence is not good enough, but an abundance of circumstantial evidence can start to tell a story. Just out of curiosity, would somebody knowing something that hadn't been made public, would that be enough to get a warrant for like their home, their car, things like that? Be honest. Yeah. I don't think so. I had a case

recently. I know the answer, but I have to be careful how I say it because some people watching this will know what case I'm talking about. You could bring someone in and they could divulge something that from your understanding is not known publicly. And let's just say hypothetically, Derek gets really excited and goes to the attorney general's office and thinks it's enough for a warrant. And I have been told no. So I think it's all about interpretation from the DA's office or the attorney general's office. It's the way you write the narrative as a detective, but it's very subjective, just

like the law. Some judges may look at what you have and say, I think you have enough for a search warrant. And there are many instances where a detective thinks they have enough for a search warrant. They bring it to a judge and they say, not enough. I need more. So I can't definitively say the answer, but it can go either way, unfortunately. Unfortunately for my side of it, we always want, we always think we have enough.

So it's just, it's basically based on the judge. It's based on the judge. And I think it's also based on how the detective presents it. You know, a good report writer will present it in a way chronologically where it lays out for the judge how they came to this, this rationale that they believe they have enough probable cause to get a search warrant or, you know, but it's again, a judge could still turn around and say, no, I would get a search warrant from every judge. Okay. I was pretty good at my, when I was in,

I was in narcotics for four years and I was, my success rate was pretty high, but, um, but there was still somewhere, you know, judges who signed most of my warrants would say hey derek i think you're stretching it here i think you know you know how i like to see the patterns before i sign something and you know that you don't have all those elements here go back get another buy for us i need to see the person leave the the informant vehicle and go directly into the house and come back out directly to you before i can sign it and we go do it because guess what they're the boss so is it like a doctor when you go in and a doctor is like, oh, you know, you're sick. You only have six months to live and you can get a second opinion. Can you just find a different judge? Can you find? No, no. And I'll tell you what,

if you try to do that because you can do some judge picking where, you know, judges who are on certain days, go ahead and do that and see how long you last. Because in Rhode Island, at least, there's only like five or six judges that we usually go to to have sign it. I mean, there's more, but if they start getting wind that you're trying to find certain judges, they'll all turn on you. So I always implored my detectives not to get into that practice and to just do it the right way. And if it's done the right way, it'll get signed. Interesting. Well, now we have Missy identified. She's identified through her dental records. She's identified due to the fact that the apartment was in only one person's name and it was Missy Grubaugh. And many people were really shocked and they couldn't believe that something so terrible had happened to someone as kind and pure as Missy.

One of her high school teachers said, quote, She was very naive, very sweet. It's a nice quality to have, but I hope that wasn't part of the reason she was killed. End quote. And early on in the investigation, it seemed that this may have been the case, that this may have been the reason why she was killed. A week before her death, Missy had filed a police report on a young man and a co-worker of hers. And I don't know what happened with this guy, why he didn't have a place to live, but apparently he didn't have a place to live. He was homeless and he kind of was asking around, you know, does anybody have a place I can stay? And everyone was turning him down. But Missy said yes. Missy said yes because, like I said, she wanted to see the best in people. And she let this young man, whose name was Charles Johnson, she let him stay with

her and she even gave him a key to her apartment so he could come and go as she pleased. And it's really sad because Missy thought that this young man was her friend and she thought she was doing a good thing. And she thought because she was doing a good thing that that he wouldn't turn on her. Yeah, it's unfortunate. But again, when we're looking at this from an investigatory point of view, this is someone who had access to the apartment, you know, wasn't around when first responders got there. So you start to ask questions. Where was he? You know, and he hasn't come forward to say, hey, what happened to my friend in the apartment? You know, he never came to them. Like, let me ask you, if you were staying in an apartment with me and the apartment burnt down and I was killed, what's one of the first things you're going to do?

I'd probably just, you know, keep driving, Derek, honestly. You wouldn't go to the police? No, I'd mess with you. Of course I'd go to the police. Yeah, of course I would. Yeah, you know what I mean? The fact that he didn't. Yeah, well, I mean, the thing with Charles was he,

I don't think anybody really knew that he was staying there because he'd only been staying there for a couple of days when shit went down. So Missy was actually working at a local pizza hut as well as the spaghetti warehouse. And when I was when I was doing this research, I kept calling it the spaghetti factory in my head for some reason. And I had to change out all the factories that I wrote down to a warehouse. So that was fun. But this spaghetti warehouse was on Interstate 20. And after every

shift, you know, she would put her tips from the day into a jar that she kept in her apartment. And this jar was full of money that she was supposed to be, you know, donating to school or putting towards school. She'd saved up almost $1,000 and she was close to having enough to pay for her next semester. But then one day after Charles Johnson had been staying with her for just a couple of days, she came home to find that this money was gone. So I don't know why this Charles Johnson guy would even come back to this apartment after he stole from her, but apparently he did and she confronted him. She was like, you know, you stole my money. And then she kicked him out and she filed a police report.

Because like I said, Missy's going to be nice. Missy's going to give you the benefit of the doubt. She's going to be there for you if you need her. But if you cross her, she's not going to let it slide. You know, she's going to stand up for what's right. It wasn't about what was right for Missy. It was about what was right in general, or at least what she perceived to be right in general. You know, everybody's definition of right and wrong is obviously different. So she goes to the police, she reports him, and a theft warrant was issued for his

arrest. But Charles, he was in the wind. He was no place to be seen. The police couldn't locate him. So when we look at the three Ms that you always talk about, means, motive, opportunity, it seems that Charles Johnson had all three, right? He had a key to her apartment. He was familiar with the layout of the apartment, so he would know where she slept, where she kept the knives, where she kept her money, obviously. And he was probably angry with her for kicking him out, since living with Missy offered him a place to crash, as well as, you know, a source of money,

because he was just stealing from her. Now, knowing Missy and knowing that she always did the right thing, Charles was probably also afraid that she was going to go to the police. So there is means, motive and opportunity there. The motive being, you know, he would want to prevent her from from turning him in. Right. And I was also curious, and maybe you found the clarification on this, but the theft happened about a week prior. And it said in what I read that prior to her death, she had came in and filed the report about a week prior to her murder. So I wonder, did Charles possibly already know that? And more so, did Missy tell him, oh, by the way, I'm going to the police? Like, he might have, it might not even been a presumption on his part. He might have, it might have been already confirmed. She might have said, hey, by the way, I went to the police. They're looking for you.

So, FYI. I mean, I don't know Missy personally, obviously. I didn't know her personally. But from what I read of her, yes. I think that she. And that would build on that motive. Yeah. I think she very well could have said,

I am going to report you to the police because she wasn't a coward. She wasn't a coward. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't the kind of person who would be like, just leave. I won't do anything. And then go to the police.

She would have told him, you did something wrong. You stole from me. And this is messed up because she's been saving this money for months to go to school, to try to better herself. And this asshole comes in and takes it from her. And after she gave him a key to her home, invited him in, let him stay there, gave him a place, didn't even charge him anything for it.

She's a good person. And this is why good people are slowly becoming a scarcity on this planet. Because there's so many bad people who make the good people feel like, what's the point in being good anymore? You know, if people are just going to take advantage of me and screw up my life. And he did. He screwed up her life by taking this money. Because she'd been saving it. She'd been working so hard.

So I think she probably did say, like, I'm going to go to the police. And, you know, maybe that's why, that's why he ran. Obviously he couldn't be located. Yeah. And, and, you know, it's stupidity on his part. You, you're living in an apartment with someone, there's probably not a lot of people coming and going. So when the money goes missing from the jar, she's going to know who took it. So either you're really stupid or you just don't give a shit. You know what I mean? Where you're like, oh, I'm just going to say it. And then I'm going to go with option A

only because he's stupid enough to come back to the apartment and probably deny it and say, oh, I'm a, I didn't take your money. And she's probably like, dude, nobody else had a key. Yeah. You're the only other guy here. You're the only other person here. The money was there when I left. You were here. I came, I come back home. The money's gone. One plus one equals two. But he was probably like, no, I don't care.

It wasn't me. And that's probably when she said, I'm glad. I'm glad you feel that way because I'm going to file a report with the police. We'll let them figure it out. And, you know, that's the point where you could say, well, that would be a motive. That would be a motive. Yes. And I think that's what the police were thinking at that point, because they were investigating

Missy's death and then another police officer, because this is homicide investigating Missy's death. And then another police officer, probably from like the robbery division. I don't know what all the divisions are, but probably from like the robbery division. Or could have just been a patrol report. Yeah. And he was, well, I think she went into the station to report it. That's the impression I got, but he could have come up to them. Well, he did come up to them and he said, listen, this, this victim that you have, she actually filed a report with me about a week ago and that's how they put two and two together. So

they're thinking like Charles, you know, you know, he might be good for this. So the Arlington police put out an APB for Charles Johnson, and then they continued on with the investigation because until they find him, they obviously have to keep trying to figure out what happened. And they started going through the papers that they had retrieved from Missy's apartment. And in these papers, they found several personal letters from a man named Ivan. And the content of the letters suggested a very close and personal relationship between Missy and this Ivan fellow. And as we've already talked about, Missy was very, very strong and sure in her faith. And this included the decision to wait to have sex until marriage. And that's pretty common when people are very religious. They want to wait till, you know, they're married to have

sex, which is fine. And it seemed as if she'd been upfront with Ivan about this, you know, from the moment they had sort of started dating and interacting, she told him, you know, I like you, but I'm not, I'm not having sex unless I'm having sex with my husband. And apparently he'd been supportive and on board with this initially, but this is a story that I personally have seen myself in friends and people that I know where the guy's always, and it's not always the guy, by the way. Sometimes the guy's the one who's abstaining and it's the girl who's sort of pressuring him to go further. So it's definitely not a guy-girl sort of thing. But the person who's abstaining, they get into a relationship. And at first, the person that

they're in a relationship with is like, yes, this is fine. I completely admire this. I respect that you want to do this. But then obviously as time goes by, they start fooling around. They're kissing. Kissing turns into going you know, going a little further. And there's some heavy petting happening. And then all of a sudden the person who's not abstaining is like, well, what the heck is happening here? You know? Yeah. Yeah.

And again, it's pretty common. We don't have to, you know, we've all been in situations like that where either as an investigator, as you know, like you said, do personal stories that you hear from people where, you know, someone's always trying to push that envelope, right? Trying to take it a little bit further. And from what these letters said, there was clear indications of that where Missy was not happy with the fact that he was trying to push her further than she was comfortable going. Yeah. And the police said that the letters indicated that the relationship had been a bit tumultuous. Maybe Ivan felt that she was leading him on a bit and this frustrated him. And due to the fact that Missy had been brutally raped, obviously Ivan became their top suspect and he became even more suspicious when the police ran a background check and they discovered that he was a registered sex offender. Now, it's not really known what Ivan did to give him this status,

but we were talking about this earlier on the phone when we were talking about the case, and it could have been multiple things. He could have been 19 and in a relationship with a 17 year old or a 16 year old. It could have been public indecency, etc. One source I found claimed that Ivan had admitted to the police that he had sex with his girlfriend, who was a minor at the time. But I didn't see this confirmed anywhere else. So I can't really be sure. Yeah.

And so you guys know, we looked up Ivan and his background as far as why he's a registered sex offender. So I can't really be sure. Not a fan of anyone who's been convicted of a crime that puts them on a sex offender registration list. But for the sake of what we're talking about here today, as it relates to Missy Grubaugh, we're going to we're going to leave that information out because it's it's not really relevant to the case. But obviously, finding out that Ivan and Missy had been dating, that he was frustrated that their relationship hadn't progressed sexually, that he was known to Missy, so if he came over to her house in the middle of the night, she might have let him in. And on top of the fact that he was a registered sex offender, we can once again apply motive, means, and opportunity, and as far as that he was aware of Missy's decision to wait until marriage, but they had been going further and further, and she'd become uncomfortable with it. However, he said that he really did care about her, and they were trying to work through their issues. But Ivan's alibi was not convincing to detectives. He said he'd been home alone and asleep. And, you know, I was thinking about this when I was looking at it. And I think I saw something, a documentary on this, on Oxygen

and the police officer or the detective who was, you know, investigating this case. He was like, this was a bad alibi. And I thought that's not really fair because it was, you know, they figured that Missy had been killed at sometime between midnight and 3 a.m. due to, you know, when she'd last spoken to her mother. And then obviously when the 911 call started coming in. So it's not really fair because most people are home alone sleeping at that hour, you know. So obviously he's not going to have a super good alibi. And this was 1994, so I don't even think that they

had a lot of cell phone technology at this point to ping and see where he was. Did they even have cell phones in 1994? Or were they just kind of flip phones? I'm not sure. I'd have to look that up. But the police didn't, even though the police thought, you know, this could be the guy, we think that he's got the motive and he obviously had the opportunity. They didn't have any reason to legally hold Ivan. But they did ask him for DNA samples to compare against the semen that was found in Missy. And he was cooperative. He gave them.

I think they took blood from him. They took hair samples and they took saliva. Is this typical when you give a DNA sample to police? Do they always take all three? Yeah. I mean, if you can do it, if you're, if they're willing to submit that, absolutely. If you can take some, some, a hair follicle, you know, saliva sample, anything they're willing to give, you'll take it because it just, it gives more, more accuracy to the test. So I know with felony convictions where people are put in prison, usually it's just the buckle swab or the buccal swab, whatever you want to call it that they use.

But yeah, the fact that he was willing to give all three, sometimes they, did they say pubic hair for Ivan as well? They said blood, hair, and saliva. Okay. So he gave the whole gamut of what they asked for. So yeah, absolutely. So if somebody said to you, I don't want to give blood or hair, just saliva, would that be more suspicious? Or do you just think maybe they don't like needles? Yeah, I would have no issue with that.

Whatever you're willing to give is great, but I would actually understand that I could see someone saying, Hey, listen, I didn't do this, but I understand that I'm a person of interest right now. So to help you guys exact, you know, clear my name, I'm willing to give you a DNA sample. I'm not going to give you everything you want. I'm not going to sit here and let you cut my hair. Um, but I will give you a saliva sample. Um, and what's, what's important to remember, and I think you're about to hit on it now, is back then, 1994, DNA analysis wasn't as quick, right? Yeah. They said in 1994, it would take four to six weeks for a DNA sample to come back. And when I looked it up, it said it was kind of even longer, that it would be maybe six to eight weeks. So they still didn't have the profile back from the semen at this point. This was very early

on in the investigation, just like a few days after they had found Missy dead. So there wasn't much they could do at this point besides continue on with the investigation because they've got Ivan's, his DNA samples, but they don't have the DNA sample of Missy's killer to compare against Ivan's yet. So they kind of just have to wait, place him in a holding pattern. We'll call you if we need you for anything. And they had to release him. And they really didn't have a lot of time to focus on what they've already done so far because when we get back from this next break, we're going to talk about a third suspect that became part of this equation. So this isn't really a sponsored ad or anything, but we do want to tell you guys about the, for me personally, it's been one of the best things that has been gifted to me in a long,

long time. It has changed my life. It has changed the way I work. And I'm talking about my Uplift desk. So Derek actually reached out to Uplift and he had talked to them because now that we're doing the podcast, we're sitting down quite a bit. And I'm already sitting down and you're already sitting down because you're doing your private investigative work and I'm doing YouTube. But we both found that sitting down at the desks all the time was causing a lot of obvious pain and discomfort. So he reached out to Uplift and they were like, yeah, we'll send you a desk. And then I was like, yo, I want a desk too. And Derek was like, I'll put in a good word for you. And they are so awesome. They contacted me and they were like, yes, you know, we can send you a desk. And

I was like, oh, this is amazing yeah shout out to reagan over at up with you're the best we love we love you reagan so the desk comes and i'm like it's just gonna be a desk that lifts up it is so much more than a desk that lifts up yeah it's really nice it's so good so it does we're spoiled for sure so spoiled so it obviously does lift up and down which which allows you to work when you're sitting it allows you to work when you're sitting. It allows you to work when you're standing up. But it's so much more that, first of all, it's beautiful. It's a gorgeous just piece of art in my office. But secondly, it's got all this power in it. And I don't mean power like, you know, metaphysical power. I mean like electricity, right? So before my desk had this extension cord under it, I had all my stuff plugged in and

I'd have to unplug stuff if I wanted to charge my phone. My uplift desk has power on the front of it as well as on the top. So there's like outlets on either side and then one right here on my left. So I have power for everything. I can plug everything in my computer, my tablet, my phone, every heated blanket. Cause you know, I get cold and I can plug everything in. It's amazing. We love uplift. It's seriously the best desk ever, ever. So, yeah. And you got, you got the bamboo, the light bamboo, and I got the Walnut. And the funny story is I was the one who put this all together. Stephanie got her desk weeks before I got mine. My desk was hard at a source.

The one that I wanted was completely on me. They weren't in stock at the time. But you just hit it. Everything she said and more, it's the quality of it. When you get it, you can just tell it's a really, really well done. It's a custom piece of wood. This isn't like you can get a like a laminate top if you want. But we both got the real wood and mine's actually really thick. Mine's like almost two

inches thick. It's like it's like a shop table. It's it's really robust. It's by far the nicest desk I've ever owned. For sure. Yes. So and you can hang a hammock under it. OK, guys. Yeah, you can. You actually not not kidding you actually can buy an uplift hammock i wouldn't i mean i'm not gonna do that because i will break i think i could break the desk i don't know although you won't break it they say 500 pounds 500 pounds that's crazy are you not yet covid a couple more months of covid i could be but yeah no huge thank you to to uplift again we're being honest with you guys they us the desks, but we didn't have to do this. I'm going to throw something up on my social for sure. So you can see the desk. I want to finish my layout first, but it really goes well with the room. It really goes well with the wall. And I, we just wanted to say thank you for their fans of the podcast and we appreciate their support. And thank you for saving our backs. Yes. And that's a big thing, too, because we're all working from home.

Well, most of us, a lot of us are working from home right now. And that's causing some issues. You know, I was just sitting down for so long. It was it was a real pain. It was a pain in my back. But it's been so much better now. I love it. It's so easy.

And it's just digital. And it's not it's digital. So you can see when you're uplifting., you haven't used yours yet. Have you? I haven't put the power to it yet. I just got mine, but, um, but I'm, I'm looking forward to trying it out because I will be, I will be standing. I will be standing the whole time during the day because I'm always moving. I just always had to sit back down to type. Now I don't have to anymore. So go check out Uplift, guys. If you're in the same position where you were literally sitting here working from home and you're like, I can't do this anymore.

Like if I sit down anymore, I'm going to grow into my desk chair. You got to check out Uplift. I think that the prices are actually incredibly reasonable for what you get. Like don't tell anybody, but I think that they could charge more. We'll put the link in the YouTube description box, and we'll also put the link in the podcast stuff. Derek will do that because I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to the podcast stuff.

It's really simple. Upliftdesk.com. Check it out. It also comes with a bunch of free accessories you get when you buy it. It's a little thing you can stand on and move. I think it's helping my obliques, okay? Oh, you got it. You got that.

I didn't pick that. I picked something else. You didn't get the hammock or the thing? I know. I know. There might be some buyers. I'm definitely thinking I might have to go back on and actually purchase those things and be like, hey, Reagan, just charge me.

I'm ready for it. But again, thank you. Guys want to check it out. If you do go check it out, I might have a code for our social soon. We were talking about it. But if you do go over there, you check it out and you call them, tell them that Stephanie and Derek sent you over at Crime Weekly. And if you do get them, let us know what you guys think, because they're pretty nice. So detectives actually found their third suspect while they were talking to Missy's friends and co-workers

at her two jobs. Now, apparently, Ivan, Missy's boyfriend, he'd already given the police the name of someone he thought might have had a reason to want Missy dead, and this was a man named Jeff Smith. And Ivan knew about Jeff because apparently all three of them, Ivan, Missy, and Jeff, had worked at the spaghetti warehouse together, or the spaghetti factory, if you live inside my brain. But it seemed that Jeff Smith thought he was a real stud, right? So he was very full of himself, and he felt that every girl he met would be immediately overtaken by his charms and his oozing testosterone.

But Missy had turned him down, and Jeff did not like being rejected. Before she'd been killed, Missy had reported Jeff to their manager for stealing, and he'd subsequently been fired, but Jeff did not feel that he was fired for stealing. He felt that he'd been fired because Missy had snitched on him. So I don't know if he came back to the restaurant or if he saw her at some other point, but at some point after he was fired, Jeff and Missy had words and Jeff accused her of, you know, turning him in, ruining his life, and then he said he was going to kill her. So he threatened to kill her. And when detectives showed up to question Jeff, they were told that he hadn't been into work for a few days. But the police did catch a lucky break when a young woman named Kristen Waller showed up at the police station. And Kristen was

Jeff's girlfriend. So Jeff's out there trying to mack on every girl that he's working with. And he's got a girlfriend at home. So it kind of shows you the kind of caliber of man that we're dealing with here. So Jeff's girlfriend, Kristen, she told the police that she was leaving him, not only because he had a volatile temper and he could just go off at the drop of a hat, but she was afraid of him.

She was afraid of him because she thought that he had killed Missy Gruba. Kristen claimed that the night of Missy's murder, Jeff hadn't come home all night and she didn't know where he'd been and he didn't volunteer that information. Kristen also knew that Jeff was furious with Missy for getting him fired and she knew that Jeff and Missy had argued and, you know, he had threatened her. Now, Jeff had no criminal record, but the police did bring him in to interview him and ask him for a DNA sample, just like they'd done with Ivan. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, initial reaction, if you're following along with us and you're just you haven't skipped ahead and kind of found out the ending of the story, you know, at this point in the investigation, we have Charles Johnson, we have Ivan Villa, and now we have Jeff Smith. And so, you know, when we talk about them grabbing DNA evidence from the other two suspects, yeah, they had to continue on with the investigation, but they also had their hands full. I mean, this is one thing after another where these individuals are just

popping up that honestly all have means, motive, and opportunity at this point. And so they really had their hands full. Not Charles Johnson because they haven't even found this dude yet, right? So they haven't taken DNA from him. They still have not found Charles Johnson at all. So they're still looking for him because I do feel that the detectives in this case, they didn't get tunnel vision on any one suspect and i appreciate that you know they kind of looked at all of these young men and they were like you're kind of shady you know you're kind of suspicious in different ways but they were still actively looking for charles johnson they hadn't given up on finding him and obviously when they

did find him they were going to want to take dna and and you know from him and eliminate him but you know they had ivan and they thought he was good for it they had charles who they thought had a motive and now they have uh jeff who's yeah yeah and and to your point uh it's interesting you know hearing from the detectives and i know you're going to break down this interview but it's one of those things where i've definitely dealt with this type of person where the minute they come in, they just, they're just an asshole. I mean, I don't know how else to say it. They're just, they come in there and it's not that they're like offended that they're there. They're actually enjoying being there and they just, they just want to waste your time. I know what you mean. Whether they're, whether they're guilty or not guilty, they just

want to waste your time. And it's, it's so inconsiderate because whether you're guilty or not, you're there for the murder of a young woman who was brutally killed. And that in and of itself should be enough for you to take it serious because whether you're guilty or not, the killer is out there and information you have may assist in solving the case. So to come in there and not take it seriously into the mannerisms in which he was displaying and how he approached this interview, really disrespectful. And I wish I could say I've never dealt with it, but I've dealt with it many occasions, unfortunately. Well, I think the lead detective, his name was Tommy Lenore. He he felt the same way. He said that there were not

two words that came out of Jeff Smith's mouth that he believed. And during his police interview, Jeff was, you know, smiling. He was making jokes. It did not seem like he was taking the situation seriously. And Jeff had a story. You know, Jeff had a story for everything. He said that Missy was obsessed with him, that she, you that she wanted to be with him and he had turned her down. And because of Missy being obsessed with him, his girlfriend had ended up leaving him like Missy had come between him and his girlfriend, Kristen. And obviously, the police have already talked to Kristen by this time. And they know that's not true because Kristen's already told them why she's leaving Jeff. So they already know he's being dishonest. And then Jeff says, oh yeah, well, I couldn't have done it. You know,

my alibi is that I was with Kristen all night. And once again, the police knew that wasn't true since they'd already talked to Kristen and she said that he hadn't come home that night. So Jeff's being very cavalier, being very, like you said, insensitive with their time because they're trying to solve a murder. And he's just being, you know, just, you know, laughing it off and thinking it's a big joke. And he's being dishonest. So when the detectives confronted him and they said that they thought he was lying, he laughed in their faces. But Jeff did voluntarily give a DNA sample. So I guess he cooperated.

And since they had no reason to hold him, he was released. But get this. Okay, so a few days later, Kristen Waller, Jeff's girlfriend, she called the police. She's in a very distressed state. She told them that she'd just been released by her boyfriend or her ex-boyfriend, Jeff Smith, after he abducted her from her parents' home and held her for eight hours. During these eight hours, he told her that if she tried to leave, he would kill her.

Now, he did eventually let Kristen go after these eight hours, but by the time Kristen called the police and a warrant for Jeff was put out, he had vanished. You know, he vanished like Charles Johnson and no one knew where he was. And I imagine at this point, the Arlington police are thinking that they've got their guy, right? Means, motive, opportunity. He's got them all. Yeah. I mean, it's hitting all the right spots. And it's one of those things where they now have a warrant for Jeff for kidnapping. But by the way, they're also attaching that warrant because when you put out a warrant, it goes into a system NCIC.

You can put little notations in there. And Detective Lenora and Detective John Stanton, who we haven't mentioned by name yet, but he was like the partner for Lenora in this case. They also put in the warrant notes that Jeff was a person of interest in a murder. And they do that so that any officer that comes in contact with him realizes, you know, a kidnapping. Yeah, exactly. And to proceed with caution because this guy may think that you're there for the homicide and he may react that way. You know, it could be a bad situation. So they felt they had enough at that point to

make that notation in the warrant, which is very, very important when you think about what they felt about Jeff at that point. They thought there was a real strong potential that he could have killed Missy. And I always wondered, what was what was he doing that night of Missy's murder? Like if he wasn't with her, if he wasn't, you know, taking part in her murder murder what was he doing that he didn't want to tell the police his actual alibi so i think he was sleeping with another woman that's what i'm going with well why wouldn't he tell the police that because it's going to get back to her i think at this point you know i think it's one of those and he would he didn't want to add fuel to the fire you know i think uh i also think at this point, Jeff probably didn't realize how in depth they had already gotten as far as he was concerned.

Clearly, he didn't know that they had already spoken to Kristen. So he thought this was probably going to be just like a preliminary conversation where they just wanted to get, you know, his side of the story and that he wasn't really being considered for anything because he didn't know that his girlfriend had already dimed him out, right? So he was going in there just thinking he was doing them a favor, hence why he probably wasn't taking it so seriously. And to not get himself in a bigger gym in case they went to his girlfriend, he just said he was with her when in reality he was clearly with someone else or he was somewhere. He wasn't with Kristen, That we know. But obviously the police are looking at his behavior with Kristen. The fact that he's going to to take this young woman against her will and keep her captive for eight hours. They're looking at that and they're saying he clearly doesn't respect women. He clearly views them as possessions that he can just sort of put in his pocket and carry around and pull out when he wants

to play with them. So this is also going to become important when they look at what happened to Missy and they're going to say, could what Jeff is doing with Kristen escalate to something like what happened with Missy? And they're going to think that, yes, this may be a pattern of behavior, right? And again, this is from what I'm from what i've gathered it's four days after their initial interview very soon yes four days i think it was five days after i think it was five days or four days after missy's murder so this is basically like the day after right after he talked to the police he kidnaps his ex-girlfriend. So again, we always mention this phrase, totality of circumstances. You have this incident that happened at the restaurant.

You have his clear, your own perception of women and how they're basically possessions to him. And he's clearly a dangerous guy because he took this woman who he supposedly cares about, kept her against her will, took her away from her family. I guess she was at her parents' home, took her away and didn't allow her to leave for eight hours. That's scary. And clearly he didn't care. And at that point, Kristen probably thought maybe I might be next, you know? And so it was probably a really scary situation for her. So I could see how you want to keep all people of interest on the list. But I think it's safe to say at this point, detectives were probably leaning towards Jeff at this particular point. Yeah. And I mean, as I've already said,

the DNA from the crime scene was going to take several weeks to process, but the lab was able to get a blood type from the semen before they were able to extract a complete profile. So the police could actually use this blood type to either exclude one or more of their suspects or, you know, to keep them on the list. And unfortunately, it turned out that both Ivan, Missy's boyfriend, and Jeff, Missy's violent kidnapping co-worker, they were not a match for the blood type. But they still hadn't located Charles, Charles Johnson, Missy's coworker that she'd allowed to stay at her apartment before she kicked him out for stealing from her. And this, I think, was quite a blow to the investigation.

Like you had just said, in my opinion, too, the police were really thinking that Jeff Smith was good for this. Like, they'd gotten their guy, they want to wrap it up, they want to give Missy justice, and now they only have one suspect who hasn't been eliminated, but they don't even know where he is. But there are going to be some developments in this case that's going to lead the police to the actual culprit. And I think we're going to talk about that next time. Absolutely. Yeah, no, it is a blow, but you could also look at it like it's one,

it's another thing you can cross off the list, right? Because you have all these suspects and they can't all be the killer. So it's as important to, it's just as important to exonerate people as well. That's our job as investigators is to let the evidence lead our investigation. And when evidence presents itself that definitively rules someone out, that's also our responsibility to say, hey, listen, Jeff, I think you're an asshole, but you clearly didn't kill this girl. You're still a dangerous person, but you're not good for the murder that we're investigating. So that's important. Whether you like the guy or not, that is important. So I'm glad they got the blood type back.

I'm glad they were able to rule these two individuals out. But like you said, Charles is still out there, still haven't spoken to him. And this case is far from over. And I think Tommy Lenore in the documentary I watched, he said that, you know, I think he basically said, like, you have to follow the evidence, like no matter what you think, no matter how much you think it's locked up, no matter how much this dude is like triggering you because he clearly doesn't give a crap that this young girl is dead and he's out, you have to still follow the evidence. So I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say that this Jeff guy, Jeff Smith, that he was a good guy. I do, like you say

you think he was with another girl. I think he was doing something illegal. Because if you're in an interview room and you're being questioned about somebody's murder, I don't care if you're with another girl or another guy or whatever or not. You're going to tell the police like, no, I was doing this. I was with this girl. Don't tell my girlfriend. So I think he was doing something illegal. And he has that personality. He already had stolen from the restaurant that he was working at so clearly he wasn't above doing criminal activity um so who knows what to put him past them and for everybody out there who's saying oh you know derrick stephanie this the dna doesn't match doesn't mean they you know the blood type that dna could belong to some the blood type from the dna doesn't match again we got to put it all together here everything that we have as far as

up to this point in the investigation suggests that missy was a virgin yes leading up to her murder so to find semen on her is highly suggestive that this, this sexual interaction was not consensual. And it's even more indicative by the, you know, I don't think we hit on it too much, but yes, you have the stab wound, but there was also a bruising to her left eye, her eyebrow. It looked like she had been punched in the face. Um, so all this is very suggestive that she was sexually assaulted. So it's highly likely that whoever the semen belongs to is also the killer. And this semen does not belong to Jeff Smith or Ivan Villa. That we know. And that's why they're off the list.

And we're going to have to get more into it next week. Till then, we'll see you guys. Keep everything coming in. We're loving everything you guys are saying. We're loving the feedback. This video will be up Wednesday, right? Wednesday of next week. The YouTube it? Yep. The video will be up next week.

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I was somewhat kidding and you actually do have a name. Or the Harlequins. The Harlequins. Okay. You ever see Harley Quinn? She kicks ass, okay? So do we.

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