Crime Weekly - S2 Ep68: Julie Dart and Stephanie Slater: Ransom with an "E" (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

During the 1970’s, a brutal serial killer terrorized the women of Manchester and West Yorkshire England. By the time he was apprehended, Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, had claimed the lives of thirteen young women and girls, and had attempted to kill at least eight more. Many of them sex workers he had picked up in red light districts. His killings created a culture of fear and suspicion in England. Every man was looked at with a side eye; whether he was your neighbor, teacher, bus driver, or father. Even after Sutcliffe was arrested in January of 1981, there was still a lingering dark cloud, causing women who were walking alone at night to pick up their pace, and glance over their shoulders. But by the early 90’s, the fear had subsided and Peter Sutcliffe and his horrendous crimes had faded to a cold memory. But when the West Yorkshire police received a letter from an anonymous man in July of 1991, alleging that he had kidnapped a prostitute off a street in Chapeltown, those distant, cold memories began to grow more vivid. The letter claimed that unless a ransom of 140 thousand pounds was paid, the girl would be killed, and the clock on Julie Dart’s life began to tick down. Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. During the 1970s, a brutal serial killer terrorized the women of Manchester and West Yorkshire, England. By the time he was apprehended, Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, had claimed the lives of 13 young women and girls, and had attempted to kill at least eight more. Many of them were sex workers he had picked up

in red-light districts. His killings created a culture of fear and suspicion in England. Every man was looked at with a side eye, whether he was your neighbor, teacher, bus driver, or father. And even after Sutcliffe was arrested in January of 1981, there was still a lingering dark cloud, causing women who were walking alone at night to pick up their pace and glance over their shoulders. But by the early 90s, the fear had subsided, and Peter Sutcliffe and his horrendous crimes

had faded to a cold memory. But when the West Yorkshire police received a letter from an anonymous man in July of 1991 alleging that he had kidnapped a prostitute off a street in Chapel Town, those distant cold memories began to grow more vivid. The letter claimed that unless a ransom of 140,000 pounds was paid, the girl would be killed, and the clock on Julie Dart's life began to tick down. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur.

So today's case, it's going to be one that we talk about this weekend for the following two weeks because I'm aware enough of what I have to tell you how long it's going to be. And I know some of you like when I give you the heads up of how many parts it's going to be in. And I rarely can do that. So I'm happy to be able to provide that to you today. So for the next three weeks, we're talking about this case. And I'm really excited because first of all, I picked this case because it's a UK case. And we are going to be in London in June for CrimeCon there. And a lot of people actually used our code and bought tickets to CrimeCon in the UK so they could come see us. And this is sort of my little thank you to them. You know, I want you guys to know how much we appreciate it. We think that's

awesome. And I wanted to cover a case from the UK. And Derek knows absolutely nothing about this case. That's another thing I'm excited for, because it is a very bizarre situation. Sometimes you'll be going through it and you'll think this can't be real. Somebody made this up. It's fiction, but it's absolutely real. And he doesn't know anything about it, even though I've been dying to discuss it with him this past week. So I'm excited to dive in and get your opinion, see what you think, and get your genuine reaction to some of these things that are happening. And I'm excited to hear what everybody thinks about this case as well out there. Yeah. Coming into it fresh. Never heard of it, as is going to be the case for probably many of you. So we're going to

we're going to go through this one together. Julie Dart was born on March 1st, 1973, to her parents, Alec and Lynn Hall. Two years after her birth, Julie's parents brought her newborn brother, Paul, home from the hospital to their home in Leeds, the largest city in West Yorkshire County. Sadly, when Julie was only four, her father Alec walked out on his family. But when Julie's mother Lynn remarried soon after to an electrician named Ian Dart, things seemed to be looking up. Ian became a real father to Julie and Paul. They called him dad and they took his last name. And even when Lynn and Ian divorced when Julie was 16, he still remained close to his stepchildren, making sure to

call whenever he could and see them as much as possible. By the time Julie was 18, she and her little brother Paul were very close, almost like best friends. And Julie had a lot of friends. She was known as a true social butterfly. Julie, she was just a nice, pleasant, everyday 18-year-old girl. She was happy, bubbly, honest, and very, very trusting to people. She was just that sort of person. She'd go out, she liked to drink, she liked dancing. She went to the karaoke. She enjoyed it. She enjoyed singing. She couldn't sing, but she enjoyed going and joining in. But even though Julie excelled in her social life, she was not very interested in school or academics. Her main focus was on her athletics, and she had been an award-winning runner before she graduated. Julie wanted to make sure to stay in shape because it was her dream to

join the British Armed Forces, where she hoped to become a physical training instructor. Besides school and friends, Julie had a steady boyfriend named Dominic Murray, who was three years older than her. She had met Dominic when he was her co-worker at a cafe she'd been working part-time in. By the time she was 17, Julie and Dominic were engaged and living together. Julie's mother Lynn was unhappy when her teenage daughter had decided to move out and live with her older boyfriend because Julie had confided in her brother Paul that she and Dominic often argued, and their arguments would sometimes become physical. In December of 1990, Julie and Dominic had broken up,

and Julie was living back home with her mother. And that same month, Julie applied to join the Women's Royal Army Corps, and her application was accepted, pending her successful completion of certain courses and tests. Julie wasn't worried about excelling in these things, because even though she had mild asthma and she was very claustrophobic, she had faith in her own physical abilities, and she was right. Julie passed all her exams and tests with flying colors, and she was scheduled to start basic training the following September. As far as Lynn Dart knew, her daughter Julie was working nights at a clinic, tasked with sterilizing needles, and because she worked such late hours, Julie would often crash

at the apartment of a friend from school. What Lynn didn't know, however, was that Julie was not staying with a friend. She was spending the night with Dominic. They had gotten back together shortly after breaking up, but Julie had hidden this from her family because she knew that they would not approve. That's something we hear pretty often, huh? Something where boyfriend, girlfriend are together. Girlfriend and boyfriend start to argue. Girlfriend maybe tells parents or confides in parents that boyfriend's kind of a jerk, tells them the reasons why he's a jerk. So now they have this negative view of him, rightfully so. But then all of a sudden, girl wants to get back with boyfriend. And then now she doesn't know what to do because the parents no longer want her with him. So she has to be secretive

about it, which only makes things worse. So not a very uncommon thing. Even today, you see and hear about it all the time. To be fair, I don't think that Julie's mother ever wanted Julie to be with them because he was older. Yeah, because Julie met him. I think she was like 14 when she first met him and they started dating. So he was he was three yeah because julie met him i think she was like 14 when she first met him and they started dating so he was he was three years older than her yeah so 17 at the time possibly which seems a lot worse than like an 18 year old dating like a 20 something right oh i mean developmentally you know mentally you know as far as you know you know personal experiences in life 17 14 is a it's a big difference. Huge. Big difference.

So I see why mom had a problem with it. And then to compound that, you know, mom's happy that they finally broke up, right? And now secretly she's seeing him again. Yeah, because she's ashamed. She doesn't know how to tell them the truth. She knows that they're going to be mad. Right. And deep down, she maybe thinks that they might be right.

Oh, absolutely. I think you're right. They're not going to approve of it because of X, Y, and Z. Yeah, because she told her brother that their arguments had turned physical, right? That's game over. That is game over. Yeah. As soon as you say something like that to your family, they're never looking at that guy the same. Especially the bro. And nor should they, yeah. No, exactly. Exactly. On July 9th, 1991, Julie and Dominic had spent the day together before going to Dominic's sister's house for dinner. Julie, Dominic, and his sister Rose shared a lovely meal of roasted lamb and Yorkshire

pudding before Julie kissed her boyfriend goodbye, telling him she was headed to work for her night shift as a hospital orderly. When she left at 7.45 p.m., Julie was dressed in a black skirt and a pink and black jacket, and she seemed completely fine and in good spirits. Dominic had no way of knowing it would be the last time he would see her alive. Dominic got another call from Julie at 9 p.m. that evening, and allegedly, she was working at the hospital, but Dominic heard certain sounds in the background, sounds that you would hear in a bar, not a hospital. He heard strains of music, people talking, glasses clinking. But before he could wonder about this too much,

Julie told him that she was not getting off of work until 1130, at which point she would be going back home to her mother's house in Leeds. After this, Dominic did not hear from Julie for two days. On July 12th, Dominic's sister, Rose, who he was staying with at that point, handed him an envelope that she'd gotten in the mail, which was addressed to him. Inside the envelope, there was a letter written in Julie's handwriting, and it read, quote, Dominic, help me please. I've been kidnapped and I'm being held as personal security until next Monday night. Please go and tell my mom straight away. Love you so much, Dominic. Mom, phone the police straight away and help me. Have not eaten anything,

but I have been offered food. Feeling a bit sick, but I'm drinking two cups of tea per day. Mom, Dominic, help me. Love you all. Julie." Dominic immediately called Lynn Dart, and she rushed right over to read the letter herself. Now, Lynn thought that the letter was written in her daughter's handwriting, but there were certain words and phrases that Lynn didn't think sounded like Julie at all. Later, a forensic document examiner named Paul Rimmer would analyze the letter, and he determined that Julie had penned the letter and the envelope with her own hand. West Yorkshire police sent the laboratory a handwritten letter and envelope, which appeared to have come from a girl who claimed to have been kidnapped.

The letter was signed Julie, and I was asked to try and establish its authenticity. The police also supplied me with a large number of specimens of Julie Dart's handwriting, and I made a comparison of those with the question letter and envelope, comparing letter by letter, looking not just at the pictorial effect of the letters, but the way in which they were formed, and also handwriting habits, such as the way in which the envelope was addressed. In my opinion, Julie did write the letter and envelope. Lynn Dart was obviously beside herself and she immediately called the police as Julie had instructed her to do. An officer came to retrieve the letter, but what Lynn didn't know at the time was that the West Yorkshire police had

also received a very strange letter as well. And it had arrived on the same day that Julie's letter to Dominic had arrived. There were a lot of odd details about this letter. There was a great number of grammar and spelling mistakes, and the word ransom was spelled with an E on the end. Additionally, the letter had been addressed to the Leeds City Police. The Leeds City Police had been the police force in the Leeds area from 1836 to 1974, but after this they had changed their name to the West Yorkshire Police. The letter, which was written using a stencil, claimed that a prostitute had been abducted from the streets of Chapel140,000 was not paid, the girl would be killed. And not only that, but a firebomb would be set to go off on Wednesday, July 17th at 5 a.m. in a busy shopping area. The letter writer gave the police instructions on how to get the money to him, July 16th, a woman police constable will drive to Birmingham Street Station with the money and await a phone call at the phone terminal in the waiting room on Platform 9.

She must wear a light blue skirt with the money in a shoulder bag. She must be there by 6 p.m. and await the call at 7 p.m. She will then be given the location of the next phone call. End quote. The letter said that this police officer would be going from payphone to payphone, and at each phone, she would receive new instructions on where to go next until she was brought to the final location, where she would encounter a dog leash tied to a tree. She would then need to clip the money, which would be wrapped in plastic and brown paper and tied with a nylon cord, to the the dog leash and only then would her mission

be complete. Now even though both the letter to Dominic and the letter to the West Yorkshire police had been sent on the exact same day, July 11th, at the exact same time, 7 p.m., from the exact same town, Huntingdon, a small market town in Cambridgeshire, over 100 miles away from Leeds, law enforcement did not immediately put two and two together at first. As far as they knew, 18-year-old Julie Dart was not a sex worker. She was just a normal teenage girl who was on her way to becoming a soldier. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. All right, so we're back from break. Really interesting so far.

And just to kind of recap it, we receive a letter, or I should say the boyfriend receives a letter, which, you know, for all purposes of this conversation, it's been verified that we believe the letter was written by Julie. However, there's another letter sent to the same date, same place that Huntington, you know, as you pronounce it probably better than me. Hunting Dunn. Hunting Dunn. There we go. So it sounds like the letter, although from the same place, though, might have been written by two different people.

Correct. Right. So it has some different grammar. The person who's writing it appears to not be able to spell very well. And they're speaking as the person, the kidnapper, not the actual victim like in the first letter. So that's pretty obvious. What was your takeaway that the kidnapper, we'll call him the kidnapper for this, referred

to the department as the Leeds Police Department as opposed to the West Yorkshire Police Department, which is its current name? So, I mean, if you look at the dates of when it used to be the Le city police in the 70s, it would be somebody who was older, somebody who, yeah, somebody who grew up with the police department being called that. And I also wondered initially when I was going through, like, maybe did that person move away and was new back to the area so they weren't aware of the change, something like that. What was your takeaway? Well, definitely that 1974, right? So I don't think this person was born in 1836, right? When the name, when it was called Leeds. So let's just go on the other end of the spectrum saying 1974. So this person is an adult, right? 1974, that would make them 30s, 40s. My God. 40s, I think, yeah. Right, right around the 40s. It also tells me that the familiarity with the area isn't that great,

right? They might be from the general vicinity, but not from the immediate area. Because if you were, we're talking 1991. So the name of the police department has been changed for almost 20 years. And this individual does not know that. So although they might be in the area now because they kidnapped Julie, they're new to the area. If they had lived there before or recently returned or had never been there before and are transient passing through. But this is definitely not someone who has frequented this area often. That's my initial takeaway. I would agree with you there. Well, that's good. Yeah. About the initial takeaway, you know, but I kind of don't want to give too much away, but.

Of course. Yeah, it's not exactly what we think. Right. And I mean, listen, you're six, seven pages into the script right now. So these are just initial thoughts. Obviously, you guys weigh in the comments as we're talking about this, what your initial thoughts are. As you start to kind of pull back the layers, I'm sure it'll change for me. I'm sure it'll change for you guys. But I think most people, nothing we said here is like, you know, game changing or like impressive.

I mean, it's common sense, most of what we're saying. So just initial thoughts based on the letters, probably what the police thought as well when they initially got it, even though, like you said, they didn't connect it to immediately. I think the police were like, what the hell? Why is this happening to us? The lead city police, who are they? Because most of those detectives probably hadn't been working there since the 70s. So they were probably like, what does this even mean? And they had to ask one of the old detectives in the back, Frank, what's this mean? He's like, oh, Sonny, that's what we used to call ourselves, you know.

You ain't lying. And it might also give the police an impression that like this is a hoax. You know, we have Julie who's missing and allegedly taken for ransom. And then you've got this guy who says he kidnapped a sex worker and wants ransom. But they're not like putting that together right away, which is kind of crazy. I feel like you should have. I wish this was an isolated incident, but we wouldn't be covering all these cases if there weren't things like this, right? That's what kind of, not every police department, not every detective, not every police officer is created equally. We'll just say that. Yeah, because it's not like you will see stuff like this, but it's usually like different jurisdictions, right? So like the girl gets kidnapped from one county and then the letter comes to a different county. So these two police entities aren't necessarily communicating with each other about every letter they receive or every case they take. But this was the same the same police force. So, yeah, it's the same day. The letter came the same day. Like what's happening? Two plus two equals four. Julie's family could think of no reason why she would have been targeted for a kidnapping.

She'd been behaving normally. And the only change in her personality they could think of was when she'd started to, you know, sort of alter her appearance a month prior to her abduction. Just about a month before she died, she started changing her hairstyles and trying different makeups. And just growing up, she colored her hair and then she put it back to her own color because I said I didn't like it really. She didn't have any problems at all as far as we were concerned, none at all.

She was just happy, go lucky, just as she always was. And that's Julie's grandmother talking. So yeah, Julie was trying different makeup, dyeing her hair, and her grandmother was like, I don't like this, which is normal grandma stuff. And so she ended up dyeing it back. But that was literally the only thing that anybody could think of that had changed about her, and she changed it back. And you know what?

I will say this, and I probably failed to mention that when we first brought it up, but the fact that he's referring to her, this kidnapper, as a sex worker, it leads me to believe that the way he was able to grab her to catch her was she might have been around the area soliciting for work and he pretended to be a John and that's how he was able to get her in the car and take her wherever he took her. He's clearly looking at her as a sex worker. We're not, we don't know if that's the case yet. You're starting to talk about her changing her appearance about a month before her disappearance, before her kidnapping. So maybe, but I don't think we can automatically assume, oh, she was changing her makeup. So clearly she was a sex worker,

but the fact that he referred to her as one in the letter, it just makes me think that might have been how he got the drop on her initially. A lot of them do that, right? The Yorkshire Ripper did that. Green River Killer, like so many. Ted Bundy, I think, too. They prey on sex workers because they're vulnerable. They're out there and they're not trusting necessarily, but they're sort of in a position where they're forced to trust you. They got to take a risk. They got to take a risk. They're desperate and they're not doing that because they want to do it. They're in a bad situation. They need money. I had a case I

did in New Orleans, similar situation. It's like hundreds of girls that have gone missing, most of them sex workers, all along one highway. And so it does. It puts them in a really tough situation where they have to ultimately trust this random person that they know they shouldn't trust, but they have no choice. It's really unfortunate. And it's not just kidnappings, not just murders. I mean, these girls get beat up, you know. You don't have to end up dead or missing

to be the victim of one of these guys. They'll just pick a girl up and have their way with her, and then they'll leave her bruised and bloodied. So it happens every day, all the time. It's a very unsafe situation. Not good. One more thing, going back, because now I'm thinking about it too, because it almost, this sounds too textbook. Is it possible that as we're going without you giving too much away, if I'm even close, that this individual, because if it's from the same person, this individual could have purposely wrote one letter to look like someone else to not try to give away their identity? What do you mean? Like disguise their handwriting? Disguise their handwriting to purposely look like two different people. I'm not going to go all the way and say Julie wrote the

second letter yet, but is it possible this could have been a play for money? Oh, I see what you mean. So that is possible. That's not what happened here. But the first time I heard this, I was like, oh, damn, because they said that, you know, and you don't usually when you get kidnapped, it's not typical for the person who was kidnapped to be able to write a letter home. That's why I'm saying it. Exactly. So that is exactly where my where my mind went as well. So absolutely.

Are we going to find out that Julie, you know, wrote both letter? I mean, anyways. Unfortunately not. That would have been a much better ending. I'm hope. Yeah. We'll see. I know if you're covering it's not a good ending.

Right. I mean, you know, so we'll keep it going. But just just the things that are running through my head. at face value. And during their investigation, they found out some things about Julie that painted a picture of a young girl who was going through some real issues by herself and in silence, and she was resorting to drastic methods in an attempt to fix those issues. Seven months after Julie had been accepted into the Army, a 41-year-old man named Michael Walter

called the Leeds Army Recruiting Office, and he spoke to someone there about their new young recruit, Julie. Michael Walter claimed that he had met Julie when she worked at the cafe and they'd become friends. He'd even offered her a job cleaning his house. But then he found out that Julie had stolen two of his ATM cards and withdrawn 660 pounds. He'd confronted Julie about this theft, and she'd agreed to pay back the money to the bank, but Michael was worried that if Julie went off to the army, she would never pay him back. Now, the recruitment officer was concerned about these allegations,

and he asked Julie about them, but Julie claimed she didn't know what Michael Walter was talking about. She was basically told that if there was any truth to Walter's claims, she would need to handle it before she joined the army. But then, on Thursday, July 4th, the recruitment officer paid a visit to Julie's old high school to verify her academic records as one of his last steps in approving her. And he found out that she'd lied on her application about her schooling and her education and things. So the recruitment officer sent her a letter informing Julie that she was not going to be accepted into the army. It's very likely that by the time this letter arrived, Julie was already gone. Can we talk about Michael Walter for a

minute? Because this whole situation is sketchy to me. The 41-year-old Michael Walter. Yeah, there's more to that story. Yeah. What was your take? What's your gut telling you? So first of all, he says, listen, this 18-year-old girl was my friend. I met her when she was working at the cafe. You're 41, dude. You have no business being friends with an 18-year-old girl, you creep. And then you offered her a job cleaning his house. For those of you who can't see, I'm air quoting it, right? Cleaning his house. And then he says she stole his money or did you pay her for something? And then she took that money and now you're saying she stole it. That's right. Yeah. Again, happened all the time as a police officer. I can't tell you

hundreds of times, literally hundreds of times over the 13 years that I was there where we would get a call from a gentleman. Usually he'd be in his car somewhere, you know, in a dark area. And he would say, listen, this woman who I was just sitting in the car with having a nice conversation with took my wallet and is refusing to give it back. And I, you know, and took my phone too. And we would say, well, would you like us to see if our wedding ring on, would you like us to call your wife? And maybe she can try calling it and see if they pick up for her. No, no, no, no. Don't do that. I don't want to file a report. I'm out of here. Thanks though. And they go on their way. What's the motive for that though? Like you paid a girl for something that you got and now you want

your money back. What's the motive for that? So sometimes they don't. So what happens is, and I'm all for this, like at the end of the day, it's a risk for them too. So what happens a lot of the times is these women will say, yeah, I'll do this for a hundred dollars. And the gentleman will give the woman the money. And if he doesn't lock the door, she jumps out of the car and she's gone. What is it? His first time, his first time picking up a sex worker. You don't give them the money first. But I'm serious. Like, you don't get it. Like, these guys are nervous, man.

Sometimes they say, no, I want the money before I do it. And honestly, Stephanie, I can't tell you. Then she jumps out of the car with the money. And he's like, eh, not the end of the world. But then he looks down and his wallet and cell phone is gone too. And his watch. His watch is gone. And his watch is, I'm telling you. Yeah, girl, get him for everything he's got.

Yes. And so we look get him for everything he's got. Yes. And so we look at him as the police and we're like, just, we were smirking and we're like, okay, so would you like to file a complaint, sir? Ah, no, I'll pass. Victimless crime, I think. Because some of these, some of these women are, you know, have been doing this a long time, like, and they're very good at what they do. And they're, hey, they're scamming the scammers.

So, I mean mean it's poetic street justice wait do you think uh you think a john is a scammer no not necessarily a scammer but they know what they're doing by law by definition is wrong and yet they're going to call us and play victim when you know they're just as guilty because you know they think they're in the they have the upper hand because they're approaching this woman who we have already discussed they know that they're desperate they know they're in a tough spot. They know they wouldn't have sex with them if it wasn't for money. And they're taking advantage of the girls, of these women. And so guess what?

The women flip the table on them. They turn the tide and they take advantage of them. Sorry, not sorry. I don't feel bad for you. Yeah, but there's definitely something sketchy with that Michael Walter thing. And like, oh yeah, he got burned. Yeah, they never came out and like said anything. But that could have happened. You know, he could have even brought her to his house and be like, oh, clean my house, you know. And then

while while she's there, he's like, you know, I got an extra couple of hundred for you if you want to clean my house naked or something like that. And she was like, yeah, absolutely. You know, give me the cash. And then she took off because how is she going to take your ATM card and withdraw money without your PIN number? Like you can't just be withdrawing people's money without their pin number. What's the conversion on pounds to US dollars, by the way? Is it close? So yeah, it's like, you know, so like $1,500 would be like, I think almost like $1,900. It's not super far. 1,500 pounds would be $1,900?

Yeah, because when I looked up the original ransom. So 660 is like $800, $900 US? Yeah, like under a thousand bucks. Yeah. So, but my thing is this, I know what I pay to have, you know, we have someone who helps us clean because, you know, obviously my wife's working, I'm working. So we have these things and I could tell you, I don't pay anywhere near close to that. And this is in the 1990s.

So that seems like an awful lot of money to clean the house. Yeah. He's saying she took his cards and withdrew the money from an ATM. Oh, okay. Without your PIN number. Yeah. There's more to that story. Yeah. He gave her the money for something else. She didn't give it to him and now he's salty. Right. No, it definitely, well, it's starting to add up too, right? We hear about the phone call initially where Julie called Dominic and it sounded like she was at a bar. There's this change in behavior. One thing,

isolated, maybe it's an outlier. You start to get this totality of circumstances and it does start to paint a picture of what was really going on in Julie's life at that time. So you're right. And there was more discrepancies because remember, Julie had told her mother that she was working nights at a clinic sterilizing needles, but she told her boyfriend Dominic that she was working nights at a clinic sterilizing needles, but she told her boyfriend Dominic that she was working nights as an orderly in a hospital. So obviously the police went to these places to ask questions about the missing girl and no one had ever heard of her. She never worked either of those places. And that was when a connection between the letter sent to the police about a prostitute being held for ransom and the kidnapping of Julie Dart, that's when it became evident. And it was sort of like, oh, two plus two does equal four, right? I don't

know why it took that long once again. And there's mistakes made here in this investigation. I think it was unprecedented, too. It was a very strange case getting these letters and having the ransoms and things. But they definitely made some mistakes that they owned up to at a later date. So on a hunch, the detectives in charge of Julie's case contacted law enforcement in Chapel Town. And Chapel Town is, you know, not only the place where the letter had claimed the girl had been taken from,

but it's been, you know, a red light district in that area for some time. And it was also one of the locations that the Yorkshire Ripper hunted for his victims. Now, after the Ripper's murders, Chapel Town had seen a decrease in sex workers, but by the 80s, the industry was back in full swing again. The Chapel Town police said that Julie Dart was not known to them, but they suggested that the West Yorkshire police talk to some of the other working girls on the streets to find out

if they had encountered her. Now, through this line of questioning, detectives discovered that Julie had been in the area, and apparently she was trying to learn the ropes. She'd been asking some of the other women for advice because she was new at this and she didn't know how much to charge or where it was safe to take her customers. And after talking to the other women and getting information from one of Julie's old classmates, law enforcement was able to put together a timeline of Julie Dart's movements on the night of July 9th, 1991. A friend of Julie's from school had been driving through the Chapel Town area at around 8.15 p.m. when he saw Julie standing on the street with a few other women. He said that he had seen Julie and she saw him. They sort of made eye contact very briefly, and then she turned her head away.

At this time, she was wearing blue jeans and a white blouse, which was obviously different from what she'd been wearing when she kissed her boyfriend Dominic goodbye just 30 minutes prior to this. She'd been wearing a black skirt and a black and pink jacket. Now, after this, Julie and two other women had taken a cab to a place called the White Swan Pub. And while there, Julie had a few drinks, she put some coins in the jukebox, and she called her boyfriend Dominic. After the pub, Julie and the other women traveled to Spencer Place in Chapeltown, where Julie spent roughly 20 minutes with

a client before getting herself a kebab from an Indian restaurant. At this point, it was around 11 p.m. and Julie's two friends went home, but she remained by herself on the corner of Spencer Place and Leopold Street. It turned out that Julie Dart had been living a secret and double life, and this had put her right in the path of a nefarious man with evil intentions. It was now clear that the prostitute mentioned in that letter to the police was in fact Julie Dart, and unless a ransom was paid, she was not going to make it home alive. The West Yorkshire police knew that they had to do all they could to follow the letter writer's instructions, so they decided to play along.

Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right, so we're back from break. Unfortunate set of circumstances. So far, the police are starting to establish a timeline. That's great. They're doing that by talking to associates of hers, talking to friends, witnesses, et cetera. And it seems like they've narrowed down a pretty good timeline up to the point of her disappearance. But it is sad to think that this young woman had some big goals, some big ambitions, wanted to go in the army, made some poor choices that affected her ability to get into the army. And now because of it, she's turned to a different lifestyle. I don't think this was her plan. Not, you know, not even really, um, in her mind, uh, a choice, but she felt like there was really no way around it.

And it does seem like she was trying to live a double life because she, she was still seeing Dominic, although her family didn't know about it. And so she had the boyfriend, she had the relationship, but yet she's sleeping with other men for money. Um, so it really feels like she was torn between, you know, what she wanted, which was the military, which was a steady boyfriend. And maybe, you know, for financial reasons, this other life because she was trying to find ways of supporting herself. Do you think do you think that's what it was? Do you think it was more than that? she was doing this to try and get the money to pay Michael Walter back so that that charge would be taken away and she would be allowed to join the army because the recruiter had told her like,

whether this is true or not, like, whatever, none of my business, but make sure it's resolved. And this dude's not calling me anymore because we can't bring you on when you have these debts, these unpaid debts. What it seems like is that was her dream to get into the army, to be a part of the military. And she was going to do, you know, whatever it took to get that. And she had to pay Michael Walter back. And I just think that she maybe probably couldn't find a good job. You know, this was also the 90s.

Like there was a lot of hard times finding jobs at this time. So who knows? But she didn't tell anybody. And I truly think that she probably didn't want to do this. It was just a means to an end to get into her dream. You never elaborated on the school stuff either. What was the issue with that? Was it something minor? We don't know. They never said, but I assume it was grades. I think she probably told them her grades were better than they were because she really wasn't strong in school.

It wasn't her thing. Right. It seemed like the recruiter was like, listen, you got to handle this financial thing. But the thing that actually broke the deal was it's like, listen, you can work that out. But if you don't have the grades to support you going to the military, there's nothing I can do for you unless you have a way of going back and changing your grades. Which is even more sad, right? Because she's trying to fix this one problem. And then there's another problem she can't fix. She can't do anything about that. Yeah. And I'd probably guess that her grades were suffering because she probably was out doing this and not getting a lot of sleep, not getting the, you know, doing her homework.

No, she wasn't in high school at this point. She'd already graduated. So this was well after that. Not well after. She had just graduated from high school, like, you know, a couple of months before. This is the summer. So she graduated, you know, a couple of months before. Right. Could she have been doing it school a couple months before. This is the summer. So she graduated a couple months before. Right. Could she have been doing it for a couple months? I suppose it's possible, but I don't know. But even that, you just said she graduated.

So the grades were good enough to graduate. She graduated, but I mean, she wasn't strong. She may have been going in there and being like, I'm valedictorian. I've got A's. I have a 4.0 GPA. I don't know how schools work in the UK, but in A's. I have a 4.0 GPA. I don't know how schools work in the UK, but in the US, I got a 4.0 GPA, all A's, stuff like that. And then they go and find out she barely made it by. It's an integrity thing, right? It's not only about the numbers. It's like,

listen, the military, obviously we hold ourselves to a high standard and your credibility is shot already before we got started. You told us all these things that are not true and we don't necessarily want someone like that where you're on a team of people who are responsible for each other's lives. We got to be able to trust you. I don't think it was the grades that prevented her. I think it was the fact she lied. Yeah. Yes. I'm with you. I'm with you. I agree. So it is extremely sad that even if she had fixed the thing with Michael Walter, it still wouldn't have mattered. Yeah, no, exactly. No, it's a tough situation,

which is what happens with a lot of these individuals. It's not like, you know, they put, they find themselves in a situation that they didn't want to be in. And then it exposes them to individuals who have malicious intentions, right? If she's not in that area, it's less likely that she's the one, it would have been another woman, um, besides her, but because she's not in that area, it's less likely that she's the one. It would have been another woman besides her. But because she's in this tough spot, she's trying to find a way out. She's digging a light blue skirt and tossed a bag containing 140,000 pounds over her shoulder. She had been instructed to be at the Birmingham New Street railway station by 6 p.m. to answer a phone call that would be placed at 7 p.m. Annette Zignes waited patiently by the payphone at Terminal 9, and when it rang at 7.06 p.m., she picked it up and said hello, but she heard nothing on the other end. Whoever was calling simply listened silently for a few seconds before hanging up. Annette waited another 20 minutes, hoping the caller would try again,

but the call never came, and the operation had to be called off. Everyone was very concerned because the letter writer had promised that if he did not get the money, Julie would be murdered and a firebomb would go off in a busy area of the city. But Wednesday, July 17th, the day of the firebomb threat, it came and went and nothing happened. Even though the anonymous letter writer had not followed through on his bomb threat, he had carried out his other threat. On the morning of Friday, July 19th, 51-year-old farmer Bob Skelton, along with his teenage son and another employee, they went out onto his 579-acre farm to move their cattle from one pasture to another. They approached a field that ran along an abandoned railroad line at around 7.45 a.m., and when they were walking, Bob suddenly spotted something from

afar that looked like trash someone had dropped on his property. As Bob and his two companions got closer, they noticed that what they had thought was trash was actually a pink and white sheet wrapped around a long object and tied with a teal rope. Bob's son pulled out his pocket knife and cut the rope, and he made a small slice in the sheet to see what was inside, but all they saw was another sheet. But then the smell of decomposition hit them, and Bob ran back to his house to call the police while the other two men kept watch.

A body was wrapped in that sheet, a bald, naked, young woman wearing only a small gold wishbone ring, a ring that had been presented to Julie Dart just four months earlier on her 18th birthday. The body was taken in for an autopsy, which was performed by Professor Stephen Jones, and he determined that this woman had died from several blows to the head with a blunt hammer-like object. There were bruises on her right ankle in the shape of chains, and she'd been strangled to death. There were yellow wool and brown nylon fibers recovered from the sheets that Julie had

been wrapped in, as well as recovered from the teal rope, and it was determined that these fibers were most likely from a mustard yellow colored carpet. Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Taylor of the West Yorkshire Police sent over Julie's dental records for comparison. And when it was confirmed that this was Julie, he was tasked with informing her mother, Lynn, that her only daughter was gone forever. It was believed that Julie had been dead at least a week, but the grass under her body had not been discolored. So she most likely had been on the skeleton farm for only a few hours. So unfortunate. So she's found on July 19th. The last time she was seen was on July 9th, right? So she was seen by the witness on July 9th. So about 10 days. And based on what

you're saying, it's kind of like worse fears confirmed, but it does seem like there was some truth in the letter. It does seem like she was kidnapped. It does seem like for at least a certain period of time, maybe about a week, if the police are right as far as how long she was dead, 10 days, only dead five. So she was held captive for approximately five days. As you said, there was bruising on the appendages of her body, suggesting she was chained. It looks like she was tortured. Her head was shaven. And then ultimately, when this individual was done with her, he strangled her. And so it's going to be interesting to see how this goes and to see, because it doesn't sound like from what you're saying, she was killed because what the kidnapper had asked for wasn't done

because it was, it almost seemed like it was never really about the money. And she may have already been dead at that point. That's very, that's very astute of you. And we're not going to really focus on that until probably the last part of this, because this is a Rubik's Cube. Okay. But yeah, right? Yeah. You called or the person was there. Annette Zignas was there to answer the call.

When she answered, you didn't say anything, right? They were almost like they didn't expect them to be there. They didn't expect them to play along, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a very good point. And I want you to remember that. And I want whoever's listening, hopefully there's a lot of you, whoever's listening to remember that as well, because it's going to become very important later. And I have a feeling the mustard carpet might become important as well. But I have that written down. So we'll see where it

goes. 38 West Yorkshire detectives got right to work, questioning people in the area to find out if anyone had seen anything out of the ordinary on the morning that Julie's body had been discovered. Several passengers on a bus traveling down High Dyke Road in Easton at 5.30 that morning had reported seeing a red car driven by a white man approaching the road from a path coming from the direction of Bob Skelton's farm. I was traveling to work on the coach early turn, 6 o'clock start, and I noticed this red car coming out of the track to my right. And it appeared that he didn't know which way to turn.

And then as the coach got very near to him, he decided to reverse back into the slipway. Interesting behavior right now. And you know, this witness is an impartial witness again, coming off an area that was specific, you know, 500 acres that this family owns. So there's really no need for anybody in that area, uh, to be other than the people that own it. And I'm sure you don't have that in here, but I'm sure as detectives were flushing out this witness account, they probably said to the owners, you know, does anybody own a car, a red car that matches the subscription? And by any chance, were you on that road? I'm sure the answer was no. So then you look at this red car, white male. Okay. We have a potential suspect, but this person driving saw the bus coming and was like, oh shit, I don't want

to be seen and tried to reverse. But thank God this guy saw enough, which is a very compelling statement. Again, he has no incentive to lie. So you got to take him at his word. So the interesting thing is for someone to be on that little like dirt path off the road, they'd have to have been coming from the pasture. There'd be no other reason for anybody to be on that. That's like that little path there. And this is the case with a lot of farms that have a lot of land. They have those little paths there so that if they do need to go from pasture to pasture, they're not having to walk, but they're also not having to take their vehicle and drive through like their crops and like screw their stuff up. So this is intended for the people who are working that land or living on that land to use to transport themselves around those pastures. So there's no reason for anybody to be coming out

of there had they not been related to the skeleton family or had a reason to be on the skeleton farm. And it adds up with the observations of the investigators, right? They're saying, listen, it does appear based on decomposition. She had been dead for at least a week. However, the grass under her body was still discolored, was probably not even- Wet from the morning dew even, something like that. Yeah, because what you'll have, the best way to describe it is even if you put, I live in the Northeast, you live in kind of the Northeast as well. It's one of those things where if we don't rake up our leaves right away and there's a rainstorm, those leaves will brown your grass immediately, like within a day. So it's very astute of them to notice that because it would only suggest a couple hours. And then, so they

have this grass like this. And coincidentally, you have witnesses at 5.30 that morning seeing this car. So it all, the puzzles, the puzzle pieces fit so far. Yep. And the police, obviously, at this point, they're like, well, we have to eliminate suspects. You know, they said this this person who wrote the letter clearly had something to do with Julie's death. But we're not ruling out that this person couldn't have known her personally and just use this whole thing as a ruse, because at this point, when we went to go talk to him on the phone, he didn't want to answer. So they obviously are going to look at Julie's boyfriend, Dominic, right? That's going to be the first place they start. And it had surfaced that just two days before Julie had gone missing, she and Dominic had been out drinking at a pub and then they began

walking home around 2 a.m. Before you continue, it's so funny because I have written here when we were talking about possibly a different person writing the letter and I just wrote, home around 2 a.m. says that when, you know, he spoke to her, he knew she wasn't where she said she was. And they had already been, as you kind of, you know, set up in the beginning, they had a very tumultuous relationship, which involved physical harm. So motive, could this guy have heard her at a bar and found a way to maybe track where she might be? Cause I just kept saying to myself, we haven't said anything about Dominic having an alibi for that night. He was at his sister's, but did he stay there? So that's all I'll say. It's funny. I haven't written down and here we are coming back to Dominic. Well, it's funny. We think so very

similarly because once again, I'm first going through this case and the timeline. I thought it was odd that Julie would call Dominic and he'd be like, it sounded like she was at a bar and then leave it at that. Yeah. I was like, why'd she say, but whatever. Yeah. Just left it there. A little Easter egg. I thought, you know, it sounded like she was at a bar. I heard clinking glasses and a jukebox and people talking, but like, whatever. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. No big deal. Yeah. No normal boyfriend would be like, oh, you lied about going to work and you're hanging out drinking instead. All right. I'll see you later. So I was thinking, did he get upset? Did he go looking for her?

Or was he already onto the fact that she may have been doing some sex work and this was pissing him off? But like I said, this case is crazy because it's not at all what you think, right? Yeah, so far, yeah. I mean, we have all these people and I have a feeling you're going to be like, well, you're going to say, guess what? It's this other person that we haven't even talked about this whole time. 100% is what I'm going to do. Yeah, it is, of course. But listen.

And that's the stories you like the most. Yeah, of course. The whodunit. Because they make your brain work hard. Yeah. They're out drinking. They're walking home at 2 a.m. A patrolling police officer, he spotted the couple and he stopped because Julie was very clearly drunk. She was having a hard time standing upright. Her face was swollen. Her lip was bleeding. And Dominic was like propping her up because she couldn't stand and he was like slapping her in the face.

So the police officer approached and tried to intervene, but Dominic was drunk, too. So that idiot fell and he broke his left ankle. Both Julie and Dominic were transported to the hospital where Dominic was fitted for a cast. So law enforcement didn't believe that he would have been physically capable of abducting Julie and then disposing of her body. He didn't drive a red car. He didn't have a driver's license. He didn't have access to a red car. You know, at first I was like, he still could have done it. You know, he's a young man. He's a healthy young man. Like he can figure out how to drop her in a field with a cast on. But I guess they did confirm an alibi. So Dominic's you're out. You're out on this one, Dominic. But not for being a scumbag boyfriend. You're still that. You're still that.

You said it. Get him, Stephanie. I'm sure he's listening. So he might be. He might be. He might be. All the way from the UK. Yeah. We have listeners from the UK.

We do. He might come visit at CrimeCon. I hope he does. I'll prop him up and slap him in the face a bunch. And then you'll have to protect me. So Julie's friend, her older man friend, Michael Walter, he was also considered as a suspect because he had accused Julie of stealing money from him. And he'd been frustrated enough by this to contact the Army Recruitment Office more than once to expose her and get his money back. Now, Walter had been questioned on July 18th, the day before Julie's body was found, and he'd been released, but the police had kept him under surveillance so they knew that it had not been Walter who had killed Julie because he was being watched by law enforcement when her body was dumped on the farm.

On July 23rd, 1991, the police received another letter from the person claiming to be the kidnapper and now the murderer of Julie Dart. This letter was postmarked Sunday, July 22, and had been sent from the Leeds Railway Station. In the letter, the author talked about Julie Dart by name and at length, saying, quote, words will never be able to express my regret that Julie Dart had to be killed, but I did warn what would happen if anything went wrong. At the time of this letter, there has been no publicity. If you do not find the body within a few days, I will contact you as to the location. She was not raped or sexually abused or harmed in any way until she met her end. She was tied up and hit a few blows

to the back of the head to render her unconscious and then strangled. She never saw what was to happen, never felt no pain, or knew anything about it. The firebomb was not left as promised, as the sealant around the combustibles must have gotten knocked in transit and smelled badly, so it was never placed. Owen's furniture store in Coventry was meant to be the target. I still require the same monies as before, under the same conditions. If you want to avoid serious fire damage and any other prostitutes' lives, place an ad in the personal column of The Sun to read. Let's try again for Julie's sake.

End quote. What an asshole. I like how he said she was never harmed or or hurt in any way until i viciously beat her and strangled her to death right and but you know the thing about the letter is you're already assuming it's the right person because again you're probably similar handwriting and all that but also he is describing the means in which she was killed which is in line with the actual body so you know this person person has direct information about her death. So that's a good way to verify what they're saying because they're giving you the specifics about how she was killed. And they're even going more specific

as to the blows to the head and the strangulation. One thing I'm a little confused about, and it might be me, her body was found on July 19th, correct? Yes. Okay. Her body was found on July 19th, but you're saying the letter was postmarked July 22nd, right? Yeah. So this is after he, so clearly this individual does not know that the body has already been found at this point. Exactly. Okay. Just wanted to make sure I got it right. Yes. And I think it might've been, because I looked in newspapers.com because I had the same question. Once again, we think alike. I had the same question and I said, was there like a media embargo?

Were they keeping it out of the press? And unfortunately, there's not every newspaper, especially when you're talking about like different countries, there's not every newspaper loaded onto newspaper.com. But it did look like there wasn't any newspaper coverage of this until a few days after she was found. A few days after. So it might've been the same day even that this person sent out the letter and it had already been sent out before he became aware of it. Yes. Because he says he hasn't seen any publicity. Right. And I'll let you know her location if you don't find her. So clearly he was under the

impression that her body was still out there and they've had her for three or four days. Yeah. So at this point, the police felt that they had no choice but to once again go along with the game. And on July 27th, this ad was placed in the sun. Let's try again for Julie's sake. Three days later, the police received another letter where this anonymous psychopath let them know that he had seen the ad, but there was still going to be another hostage taken, just to be sure that law enforcement went along with his elaborate plans. He said he wanted the same female police officer to travel to a payphone located on the M1 motorway in Leicester that same night. She should once again wait for a call, which would provide her with further instructions. Constable Annette Zignes waited by the phone, and she picked it up

when it rang. She could tell that the person on the other end was playing some sort of audio recording for her, but there was so much traffic and noise on the M1, she couldn't hear what it said, and then whoever was on the other end of the line disconnected the call. So there's a lot of information to process, a lot to discuss. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. On August 1st, the police received a letter instructing Annette Zignas to return to that same payphone on Tuesday, August 6th, which she did, but no one ever called. On August 9th, the police received another letter where the kidnapper slash killer wrote that he had been

unable to find a suitable hostage in time, which is why he hadn't called, but he wanted Annette to return to that phone booth on the M1 motorway at 8.15 p.m. on August 14th because he was ready now. He said, quote, this will be the last time you receive a call at the usual location. Should anything go wrong, you will not be given the location of the incendiary device or the prostitute's body, end quote. This time, when the payphone rang just after 8.15, there was someone on the other end, a man who spoke with what was described as a flat, accentless voice. He told Annette Zignes that he had abducted a woman named Sarah Davies from Ipswich, and then he instructed Annette to go to another phone booth nearby to receive a call from him at 9.45 p.m.

When the phone rang, the man told Annette that he had run into an issue, and he would call her back in 30 minutes. And the phone did ring half an hour later. But Annette Zignes claims that the receiver on the payphone was jammed, and by the time she had jiggled it to make it work, all she heard was a dial tone. The man had hung up, and this time he was not going to call back. But when detectives checked into his story, they discovered that no one named Sarah Davies had been reported missing from Ipswich or anywhere else, and they started to

wonder how genuine this man's threats were. But then, the next day, a device shaped like a tin can was found underneath an abandoned railway bridge not far from where Annette had been talking to the letter writer the night before. Two men who had been walking by saw the device and they thought it looked like a bomb because it had like a wire attached to it and like a rubber or plastic cube attached to the wire. So they called the police and the bomb squad was brought in. Now, this device here is part of an elaborate plot that he had to extort money and he's put this together himself but the most interesting thing about it perhaps is that the container itself which is he's painted the inside of it has been made from an aquarium or goldfish food container

that's right it's an aquarium brand fish food container maybe he's got access to an aquarium. Maybe he picked it up from a rubbish dump. One doesn't know. He's obviously got some electrical experience. He wired this up himself. He's got some technical knowledge. He has got some technical knowledge, yes. Yeah, that's interesting.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. But you guys don't know this, but Stephanie does. I'm a big fan of like building electronics. I buy like soldering kits. And I was showing Stephanie, I built my own clock. She was like, that's cool. You would think it's cool. So cool. But I do enjoy that stuff. And I will tell you, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do, especially write. It's not as simple as it sounds. So the first thing I thought when I saw that is like,

clearly this guy has some type of technical background or at minimum, he's a hobbyist with electronics. So that does give you a little bit more insight into the profile of the person you're looking for. So this device, though, it's not an actual bomb, right? That's another twist to it. So the South Yorkshire police who had responded to this call, they also found something else that was very strange nearby. They found a smallish brick, which had been painted white, and attached to that brick, there was an envelope that had a large number three written on it. The envelope contained a note which read, message next bridge 400 meters detector on panel carry money. So when the West Yorkshire police found out about the device being found alongside a brick that had a cryptic note attached to it,

they knew that it must have been the work of their murderous extortionist, and they realized that this device was actually not meant to be a bomb at all, but it was supposed to be like a detector that the killer had intended for Annette Zignas to put on the dash of her car as she traveled to him with the money. It was yet another clue in the bizarre scavenger hunt that their suspect had been sending them on. This is not even, it's not even a transmitter. Like, he wanted her to think it was, like, a tracker, but it wasn't. It was just, like, this fish food can, like, painted silver and, like, elaborate, like, wires coming out of it and stuff. But it didn't actually do anything.

And this dude. So you're saying it's a decoy inside the container itself, the wires. So I'm giving him all this credit for soldering up this device, whether it was a bomb or not. And what you're telling me is he just stuck a couple of things in the top of the cover. No,

I mean, they agreed, but like the police agreed. He had some technical knowledge because he was able to like make these things look like legit, you know, he must've known what the initial thing looked like and how it would be put together to make a decoy, right? But why not make a real one then, I guess?

I don't know. Why go through all that? I guess just to make them think that he's more in the driver's seat than he really is. I'm trying to think of what the motive would be behind that. He does this a lot, man. He does this a lot. He's enjoying it.

I can tell you that much. He's enjoying this. Up to this point, there's no other reason to justify. He's enjoying this cat and mouse game. He feels this level of superiority over them. He's trying to see who's smarter. He's enjoying the fact that he's got the police running all around the town trying to find him. Yeah, he loves it, right?

Absolutely. Those are the kinds of people that do this stuff, though. The Zodiac and all the kinds of killers and stuff who committing the crime isn't enough. They have to get some sort of credit. They have to play this cat and mouse game with the police. They have to know that they're outsmarting the police. And they always get themselves caught, I think. And not only the police. They want the public to know. That's why he's asking them to put another ad out. Yes. Right? He wants public affirmation of his success in avoiding being apprehended by the police. Very much so. I agree. So this device, this brick, they're just more bizarre clues in the bizarre scavenger hunt that their suspect had been sending them on. Annette Zignas had not been able to answer the call, which would have led her to the next clue. But 10 days later, on August 20th, an envelope marked with the number two was found taped under the shelf of a phone booth in the South Yorkshire town of Barnsley.

And this note gave directions to the location of the white brick and the detector device. So the detectives realized that Annette would have been led to this note first. Then she would have been directed to the white brick. And then she would have put that device on the dash for a car and followed clue three 400 meters away. Police found that 400 meters away from where the brick had been, it led to an underpass of a bridge. And they theorized that their suspect would have been on the bridge holding a dog leash, like down to the bottom of the bridge that Annette would have clipped the money onto, and then he would have lifted the money to his location at the top of the bridge and gotten away unscathed. Doesn't seem like he was, well, either he's smart or he fled the area immediately after

the call wasn't picked up. Maybe he got scared and thought, maybe they're onto me because he never went back for the decoys. He never went back for the envelopes or the devices. No, he's not hanging around. No. Right. Not hanging around, not even revisiting the location after realizing that the plan was kind of ruined. So he was very cautious. And as soon as she didn't pick up when she was supposed to, yeah, he hit the eject button. He aborted the mission. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think he's not taking any chances. What he's doing is serious. He's already got one dead body on his hands.

He's extorting the police. He's demanding a ransom. He's taking their resources and time. He's not taking any chances, right? Nope. Like you said, as soon as she doesn't pick up, he's out. So that brick, though, is also an interesting clue because it wasn't like your typical red brick. It was actually blue underneath the white paint. And the brick was made from a certain type of clay that was only found in one quarry, which was located in Staffordshire.

On August 19th, the police received another letter from their suspect, and it read, quote, The game is now abandoned. Crimewatch UK will tell me most of what I wanted to know. You'll have to file your papers until I try again. As you know, I never picked anyone up in Ipswich or planted a device. I didn't need to. Following Julie's unfortunate death, you'd cooperate with anything I wanted. For your records, Julie was picked up no one but the killer would know. came away, stuck to the blood on the towel, end quote. That's graphic, but more details that no one but the killer would know. One interesting thing about what he's saying,

you're quoting here, but it seems like his grammar has gotten really good. Am I wrong in saying that? It seemed like he couldn't even spell the word ransom before. And yet now I'm not seeing any grammatical errors. Is that because I'm reading your script or is that because this is how it was written? So there were spelling errors. I didn't put the spelling errors into my notes because then I wouldn't read it that way. But so the writing was still consistent. I'm thinking there's not multiple people involved here. No.

Okay. That's what I was getting at. Is there a different person involved? Does he have a co-conspirator? Did the writing change as far as how he was able to spell the words correctly? Because these words are not the easiest words to deteriorated. So, I mean, if he's spelling everything- Yes. There were words spelled incorrectly and things like that. But for the sake of- Yes. For the sake of what you're reading. For the sake of my brain, because looking at misspelled words gives me a headache. I'm with you. I'm with you. Okay. Just wanted to make sure,

but all these other things, they all line up with what we know about Julie. So you know you got your guy. Exactly. And like you just said, these details about Julie Dart, the fact that she'd been extremely decomposed, the fact that her hair had been removed from her head, those hadn't been released to the media or the public. So the police knew they were genuinely dealing with her murderer. And so they turned to criminal psychologist Paul Britton to create a profile on the suspect based on his letters. Britton determined that the suspect was male, and since he had referred to the West Yorkshire police by a name they had not used since the 70s, it was believed he was older, most likely in his late 40s or early 50s. Britton believed that the suspect was a careful planner who had likely worked in a field that

required a high level of technical knowledge, but not necessarily a high level of technical skills. Due to his many spelling and grammar mistakes, it was theorized that he had attended secondary school, but not university. So secondary school for us would be high school and university would be college. He appears to have a dislike for the police. He's written to the Leeds City Police. And as they cease to exist as such in 1974, that may suggest he's an older person. He has low literal skills from the letters, the spelling and grammar, so he may well be self-taught.

It would appear that he works alone. He has probably not killed before. Not a senior position, if he is in employment at the moment. And his core aim would probably not be the murder of Julie Dart, but may well be the obtaining of the 140,000 pounds from the police. It's extraordinary sort of blackmail to blackmail the police because normally blackmailers say don't tell the police. It's as though he's got a grudge against the police. That may well be so, yes.

So he kind of, you know, he said it right there, sort of like he's got some technical knowledge that you could find if you read in books. You can see diagrams, you can see graphs, you can see what things are supposed to look like, but he wouldn't necessarily have the skill to actually like make a transponder or things like that. You know what I mean? Right. Might have seen about it, read about it, but not necessarily the technical skills to actually apply it to do it.

Something else that may be interesting may not turn out to be anything. If we're if by the end of the story, we find out who did it. Something else that may be interesting may not turn out to be anything. If by the end of the story, we find out who did it, I'd like to know where he was living, where he was residing at the time. And if there was a greenhouse in the immediate location, a greenhouse that he could go back to multiple times without fear of being in a place that he wasn't supposed to be. Because this is something where you would assume this greenhouse would be on someone's land, maybe his, maybe someone else's. And if he put her body there initially and then went back to it to clean her up and kind of put her in the sheets, he probably didn't have a fear

of being seen or heard. So I would assume that wherever he was living or where he was staying at the time of all this occurring, there was a greenhouse in somewhat of a reasonable area close to him. We shall see. We shall see. And just for reference, because I didn't know, when he refers to a wheelie bin, at first I was like, what is that? Is it like a wheelbarrow? You know, what is it?

It's a garbage can, like a garbage can on wheels. Oh, see, I was thinking a wheelbarrow. Yeah, right. It's a wheelie bin. I thought the same, especially when you said greenhouse right after. Yes, but apparently he's referring to a garbage can on wheels and they call it a wheelie bin in the UK. So now that you've said that, even more so, there's a garbage can near a greenhouse that

she's being stored in. So he's walking. I can visually see him walking around with his garbage can, putting it into a greenhouse, and yet nobody has reported some random man being inside their greenhouse with a garbage can. Why is that? Well, it's probably because for whatever reason, he's expected to be in that location. It's not out of the ordinary. Yeah, exactly.

So of the seven letters that were sent after Julie's death, four were written using a typewriter and three were handwritten. Two of those three seem to have been written using the suspect's non-dominant hand, while the third had been written with his dominant hand while he was wearing a very thick glove of some kind. There were consistencies in the way the suspect wrote despite his attempt to disguise his handwriting. There were consistencies in the way the suspect wrote, despite his attempt to disguise his handwriting. There were also distinguishing characteristics that allowed forensic experts to learn more about the typewriter he had used for the letters that were not penned by hand. The Forensic Science Service has maintained for many years, in fact since the 1930s, a large collection of type styles from thousands of different machines. On comparing the question types with specimens I found that it corresponded most closely with

the specimens from Olivetti manual type bar typewriters. There is quite a lot of damage to the typeface itself. The figure zero has a large portion missing at the bottom left-hand side. The capital letter P has the top serif missing, which can be seen best if we compare it with an undamaged specimen. And also a portion is missing out of the very middle of the lowercase f. The style of the type and the damage that's occurred to it it does suggest for the typewriter that's 20 or 30 years old see i love this this is what i love this is why i got in the police work because these are the things right here where it's like

if they catch this guy they're going to find a similar typewriter in his area and when they use that typewriter under their own power they're going to type similar letters and they're going to find the same patterns within those letters that this gentleman just described. And it's like, gotcha, bitch. So I found it very, very interesting to like all this little stuff. It's so cool. Because like you said, they got thousands of samples from thousands of different typewriters so that they're able to pinpoint, look at the typewriter's fingerprint. That's insanely cool. That's it.

It's the typewriter. I was going to say typewriter's DNA. It's specific to that. The same thing happens with tire impressions. Everyone's like, oh, you have this tire. It could be on multiple cars. No, but this specific tire has seen certain roads, has been punctured by certain nails,

has had pieces of chunks of rubber taken out of it due to the weather, whatever it may be. No tire, even though it's the same make and model, is the same, not even on the car, the same car. And so the typewriter is the same thing. This typewriter has specifics about it that is only going to be found or replicated within that typewriter, which you show that to a jury. Thank you. Exactly. It's as good as having the fingerprint. It really is that to a jury. I mean, exactly. It's as good as having the fingerprint. It really is.

Yeah, it really is. This is fascinating stuff. This is the stuff that gets me excited about police work for sure. That's just some good. I'm so happy. Some good police work. So detectives had also seen certain indentations on one of the letters that suggested another note of some sort had been written over the letter. And during a press conference held on August 21st, detectives revealed that they had been able to decipher what had actually been written. The words, Mavis, I will not be in on Tuesday,

Phil, were read out loud to the public, and Chief Inspector Constable Bob Taylor announced, quote, I would urge anyone who may know of a Mavis and a Phil, possibly working together or known to one another, to come forward, end quote. Bob Taylor announced, quote, I would urge anyone who may know of a Mavis and a Phil possibly working together or known to one another to come forward, end quote. So before we go to break real quick, I just want to say this is one of the things in CSI school that we had to learn about, because what happens is these offenders will have post-it notes, notebooks, pads of paper. Yeah, right. And they're writing. And what you can do is use lighting, use camera lighting and regular flashlights to kind of enhance those impressions so that you can actually take photos of them. And if you use the lighting to take the photo, then in Photoshop, you can enhance those indentations even more to kind of discern what they actually mean. It's an old school tactic. It's still being taught to this day and it's a really effective practice. So it's something where detectives out there today are using the same tactic where there might be a notebook. It might seem like it's not really important. However,

the thing you're not seeing that was there before it was ripped out might be most important. And it seems like this might be the case here. Absolutely. And that's kind of how they figured out the ransom letter with John Bonnet Ramsey. Remember that they had seen that other letters seemed to have been attempted before that letter because there was imprints of those attempts on the notepad. If you guys have never done it at home, you want to try something cool, write on a notebook, just write naturally, then rip it off, take a flashlight or something, even your iPhone, shine it at certain angles. And it's amazing how the shadows will fill in those indentations. And all of a sudden you can see what was written on the page before. It's pretty cool. So cool. And Stephanie's looking

right now. She's looking at my notebook. All right, let's take a quick break while I look On September 12th, the British television show Crime Watch included Julie's case in their episode, and this new exposure brought in a plethora of tips, over 400 to be exact. Now, one of these tips came from a man who claimed he had met Julie Dart in a bar the week before she'd went missing. They'd had sex, and when he was driving her home, Julie had told him that she was very new to this way of life, and she'd only started doing it because she needed to pay off a debt that was preventing her from joining the army. It may not have been a tip that led to her killer, but it was some insight into why Julie had turned to sex work. She would not let anything stand in her way of, you know, seeing her lifelong dream realized. The case went cold for over a month, but on October 16th, 1991, the police received another letter from Julie's killer.

Apparently, he had seen the Crimewatch episode and was confident that law enforcement had nothing on him, and he said, quote, as you are nowhere near on my tail, the time has come to collect my 140,000 pounds from you. I do not get any bigger sentence for two murders, and prostitutes are easy to pick up, end quote. In this letter, he gave instructions for another drop of the ransom money, telling the police to send the same female police officer to a payphone at the Carlisle train station at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, October 21st. Now, detectives were confused because October 21st, it wasn't a Wednesday, it was a Monday. So they sent Annette Zignas to the location on both that Monday and Wednesday, but there was no phone booth even

there. It had been moved a few years back. And although Annette dutifully went to the stated location and waited on both days, nothing happened. What the police didn't know at that time is that just the day before they got their letter, another letter had been sent to the London headquarters of British Rail, the state-owned company that operates most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain. This letter was longer, two typed pages, and it had been sent on October 10th from Staffordshire. The writer of this letter demanded that British Rail pay him £200,000 to be delivered on Wednesday, October 23rd, by two of the company's female employees.

The women were instructed to await further instructions at a payphone located in Crew Station in Cheshire, and the letter writer warned, quote, your females will be in danger if the money is not real, end quote. Not only that, but he threatened to derail a high-speed train if they did not follow his instructions to the letter. British Rail immediately called the police and Detective Pat Fleming was assigned to the case and he quickly connected it with the extortion scheme and what was happening with the West Yorkshire police. Officers from both investigations compared letters and realized there were many parallels. A demand for money,

followed by a threat of violence or harm, requesting that the money be delivered by women, similar technical language. They theorized that the letter received by the police on October 16th, demanding that the money be delivered on Wednesday, October 21st, even though that would have been a Monday, not a Wednesday, it hadn't been a mistake at all. Like the guy hadn't gotten the day wrong. The letter writer had been trying to keep the police busy, running around in circles on a wild goose chase using their resources elsewhere, while he slid right in and began his second extortion plot on British Rail. So it's starting to seem like, you know, in some cases, many cases with someone who might be a potential serial killer down the road, the motive, the

gratification is the killing itself, where it seems like he's using this to solicit money. His motive is financial, right? And so he's using the threat of physical harm or death to these prostitutes and also to a bigger area by using a bomb to get what he really wants, what really gratifies him, which is the money itself. On Wednesday, October 23rd, a female police officer posing as a British Rail employee waited patiently at the phone booth at Crewe Station. And when the phone rang, she picked it up. But all she heard was someone saying, hello, hello, hello, on the other end before the call was disconnected. The phone rang again right after this, but before she could answer it, it stopped ringing. Five days later, British Rail received another letter with the chilling statement, Congratulations, you have now qualified for retribution. pentagraph. So this is the apparatus that's mounted on the roof of an electric train or an electric bus, and it collects power through contact with the overhead line. If this was tampered with,

a train would have no power, and it could result in an accident or a collision. But I was looking into it, and it doesn't, I mean, it looks like the train would just not have no power, you know, and it would kind of coast to a stop. Like you would hope that it wouldn't come across, you know, another train at like a crossing or something that would be bad. But otherwise, it would sort of just lose power and coast to a stop. And because the brakes are hydraulic, I think that they would still have access to their brakes as far as I could tell. Right. So it's more just a fear thing. It's just trying to like I'm in control. Yeah, that's what it looks like. But sure enough, on Monday, November 4th, an employee of British Rail was conducting a routine inspection on an eight mile section of the West Coast line running between Crew Station and Stafford Station. As he went about his inspection, he encountered a broken concrete block under a bridge right in the middle of the train tracks.

He got closer to remove the block and he found that the concrete block was actually attached to a large piece of sandstone by a rope. Apparently, the writer letter had gone to the top of the bridge over the train tracks and he had thrown the sandstone block over the bridge using the concrete block as an anchor to keep that on top of the bridge in an attempt to damage the electric pantograph on a passing train. It hadn't worked this time. His plot had been discovered before it could do any damage, but law enforcement understood that the type of person they were dealing with wouldn't be stopped until he was caught. The letter writer's next criminal act would not be with a pen or even a

concrete block. He knew that in order for law enforcement to take him seriously, he had to put another life on the line. And that's exactly what he did. So really interesting. I know we're probably going to stop right here. But as we're thinking about this, as we're talking about it, it's something where there's an escalation, right? Again, he knows what he ultimately wants is money and

he's not getting that. He's not getting the money from the railroad company. He's not getting the money from the police. Although there there's, there's still a miss, right? The police are actually bringing the money and yet there's just a miscommunication. He's really cagey and he's not willing to take any chances. And as his plan continues to be spoiled. So I was waiting for you to go into something where there's another death because it seems like that's going to get the best response for him. And so he has to still prove that he's serious and this wasn't a one-time thing. So the fact that you're ending it that way, it's unfortunate because I have a feeling I know where it's going, but he wants money. He wants money, right? So I agree with you. And so do the police on this case. But it's weird

because he only got really close to getting the money that one time, you know, when she wasn't able to answer the phone because the headset was stuck. But it seemed like every other time he sent them to these phone booths, it was like he wouldn't call or he wouldn't say anything or he would just hang up. So is there a joint motive of control? Like you said, he wants the money, but is he going to play with them a little bit before he gets it? Is he just trying to see how far they'll go? But if you really want the money, are you going to push your luck? Or maybe he knows, well, I'll play with them a little bit. And all I have to do is kidnap someone again to get their attention. Yeah, it makes sense. Totally makes sense. I just don't understand. And I know we're going to figure this out. You said this is a three-parter and maybe there's more insight onto it. But why kill Julie if the incentive is the money. Oh, there is more insight. Trust me. Right. There's got to be. My wheels are spinning. It's like, you know, what happened?

Because you have the carrot that you're dangling over law enforcement. The incentive would be to keep her alive because as long as she's alive, they're going to be more incentivized to give you the money. But once you kill her, now you have to start all over again. So what happened? Did she not cooperate? Did she escape? Did something go wrong where you had no other choice but to kill her and start over? Because once they find her body, there's no incentive for them to give you the money. So I'll be interested to hear how that plays out because that doesn't really make sense because

we both agree money is at the root of this. And yet he had someone who was going to probably help him in getting that money. He had a victim who people were trying to get back. We can record part two right now if you want. Don't tempt me with a good time. It's only 1113. We're usually down here till like 1am anyways. I know. We're recording this a little early because Stephanie's going to Mexico. So we weren't going to miss another week. So we wanted to get it done. So we're recording on a Thursday tonight. And I was so into this case.

I just banged out the first two parts over the past couple of days because I've been looking into this case for a couple weeks or so. But I was just so into it. And there was so much. And I was having so much fun writing it and going through it that, you know, because I was so interested by it. I just banged out the first two parts. So, I mean, we can record it whenever you want. I'm down. I love the reason I don't love the case.

Whatever I say, I love. I know people people get all like, what do you mean you love this case? No, that's not what we're saying. For the for the the one percentile out there. I don't love the specifics of the case and why we're talking about it, but there's always an element of that mystery of that puzzle, which is why I think Stephanie likes it, which is why I like it, which is why I was in law enforcement. We're not specifically talking about what happened here. There was a loss of life and the way this is

going, there might be more, but I like the investigatory process and how they catch these bad guys because they all go into it thinking that they can't be caught. That's the plan. It's literally two people, you know, thinking I'm smarter than you. And the police and, you know, for what it's worth, don't always catch the person. But what do you mean two people? There's more than two people. There's an entire police department and the offender. But really what I'm looking, I always looked at it in like a personal way as a detective where

there's a criminal out there and he's robbing stores or robbing banks. And I'm the guy assigned to the case. And he clearly thinks he can outsmart me because if he didn't, he wouldn't be doing it. So he's kind of, he's calling me out and it's, and you have to take that personally and try to do your best to catch him. So I like that. It's like, hey, listen, you think you got the drop on me? We're going to see. And then when you catch him, it's that much more gratifying. So that's why I love doing what I did.

And that's why I still do it. I wish I could still do that aspect of the job. That's the one thing I do miss. I do. I do really enjoy it. And I feel like if I was a cop, I wouldn't be the one out there running through the streets. I'd be like in a library with all the books and papers around me, just researching everything and finding like everything I could because it's so, it's rewarding. And it's a mental activity that I don't think we really allow ourselves to do on the day to day. You know,

life gets mundane. We kind of go through the motions. We're not really out there solving puzzles every single day, except like, where did my ice cream sandwiches that I just bought go? Like, how did these people eat all my ice cream sandwiches in 48 hours when all I wanted was an ice cream sandwich? That's a puzzle you got to fix or figure out. But it's pretty evident what happened. Your family just ate them on you. But I mean, it's something that we as humans want. We want to go and ponder and puzzle over things and solve things. And if we weren't like that, there would be no innovation. So we don't like these cases. We're not like, yes, love murders. But we do love the experience of going through them and figuring things out and piecing things together just so you know do we got time for a quick story yeah okay so i'm gonna tell you about a case i worked

and it involved an individual he was uh he was robbing convenience stores and he was actually very good he was using gloves mask wouldn't speak much would just use the gun wouldn't really give anything away that we could even see on camera that would indicate who he was. He always wore the same outfit, all that good stuff. So he's, he's getting away with these smashing grabs and it's really pissing me off because it's, you know, he's right in my backyard and he's doing this right. And we haven't caught him yet. And my chief was getting really pissed off. He's, we need to find this guy. So I'm going over the old video footage of a couple of these smashing grabs.

And, you know, for, for people who don't know what that is, he's just basically going in there, give me what's in the register and he's out. So on one of the occasions where he did it again, gloves on, you know, no distinguishable marks, nothing. He's wearing air forces. He, the cashier wasn't grabbing the money out of the cash register fast enough. So he jumped over the counter and grabbed the money himself and then he took off. So this one had just recently happened. So nobody had

been in the store yet. It was still a crime scene. I go back there and I had been going through this more advanced fingerprint school. And we were thinking about impressions and all these things and using different items that you could take impressions off of based on other residue being on the surface area. And you think about the counter where like, you know, the cash register is. It's kind of gross, but it gets a little greasy because people's hands are constantly on it. There's money. So there is a little bit of a film on there. And I thought about it and I said, you know what?

I'm going to dust this counter and so i think i dusted the counter with a magnetic powder and i was able to get a shoe impression and it was so good that there were actually like gashes it was an air force one and anybody who knows an air force one is super popular but just like this this typewriter that we were talking about earlier, which is why I was reminded of the story. There were specific marks in the shoe print that if I could find the shoe, I had them because it was like a lot of little gashes. And again, no two shoes are going to be the same. As far as the bottom, there was a lot of wear and tear. Long story short, we ended up getting some leads. We find out about a person that we think might be involved. We find this person. There's some other things that happen i get a search warrant go into the house sure enough i find the white air forces i take a photo of the air forces match it up to the one impression that i was able to get exact match right foot exact match that's literally what

got him convicted in court. Actually, he pled guilty and took a deal. He didn't even want to go to trial. He was like, they got me. And now a big component of that case was the sneaker prank. What was the deal? I don't even know. I honestly don't even know. He still served time, but it was a no contest. We had him. There was other things that lined up. I'm giving you the shorter version, but we found items in the house that were stolen from the stores, money, things of that nature. So he was, he was dead to right. But I, it was a really good feeling to think this school that I had just went to, it actually worked out. It was fresh in my brain. I was wanting to dust everything. And I remember some of the older guys being like, kid, really? You just got fingerprint

dust all over this place, you know, but we got the shoe print out of there. It was pretty good. It was a good one. So next time he's just going to wear those little booties, you know, that like the cable guy wears when he comes in your house. He's like, you're not getting me again, motherfucker. No, that was, that was an interesting one. I mean, it doesn't happen often, but sometimes, you know, it's better to be lucky than good. Yeah. I don't know. I like to be good. Well, I think getting a shoe print off a counter is pretty good. I was being, I was being humble. No, I know you were. So don't do that. Why do you have to be humble? That's great. That was a good one. Like you said, the older guys were like, Sonny.

And I will say there was dust everywhere. I mean, I was, I was covered in it. Cause it was just, I was just anything that had a surface to it. I was like, let me, you know, never know. And yeah, it worked out well. I can see you just like running around this gas station with your fingerprint dust. It was bad, man. With that like fevered look in your eye you get when you're excited about something. I'm like, I just learned about this. We can, you know, and they're like, okay, buddy, sure.

They were like, all right, all right, guy, go around. go around they're like knock yourself out we're going to lunch don't give him any more candy yeah no it was a good one i like it well thank you so much for bearing with me because i know it's probably weird when you jump onto a new case that you literally know nothing about like it would drive me crazy if we switch switch spots, I would not like it. No, I know you wouldn't. I would not because I like to know things and I don't like to be taken by surprise. So I would not like to be in your position. So I appreciate you being patient with me. I appreciate you guys being patient with me. And I do want to ask, do not go and look this case up. Do not spoil it. Okay? Because I have laid it out for you

in what I believe to be the perfect way to hear it. So trust me, put yourself in my hands. Put yourself in my little hands and let me take you through this and care for you and cradle you through it, okay? Don't look it up. Don't go and find information. And if you do, please don't put it in the comment section on YouTube, man. We will delete you.

I am so mad when people do that. That's some trash right there. Like, I ruined it for myself and I'm going to ruin it for everyone else. But come on, guys. Yeah. Nobody really does that. Yeah, you guys do. You guys do that.

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