Criminology - Sarah DeLeon

Episode Date: December 14, 2019

It was 30 years ago this month that 18-year-old Sarah DeLeon was murdered after she left her boyfriend's house in the early morning hours of December 29, 1989. Police had few suspects and little evidence to go on and eventually Sarah's case went cold. Five years later, another woman named Diana Ault was murdered. Again, police struggled to solve the murder, and at the time, they had no idea there was a connection between the two cases. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the murder of Sarah DeLeon. Police eventually learned of the connection between the two murders. Both women had been harassed by a woman named Carol Coon and the authorities began zeroing in on Carol as a possible suspect in both murders. Carol Coon, it seems, had a habit of harassing women who were dating her former boyfriends. Was she willing to kill to eliminate romantic rivals? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 91 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you today? I'm doing good, a little bit stressed out because I had my first bout of snow driving for the year and made me get here a little bit late to get started, but I'm doing pretty good. How about you?

Yeah, no, I'm doing good. We haven't had much where I am, but I know you're a little far. either east than I am, would you get three or four inches? Yeah, we got about two inches, three inches. It wasn't too bad on the roads. Certain areas were pretty slick, but mostly the grass, but it's just my snowblowers out there in the garage, and I'm just afraid sooner or later, I'm going to have to crank that thing up to start using it.

Well, it always happens where, especially with like the first few snows of the year, everybody is real cautious. It seems like it takes forever to get somewhere. by the end of the season people are flying through wrecks everywhere what are you going to do all right we had some new patreon support so let's give some shoutouts man we actually had a lot of new patron support this this time we had stephan brood out donah hill jane irola nina pauli hunter sophia muller marina turner james clark kaya n n jessica Kate Van Bressel, Henson Milam, and Karen Burroughs. So big shout out to all of those folks in making the decision to support criminology. Yeah, that's really awesome. That's a lot of great support.

And anytime somebody is willing to help the show like that, it just means so much to us. And anyone out there that would like to support criminology on Patreon, they can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. And more if we mentioned crime con last week, we're excited about it, right? We're excited to be back on podcast row in Orlando, Florida, May 1st through the third next year. I don't think there's any doubt when you talk to podcasters, when you talk to people that have gone, CrimeCon is the best true crime convention out there. And since the holidays are right on top of us, it's a perfect gift, right?

Tickets to CrimeCon for a true crime fan. And that takes care of your holiday shopping list right there. And you can save 10% off your standard badge right now by heading over to crimecon.com and registering for CrimeCon Orlando. When you check out, be sure to use our promo code, which is Chronology 2020. And if you're on the fence, definitely just do it because it's a lot of fun. I think Mike and I can both attest to that. Well, and I think there's a lot of people out there.

There's a lot of listeners who, over the. the years have said, I don't know if I want to go. Do I want to spend the money? Do I want to make the travel plans? Do I want to do all that? They leave that weekend emailing us or messaging us that saying, I can't believe I haven't done this yet. I had an amazing time. We get that every year. I don't know how many people walk away from that thinking, ah, I wish I hadn't have done that because by and large, the people we hear from, they love it. So we definitely had fun with some listeners and had drinks with them and it was a good time. Yeah, it always is every year.

We get to hang out with a lot of people and a lot of people that we see year after year. I mean, we've seen some people, you know, three, four years in a row. It's awesome. All right. More if we have all that out of the way, let's jump into this case. 18-year-old Sarah DeLeon was murdered after leaving her boyfriend's husband's husband's home in the early morning hours of December 29th, 1989. That's 30 years ago this month.

Police had little evidence to go on and the case eventually went cold. And then five years later, Diana Alt was brutally murdered in front of her two small children just a few miles away from where Sarah was murdered. At first, the crimes didn't appear to be connected. But then police learned that the two women had one. one thing in common. They were both harassed by the same woman prior to their murders. What followed for investigators and for Sarah's family was a long and frustrating journey. Sarah DeLeon was born on June 7, 1971 to Joseph and Gail De Leon. She has an older sister named Rachel and a younger

brother named Matt. Raised in Kansas City, Kansas, Sarah was popular in high school and active in sports. She didn't drink or do drugs, and overall was a good kid. She graduated from Washington High School in 1989 and completed one semester at Kansas City Community College, where she was studying travel. Around this time, she started seeing a boy named Matt Euland. And Morph, I know for a fact that this case is going to hit close to home. We tend to do cases from time to time about young women in college. I think everybody listening knows I've talked about it. My oldest daughter is a freshman at college right now.

So those cases, this type of case, it hits me. There's no doubt about it. You see the same thing with cases involving small children for people that have small children or, you know, anything like that. There's no way around it. It's sad that that's a demographic that really gets hit hard with some of these cases and it seems like an overwhelming number of cases we discuss. Unfortunately, the victims are younger women, sometimes school age or college aged. Yeah, I would agree with that. And it is sad.

It's true, but it's sad that, you know, women are targeted. There's no way around that fact. The statistics prove it out. And that's why, I mean, everybody should be concerned with their personal safety. I absolutely believe that. I think as a woman, you got to double down on your personal safety. And you can call it whatever you want. I like the term keep your head on a swivel, you know, keep your wits about you, whatever it is. You know, it's something that I talk to my daughters about a lot. You know, don't walk through life on your iPhone. Don't, you know what I'm saying? Don't leave the mall headed to your car with your face buried in your iPhone. You need to know what is going on around you at all times.

I guess that's what I mean by keep your head on a swivel. And don't be afraid to listen to your gut instinct if something's telling you something's wrong. Yeah, I would 100% agree with that. It was on December 28th, 1989. Sarah spent the evening at Matt Eulen's house and left in her black Ford Mustang around 1.30 a.m. The next morning, December 29th. Just 20 minutes later, this was around 150 a.m. A witness spotted Sarah's car near the I-70 underpass on North 78th Street. There was no sign of Sarah. The door to the car was open and the car's hazard lights were flashing. Later that day,

at around 10 a.m., a train conductor spotted what he first thought was a mannequin along the track. under I-435 near Walcott Drive, but it wasn't a mannequin. It was a dead body, a woman's body that would later be determined to be Sarah de Leon. The spot where Sarah's body was found was an out-of-the-way area. There wasn't a lot of traffic. It was a little less than 10 miles northwest of where her car was found. Police were summoned to the scene, including an experience

lead detective named Mike Schoeman and a young police cadet named Jeff Cheek. Before they identified the body as being Sarah's, Detective Schumann thought the victim was in her late teens. Jeff Cheek was around that same age, and Detective Schoeman asked him if he recognized the girl. It turned out that Jeff Cheek did recognize her. He remembered seeing Sarah once or twice in the hallways at Washington High School. The crime scene was gruesome. Sarah had been stabbed numerous times. Drag marks in the dirt indicated Sarah had been dragged from the the road before being dumped on the ground. This meant she was likely killed somewhere else and transported to the area where her body was found.

Police realized that the abandoned Mustang was Saran's, and they closed off the area around her car, treating it as a possible crime scene. They examined Sarah's car, but they didn't find any signs of a struggle. There was no blood, no suspicious fingerprints, nothing that really, to them, yielded any clues. But one thing that police did notice was that the rear of Sarah's car looked like someone had bumped into it. Police initially thought Sarah may have been killed in what they called a bump and rob. And this is where, you know, a person bumps into your car. You pull over and get out and then he takes off in your car. And in fact, several of these incidents happened around that area

during that time. It was a good theory, except for two things. No one stole Sarah's car and Sarah had been brutally murdered. And more if you hear a lot of stories about these types of incidents, whether it's for merely the purposes of insurance, right? Somebody pulls in front of you on the highway, they slam on their brakes, you rear in them. You hear about people trying to do that all the time. this is a scary scenario because somebody bumps you and as a you know a good person you're thinking

okay I've got to pull over to the side of the road I got to do what's right let's get out let's exchange insurance contact information all of that meanwhile you have no idea that this person has bad intentions and whether it's they you know the fact that they steal your car or they harm you in some way. That is a scary thing. And I think most drivers, they get bumped. They don't think it's the worst scenario. They just think, oh, this guy hit me.

I got to get out. Let me get my insurance. You get out, not expecting for this scenario to happen. And then you've got someone there threatening you, perhaps, and it goes sideways. Yeah, I think that's why it's a tactic that's used because I think what would go through a lot of people's minds is, you know, it's my duty. to pull over. I can't just speed off. I may be in trouble if I do that. And the area where this happened, we should definitely point out, it was not populated. It's an underpass.

There was poor lighting. There's no witnesses. There's no stores right around there. So it was a spot that if something happened, there wouldn't be anybody there to really see what went down. Which is the exact place that, you know, a person that was trying to do this would pick, right? They wouldn't pick a crowded intersection. They wouldn't pick a strip where, you know, there's 14 restaurants. They would pick a place that's a little bit out of the way. Police were tasked with contacting Sarah's family to let them know the grim news that just days after Christmas, Sarah was dead.

An autopsy was later performed on Sarah DeLeon's body. The medical examiner wrote in his report, The neck presents evidence of multiple stab and laceration wounds. towards the front they are more deeply penetrating until a large irregular gaping wounded area is noted some two to three inches in greatest dimensions characterized by ragged cut edges widely open with exposure to the skeletal muscles of the neck the left cradded artery has also been widely opened the attack on sarah was a brutal one she had been stabbed over 20 times she had 12 slash marks to the left side of her neck

plus the large gaping wound. She had a few stab wounds on her back as well, and one in the crook of her left arm. There was a bruise or an abrasion above her right breast and a bruised area around the right eye. She also had a stab wound of the heart, which is most likely the wound that killed her. Because Sarah had no major defensive injuries,

the killer may have incapacitated her somehow, possibly hitting her on the head. But police also wondered if the reason she had no defensive wounds was because she perhaps knew her killer. and didn't have time to react to being attacked. So we talked about the bump and rob theory, but I think pretty quickly, police figured out that this was not a random bump and rob.

This was a cold-blooded murder. Whoever killed Sarah must have been extremely angry with her because there was a lot of overkill in her death. And this is something that police look at heavily. And a lot of times, look at as a clue to the fact that maybe this is a crime of passion and that Sarah knew her killer. So police turn their attention to Sarah's boyfriend Matt. He was the last known person to see Sarah as she left his house. And obviously, if they're thinking, okay, this is a possible

crime of passion. Logically, the boyfriend is someone that police are going to want to talk to. But once they checked Matt out, they believed that he had nothing to do with Sarah's murder and they eliminated him as a suspect. Kansas City PD immediately set up a metro squad involving police from every Kansas City precinct. No doubt, they were going to put forth an all-out effort to catch. Sarah's killer, but after less than two weeks with no leads or suspects, the squad was disbanded.

So I said, you know, yeah, they're going to put forth an all-out effort. And it sounds like they did. But then when you think, okay, they did for not even quite two weeks, what do you think of that? It seems like a short period of time. But then I started thinking, you know, they might have other new crimes happening that they've got to break down some people to go take care of those crimes and maybe they just couldn't focus all the attention of this this group on one victim's case. Yeah, I mean, it does sound like it was a, you know, a big squad and obviously it's a lot of manpower. Maybe they can only dedicate that much manpower for so long and then they have to disperse. And I'm leery of criticizing the police too much, not.

knowing all the facts surrounding it, just because deep down, I do believe that police are trying to do the very best that they can. But some people listening will hear that and think, well, it doesn't seem like that long of the time for this squad to spend on catching Sarah's killer. I think that's natural. And I wonder how Sarah's family felt if it seemed like it's only been this short period of time and you're already giving up. I wonder if they got that feeling. But are they giving up? I don't think they're giving up. I don't think they're giving up, I think they're giving up on the squad. Doesn't mean they're giving up on their efforts to catch Sarah's killer though, right? Yeah, but in their eyes, you wonder, hey, this is our daughter and here

it is two weeks in there. I wonder if they just felt that maybe the, oh, I'm, I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did because I think as a grieving parent, you're not thinking about, okay, there's other murders to solve. I don't care. I'm focused on you catching my daughter's killer. I don't care. I'm focused on you catching my daughter's killer. And if that's selfish, that's selfish. But I can imagine more if I would be the exact same way. Yeah, I think most people probably would be. Sarah's murder shocked her community. People were upset that something like that could happen to someone like Sarah there. And this concern led to people coming forward to share information and provide tips. Through this information that police received, detectives learned that Sarah had a romantic rival, her boyfriend Matt's

ex-girlfriend, Carolyn Coon. Carolyn, who went by Carol, was 21 at the time of Sarah's murder. It was alleged that Carol had threatened to get Sarah drunk and cut off all of her hair. But Carol didn't stop there, apparently. She continued to harass and bully Sarah, hoping Sarah and Matt would break up and he would go back to her. But Carol's alleged bullying didn't work. Sarah was tougher than she looked and wasn't going to cower from Carol. On January 10th, 1990, police questioned Carol about threatening to cut Sarah's hair, and she admitted to it, but claimed that she was just joking around. Despite the threats and harassment, investigators had no evidence linking Carol Coon to Sarah's murder. What police didn't know at the time was that an earlier 1989 incident in the area where Sarah's murder might be connected to Sarah's murder occurred might be connected to.

Sarah's case and years later would come back into play. This incident occurred at the American Motel, located at North 78th Street and I-435 in Kansas City. This was very close to where Sarah's car had been found. In February of that year, a girl named Maggie Lovett claimed to have been abducted in a limousine and taken to the motel where she was drugged. And as it turns out, this alleged drugging came at the hands of Carol Coon. At the time, nothing came from this incident.

And as we've already mentioned, it would be sometime before police would connect it to Sarah's murder. So police don't have anything solid against Carol in regards to Sarah's murder. So they kept looking at all possible angles. But it didn't take long for police to. run out of leads and promising suspects, months of investigation turned into years, and eventually Sarah's case went cold. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency?

We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and Water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor,

moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodontas. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch.

Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. On Super Bowl Sunday, January 30th, 1994, just over four years after Sarah De Leon's murder, a 26-year-old woman named Diana Alt, and her two children, four-year-old Josh, and six-month-old Katie, spent the evening watching the football game at her in-law's house. This was an Independence Mesa.

Missouri, just across the bridge from Kansas City. Diana's husband, Timothy, was working the night shift at the U.S. Postal Service, and Diana wanted some adult company, so she watched the game at her in-laws. After the game, she left and took the kids home to put them to bed. Diana made it home with the kids. After they got home and went to the house, Diana went outside of the car to get something, perhaps the diaper bag, and then she headed back inside. As Diana was walking through the living room to the kitchen, four-year-old Josh heard some loud noises that despite him being only four years old,

he knew to be gunshots. As he looked toward the sound of the shots, he saw his mom stumble to the floor. Diana Alt had been ambushed, shot in the neck, and she bled out on the floor as her children sat helpless nearby. Then the killer scooped up Josh, held him gently and carried him to his parents' bedroom closet and placed him inside.

Josh said years later, it was as if the person was shielding him from the horror of what had just happened to his mother. Josh eventually left the closet and found Katie crawling on the floor near their mother's body. Morp, this is a horrifying situation for everyone involved. I mean, obviously it's horrible that Diana all lost her life. A perpetrator shot her. But to think that someone did this in front of her two small children and that, you know, not only did they witness it, but they're in the house crawling around their mother after she's been killed.

It's almost unimaginable. That would haunt them, I think, for the rest of the, life. And even though he was only four years old, he still remembered details years later. And I don't know about the memories of a six-month-old. I tend to think that younger children that young wouldn't have any recollection, but you have to wonder if something back there in her mind held on to what she saw that day. And if that's buried in there someplace, just tragic. Yeah, I think it's a double blow. First of all, you've lost your mother, which is absolutely horrible, but you're going to have to figure out how to deal with what you've seen, what you

remember, and that's going to, you know, maybe last forever. I just don't believe more if that's something that you're going to forget. Now, I get it. Josh was four years old. Katie was only six months old, but I think for both of them, there would have to be massive amounts of trauma that have to be dealt with for probably the rest of their lives. Around midnight, Independence, Missouri police found an abandoned car with the engine still running and the lights on in a church parking lot. Inside the car was a 44 magnum revolver. A quick run of the plates told them the car belonged to Diana Alt. When the officers drove to the Alt home, they found Little Josh inside giving Katie a bottle. Nearby, Diana's lifeless body lie on the floor

in a pool of blood. The gun found in Diana's car was determined to belong to her husband, Tim. The killer had apparently been waiting inside the house when Diana came home. At around 1 a.m., Diana's father, Bill, got a knock on the door. It was the police. The officers told him that his daughter Diana had been killed. He immediately called his other daughter Sharon and told her the news about Diana. Tim Alt, Diana's husband, arrived home from work to a chaotic scene. The house had been cordoned off by police using yellow police. tape, there were several police officers at his house. They informed him that his wife Diana had been murdered. Tim, Bill, and Sharon went to the police station around 3 a.m. When police asked Tim if there was

anyone who would want his wife dead, he told them that he had no idea and that he and Diana were in a good place and that their marriage was fine. But Sharon told police a different story. She said that Tim and Diana's marriage was far from fine. She informed police that Tim had cheated on Diana with a woman named Carol Coon. This is the same woman that Sarah DeLeon's boyfriend Matt had dated before Sarah. And just like with Sarah, Carol began stalking and harassing Diana. One time while Diana was gone, Tim and Carol had sex in the Alts bedroom on a mirror. on a mirror, Carol wrote in red lipstick, thanks for the use of the bet.

Carol also called Diana and told her she was researching social security death benefits in the event that Diana died. This harassment got to the point where Diana was forced to file a complaint with police. Morp, this is pretty brazen. I mean, it's some serious harassment. I mean, it's not rabbit in a pot fatal attraction. harassment, but it's not good. It's never good. Number one, for a husband to stray. But then the woman that he's straying with is literally throwing it in his wife's face. I think she's definitely opening up the possibility for some kind of confrontation, maybe inviting some kind of confrontation

to occur. Well, there's a reason for it, right? So either she thinks this is going to break the marriage up, and that's her ultimate goal, or like you said, she's looking for a confrontation, one way or the other. On Christmas Eve, 1993, just weeks before his wife's senseless murder, Tim left Diana for Carol. But after the holiday season, he returned home to Diane and the kids. This infuriated Carol, because she told her friends that she and Tim were going to get married, and they would raise Josh and Katie together. After Sharon provided investigators with this new information, they went back to interview Tim about the affair, and he confirmed it. They checked to make sure he was working that night, and he was.

Carol's alibi also checked out. She was more than 100 miles away in Manhattan, Kansas, at a party. With alibis for both Diana's husband and his mistress, police began to wonder if Diana had walked in on a burglary in progress, and the case went cold. But the connection between Sarah DeLeon's murder and Diane Alt's murder was not made until many years later. So we mentioned that these cases went cold and many years went by. It was in 2014 that the police cadet who was at Sarah DeLeon's crime scene, Jeff Cheek, saw a candlelight vigil on television. The vigil was for the 25th anniversary of the death of Sarah

de Leon. And it brought back horrible memories for Jeff Cheek of seeing. Sarah's body and it stirred something inside him. Jeff had left the police force and had become a corporate security consultant by this point, but he offered his services, his investigative services to Sarah's family free of charge. This guy did a ton of research on the case. He spoke with numerous law enforcement officers, including his friends, about Sarah's case. During his investigation, he spoke with the woman named Jamie Locke. Jamie Locke had been Carol Coon's best friend for years, and she had a lot to say to Jeff about Carol Coon. Jamie said Carol was smart and driven. She was determined to get what she wanted, and when she didn't, she played dirty with romantic rivals. Jamie said that she knew Matt

Euland, and that he had dated Carol prior to Sarah. When Carol found out about Sarah, she was furious, but not at Matt. She was mad at Sarah. Jamie said that Carol wanted to get an accomplice to help her drug Sarah and then cut off all of her hair. But the person Carol asked refused. As we mentioned, police had interviewed Carol Coon

shortly after Sarah's murder. Jamie was with her, the day that Carol was interviewed, and she recounted for Jeff Chee that she noticed that after Carol walked out of the police station, she was giddy. She was smiling. She was.

was happy. The police didn't suspect her of any involvement in Sarah's murder. It was at that time that Jamie noticed a big scratch on Carol's neck. When she asked Carol how she got it, Carol said that her cat scratched her. Jamie also said that Carol was normally a messy and sloppy person and that the inside of her car showed that. But after the murder, Jamie noticed that Carol's car was spotless. And police did search Carol's car after the murder, but found no evidence tying her to the murder of Sarah De Leon. Jamie also revealed information about the February 1989 incident at the American motel. She said that at the time, Maggie Lovett was dating a guy that Carol had previously dated. Carol lured Maggie to the motel, telling her that her boyfriend was there.

In the motel room, they got Maggie drunk. And Carol told Jamie to put gloves on. This freaked Jamie out, and she refused to help Carol with whatever she had in mind. Jamie left the motel, and Carol didn't go through with whatever she had planned, and she left the motel too. Years later, Maggie Lovett would confirm the incident at the motel and said that when it happened, she felt that she wasn't drunk, but instead had been drugged.

So we have all of these allegations of Carol trying to enlist Jamie to help her harass the significant of, others of men that Carol was interested in. But there was more. Prior to Diana Alts murder, Carol told Jamie to call Diana and tell Diana she was having an affair with Tim Alt. At first, Jamie refused, but eventually gave in and made the call. But apparently Diana hung up on her. In a phone conversation after Diana's murder, Jamie asked Carol if she killed Diana. Carol said no, but she told Jamie not to tell anyone about making the phone call to Diana. Jamie went to the police in 1994 about what she knew.

Police wired Jamie's phone and told her to call Carol to get her to confess. But Carol didn't say much when Jamie called her. Jeff Cheek also wore a wire when he spoke with Carol. But again, she didn't say much, apparently because she was aware police suspected her. In 2014, Jeff Cheek put all of his investigative work into a file. and presented it to the Kansas City Police Department. They submitted the findings to the district attorney, but the DA refused to file charges against Carol Coon.

But two years later in October 2016, police finally arrested Carol Coon, who by that time had changed her last name to Heckert. They charged her with the first-degree murder of Sarah DeLeon. Her bond was set at $1 million, but was later reduced to $500,000. The arrest made national and international headlines. Carol was 48 years old at the time of her arrest. She was married and she had two young children.

She was a successful realtor and lived outside of Smithville, Missouri. She was active in the local PTA. Her family and friends were shocked by her arrest. But on the other side of the coin, with Carol's arrest, Sarah's family, along with Diana Altz family felt that they may finally get the justice they were seeking. At the preliminary hearing in April 2017, several people testified. The judge allowed the assistant DA to bring in witnesses not related to the case. These were other girls Carol had arrest.

This was done to show a pattern of obsessive and threatening behavior. One witness was Maggie Lovett, the girl at the American Motel in February 1989. She testified that Carol invited her to a Valentine's Day party at the American motel that Carol's new boyfriend was throwing. Carol had booked a room in a stretched limousine to pick Maggie up in. She testified that Carol got her drunk, and then she heard Carol and Jamie talking about gloves before Jamie bouldered from the room. Maggie testified that she felt as if she had been drugged at the motel.

Another witness was a woman named Aaron Doloshal. She testified that Carol was dating a boy in the middle. high school who dumped her for Aaron. Carol showed up one night at Aaron's house screaming, you blonde bitch, stay away from him. Another time, Aaron said that she found fish guts all over her brand new car. Carol allegedly stalked and harassed Aaron like she did with Sarah and Diana, and it all exploded one night. Aaron attended a party with some girlfriends and Carol was there. The two got into a physical altercation before people at the party had to force them apart. Aaron ended up marrying the boyfriend, who also testified at the hearing.

Sarah Dalyone's best friend Alice testified that a girl resembling Carol had shown up at Sarah's house pretending to be a salesperson. Alice was pretty sure it was Carol Coon. Another man named Sheldon Utes testified. He said that Carol had asked him to lure Sarah out of her home, get her drunk. and then cut off all of her hair. But Sheldon said that he refused to do it. Diana Alt's sister Sharon also took the stand, telling the court about all of the incidents with Carol in the weeks before Diana's murder.

It was then that Carol's one time, very good friend, Jamie Locke, testified. Jamie had some juicy details to share that didn't make Carol look good. She told the court about Carol's scratch on her neck. She talked about how clean her car was. after Sarah's murder, Jamie said that Carol showed up at Matt's house that same day, offering sympathy for his loss. Carol told him that she was there for him. And six months later, she registered at Matt's College, Kansas State. Matt Euland also came to court to testify. The assistant district attorney asked him, quote, were you surprised when Carol showed up at your house a day after the murder?

and Matt replied, kind of. He was then asked, how about when she showed up at your college? He said, yeah. So despite all of these witnesses, their testimony, after preliminary hearing, pretty much all of this evidence was circumstantial. And I get that more. If it is circumstantial, right? You have people saying, this happened, that happened.

It's not physical evidence. It's not DNA. It's not that type of thing, but it's a lot of circumstantial evidence. Yeah, you really start to see a pattern of abuse or stalking or whatever you want to call it, bullying. Yeah, I think you said it earlier that this was the prosecution's strategy, right, to bring a lot of witnesses to show that Carol had a pattern of doing these types. of things, and I don't think there's any doubt that she did. But the big question is, would it be enough to show this pattern that Carol had displayed throughout the years to prove that she committed murder? Carol Heckert's attorney's strategy was to point out inconsistencies and testimony of the

witnesses. He also offered up another suspect in Sarah's murder, a former boyfriend who had been charged with domestic battery. The defense attorney also pointed out that the DA had no physical evidence proving his client killed Sarah DeLeon. DNA tests were inconclusive, and he said to the judge, quote, they have nothing, Your Honor. Okay, maybe motive, but in a first-degree murder case, that's not enough. Judge Aaron Roberts shocked the courtroom when he concluded that a cat fight between Sarah and Carol would have resulted in both girls having numerous scratches. And he also said that he didn't believe that a woman of Carol's size could have dragged Sarah's 115 pound body 40 feet.

Judge Robert said, quote, there's no doubt Carol is guilty of abhorrent acts, harassment, kidnapping, vandalism. There is reasonable suspicion that Carol has. Hecker murdered Sarah de Leon on December 29th, 1989, but it's up to the police to find the hard evidence to prove it. There's no DNA. There's no witnesses. There's no one that overheard threats to kill the victim. In the absence of this type of evidence needed to proceed to trial, I'm bound to dismiss the charges and herewith release the defendant, Carolyn Hecker. One problem with the judge's decision was that

this was not a mere catfight. This was a cold-blooded murder. Sarah had no scratches on her, but Carol had the two-inch scratch, as witnessed by Jamie Locke. Additionally, the night of Sarah's murder was extremely cold, roughly 23 degrees below zero. So the killer easily could have been wearing gloves or heavy clothing that would have limited any injuries that the murderer suffered. But I think to many, Morph, that wasn't the only troubling thing in the judge's statement. He mentioned the dragging of Sarah's body 40 feet and that physically Carol likely couldn't have dragged Sarah that far. But it wasn't really 40 feet. It was more like 14 to 20 feet. And the killer dragged her body downhill, which would have made it easier to prove Roberts wrong. A demonstration using two women

who were the same sizes as Sarah and Carol was recorded in a video. And later up, uploaded to YouTube, it showed that not only was it possible for someone like Carol to drag Sarah 40 feet, she could have dragged her as far as 120 feet. This year, our pal Paul Holes, the investigator who helped nav the Golden State Killer, launched his new oxygen show the DNA of Murder with Paul Holes. In episode three titled Taken in the Night, which aired on October 26th, Paul covered Sarah DeLione's murder. Paul and his sidekick Las Vegas crime scene investigation. Yolanda McClary also proved that it was possible for Carol to drag Sarah's body more than 14 feet. They did this by performing their own demonstration with two females.

Paul and Yolanda also figured something else out. After looking at pictures of Sarah's body, they noticed that there was quite a bit of dirt on Sarah's rear end, but not on her legs. They concluded that there had to have been an accomplice because there was no way. just one person would be able to drag the body without getting dirt on her legs. Paul and Yolanda determined that one person held Sarah by her wrists and the other person held her by her ankles and then carried her to where they dumped her body. But there was a disruption in the dirt, which they believed was from the two people circling around to dump the body on the ground in a very certain way, the way it was found.

So then more if I think you have to ask the question, if Carol did have a hand in this murder, as I believe a lot of people think she did, then who was the accomplice? At the very end of the episode, Paul interviewed Matt Yuland, Sarah's boyfriend. He told Paul that on December 29, 1989, he and Sarah went to the airport to watch the planes. Afterwards, they went back to his house. The next day his mom told him Sarah had been killed. Matt also said that he dated Carol Coon for about six months to a year before Sarah. Carol wanted to get back together, but never talked specifically about Sarah.

Sometime after Sarah's murder, Matt and Carol Coon went out again, but he emphasized it was not a relationship and it ended pretty quickly. He had not heard from Carol in years until 1994 when she called and told him about Diana Alt's murder and that she had. was a suspect. I think it was at that point that Matt thought Carol might have had some involvement in the murder of Sarah. Paul Holes is currently in touch with the chief of the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department. And according to the Justice for Sarah Facebook page, he is meeting with someone from the KCPD soon and that he hopes to bring resolution to this now 30-year-old murder case. more if you and I know Paul fairly well. And, you know, for me, if anybody can do it, Paul Holes can do it.

Yeah, he definitely had some really good insights into this case and the things that he said made made sense to me. Well, that's kind of the thing about Paul, right? Go back to our, you know, very long series on the Golden State Killer. His insight was amazing. Now, obviously, he was very involved in that case, but it's more than, that for me. The guy is just so sharp. He gets it. The way his mind works is amazing. I just, I think he's very intuitive for one thing and he's able to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Investigators have never determined where Sarah Dalyone's murder took place. It remains to be seen if and when Carol Hecker will be charged again with anything related to Sarah Dalyone's murder or with anything related to Diana Alts murder, for that matter. I think it's important to point out that since the grand jury trial resulted in charges being dropped against Carol Hecker and the case being dismissed against her, it might still be possible for her to be charged in the future in relation to Sarah's case. Well, I think it's absolutely possible because she was not acquitted, right? She was not found not guilty by a jury of her peers.

it never went that far. It got kicked out at the, at the grand jury part. So it's not a case of double jeopardy. I think that's what's important to point out. And then we also have Diana Alt's case, which if there's anything that ever comes to light there, as far as evidence, there could be legal proceedings there as well. Sarah's mother, Gail, now lives in Colorado.

Her brother, Matt, has two grown daughters of his own. Rachel, her sister is married and has three children. She still lives in Kansas. Sarah's family will not stop in their fight for justice. Diana Alt's children are now grown. Josh and Katie were raised by Diana's parents and their father, Tim. Josh is 29 years old. Married with two kids.

He has a girl and a boy. Katie, who looks just like her mother, is 26 years old. The same age Diana was when she was killed. She's also married and has a little boy. More, this is a tragic story all the way. around. You have two families that have been forever affected by these senseless murders. There is a woman who has been tied to both of them who has a history of alleged harassment. Like I said before, I think there are many people who believe that Carol had some type of

involvement in either one or both of these cases. But to date, the justice system has not had enough evidence to make anything stick. And that's, that's really frustrating when you see these 30 year old cases where the families are just getting older and having kids of their own. And, you know, you hear from them, hey, our sister never got a chance to meet her niece or her nephews, that kind of thing. And you realize that this is, reaches far beyond the victim who died 30 years ago. This affects their whole family. And again, I don't know.

I don't know if Carol had anything to do. with any of this. But obviously, the police thought she did. The prosecutors at one point thought she did enough to take it to a grand jury. But their evidence was circumstantial and it never made it to try. So, you know, does that change in the future? Does something come up that provides better evidence? Who knows? We'll have to wait and see. Well, one thing is for sure, it's hard to see the pattern over a period of time from multiple people coming forward and not notice that and have that jump out at you. And that's what we have in both of these cases. Yeah, I definitely think there was a lot of circumstantial evidence.

But I think you have that in a lot of cases, right? A lot of circumstantial evidence in these unsolved cases, what oftentimes happens is that's all you. you have and you just don't have that physical evidence that maybe a grand jury is looking for to say, yeah, this should go to trial. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at truecrime diva.com for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you like to show and haven't done so, go out, give us a five-star rating. Keep telling your friends, that word of mouth goes a long way in helping the show grow. If you want to find us on social media,

we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group, which is called Criminology Podcast Discussion in Fans. All right, Morth, that is it for the case of Sarah DeLeon. We also talked about the case of Diana Alt. We'll be back with everybody next week. we have kind of a special episode.

We have some notorious Christmas murders, murders that happen around Christmas time. And then I wanted to let everybody know ahead of time. We're taking the last week of the year off. We're not going to put out an episode. Just going to take some time to spend with family and friends around the holidays. It kind of recharge the battery, should of speak. Yeah. I mean, it's been a busy year, right?

Switching to this format, this every week format. Matt, we need that. We need a week off for sure. And it's a good time to take off. People don't listen to as many podcasts. That last week of the year, it's proven, right? And they shouldn't. They're spending time with family and friends as well. So it'll be good. It'll be good for us to kind of recharge. But like I said, we'll be back next Saturday night with an all new episode of criminology. So for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you then. Take care, everyone.