Criminology - The Anderson Sisters

Episode Date: April 28, 2024

On August 1st, 1974, 11-year-old Lillian Annette Anderson, who went by Annette, and 6-year-old Mylette Anderson, went missing from their Jacksonville, Florida home. The girl's father, Jack Anderson, came home to find his daughters gone. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance of the Anderson sisters. One man, Paul John Knowles, even confessed to abducting and killing both Mylette and Annette. But in the summer of 1974, other young girls disappeared or were murdered. The police tried to figure out if all of the cases were connected. 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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I'm Josh Maykowitz, and I approve this message. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 305 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morph, how you doing, buddy?

I'm doing pretty good. How you doing? I've had a real good week. Tell us about it. Well, the temperature here in Ohio has been like in the 70s, which I know that's nothing for you down in sunny Florida, but, you know, that's nice here in Ohio after the winter. And then I was watching the news and I said it was going to be a high of 35 a couple of days next week. That is so bizarre to go from 70 and it was 80 something one day to 35.

That's one thing I don't miss about living in the Northeast because in New Jersey it was the same way. It'd be super hot. You'd be wearing a T-shirt. And then before you know it, a couple days later, you're breaking out jackets and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm just ready to get to that. warm weather where you can stay outside and man I feel like I've been cooped up too long during during the winter and we had a mild winter so I mean I really can't complain about it but you can always move down to florida could my wife keeps talking about wanting to go south so let's go

ahead and give our patreon shoutouts we had cat cat Eric pelleteer and mason gordon so that's a lot of great new support we really appreciate it thanks everyone for that great support, it really helps us out a lot. And for anyone that would like to help the show, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology podcast. All right, let's jump into this episode. And we have a real head scratcher of a case from Florida, your neck of the Woods Morp. And it's a case that is about to mark its 50th anniversary. And sadly, it's a case that has remained unsolved all this time. And while it's a pretty big case, it has gotten some. attention over the years. It seems like a case that you'd expect a lot more people to be familiar

with. We're talking about the August 1974 disappearance or abduction of Annette and Milette Anderson. 1974, it was 50 years ago, certainly a different time. No internet, no cell phones. If you wanted to watch TV, you basically had three networks, CBS, ABC, and NBC to choose from. If you didn't your news from TV, you likely got it from the morning paper. There was no social media in which big news could travel at the speed of light. And of course, there were no ring door cameras and video surveillance systems everywhere you turn. In short, it was a simpler time in many ways. People were more trusting, and many people didn't lock their doors. The rule for playing outside for many kids was to be home when the streetlights came on, or to stay where you could hear your parents call for

you when it was time for dinner. It wasn't unusual for kids to come home from school, let themselves in with key and fend for themselves do their chores, homework, and then play until their parents got home from work. On top of all that, the laws in 1974 were a lot different than they are today, as you'll hear during this episode, this different time or innocent time, whatever you want to call it, was fun and full of freedom. People are nostalgic for those long summer days. It was because of all of the conditions we just mentioned that it was all.

also a pretty dangerous time because many predators would seek out opportunities for victims and would strike when the moment was right. It's only in hindsight that we can look back and see how many sexual predators and murderers were in an area at one time. And at the same time, people weren't locking their doors and children went a little more unsupervised until it was dark. In the case of the Anderson sisters, as far as we know it, they weren't. even outside their home. Whatever happened to them seems to have happened while they were inside, waiting for their dad to get home for the evening, as usual, and there were other similar cases. Other young girls would vanish from the Jacksonville area in the summer of 1974,

and some were found murdered. The question is, are the cases connected? On August 1, 1974, 11-year-old Lillian Annette Anderson, who went by Annette, and her six-year-old sister, Milette, were at their Darcy Drive home in the Oceanways section of Jacksonville, Florida, with their older sister, 13-year-old Donna and their mother, Elizabeth. The girl's father, Jack Anderson, a commercial fisherman, was at work. It was a mostly normal hot Florida summer day for the family, other than Elizabeth's sister being ill. Donna and Elizabeth decided to visit her and see if there was anything they could do for her. They left at around 6 p.m., leaving 11-year-old Annette in charge of 6-year-old Milet. The family dog would keep them company.

Jack Anderson would normally get home around 7 p.m. So the girls would only be alone for about an hour. But unfortunately on this evening, Jack was delayed at work due to some kind of problem with the motor on his boat. He called home at 7 p.m. To inform his family that he would be home late, but only Annette and Milet were home. The girls answered his call and seemed fine. but Jack noticed that their dog was barking a lot. Annette told him that the dog was just barking at birds that were in the front yard

and that everything was okay. After they hung up, Jack couldn't get the thought of the barking dog out of his head. For some reason, it just felt strange. At 7.20 p.m., just 20 minutes after he had last spoken to his children, he called home again. No one answered. This worried Jack and he immediately headed home. So more if we've talked about, you know, 1974, you can talk about the 70s in general.

It was a different time. There's no doubt about that. I often wonder if as we get older, is it natural for us to become nostalgic about the past? You know, do we sometimes romanticize different decades in the past as maybe being better than what they really were? I don't know. It's just a question that I have.

Or was it because we were younger and we just thought everything was okay? We didn't know all of the bad things that were happening. Yeah, I think you can probably look back and find good things and bad things in any time frame. Or look, you know, at current times, there's a lot of things that people back in the 70s would have loved about today. But there'd also be some things they probably wouldn't be. happy about. Yeah, I think it's just natural. But the other thing that, you know, I want to talk about is this sort of intuition on Jack's part. You know, we've talked about mother's intuition. I mean, everybody can have it. It just seems like mothers have it maybe a little bit more. But obviously,

he had something going on in his mind that was leading him to believe something wasn't right. Right. And part of that goes back to the time frame that we're in. You mentioned it. No cell phones, no text. It was harder to get a hold of people. It was harder to track people. Yeah, and he was probably thinking that when he got home, he'd find his daughters there okay and that he had just overreacted, but, you know, probably better to be safe than sorry. And when Jack made it home, he knew he was right to be concerned. Both of the girls were gone. Donna and Elizabeth hadn't made it back home yet either. There were three very suspicious things other than the girls being missing that jumped out to Jack. First, the door had been left unlocked. Second, the doll that Milette never went anywhere without, she carried it almost literally everywhere, was missing. And third, probably more concerning, was that the family dog had been put into Jack and Elizabeth's room, and the door was closed. While Milet may have taken her doll with her if she and Annette decided to walk somewhere, maybe to have friends or

a store, there was no real reason, no explanation for the dog having to be put in the other room. The dog was normally allowed to go everywhere in the house. We should point out, this dog was a smaller one, probably one that might make a lot of noise, but not a big dog that looked like an attack dog that might scare someone off. But Donna Anderson, as an adult, told First Coast news that the dog may have been small, but was protective of her little sisters. She said, whoever went in that house would have to put the little dog up in mommy and daddy's bedroom because he would eat them up so badly.

We should point out that the timeline of the phone calls to the home and who made those calls varies slightly. Depending on which news articles and online sources you read, some sources say that it was the girl's mom Elizabeth who called home at seven and the girl's aunt who called back at 720 and didn't get an answer. and that the alarm was raised a bit later once Jack got home and the girls weren't there. But the majority of the sources say that it was Jack Anderson, who called home both times. So that's why we're going with that.

And again, when you're talking about 50-year-old cases, you often see various details and timelines for these cases depending on the sources. Police were called to the Anderson home so that their parents could report that Annette and Milet were missing. And they responded quickly. To their credit, police seemed to immediately treat the case as if the girls were in danger, and not that they had run away from home, which was a very common theme when young people vanished at that time. Once police got there, they surveyed the home and found no sign of a break-in or forced entry. Police went out to local residents to see if anyone had witnessed anything. I think it's important for listeners to describe this area where they lived a little bit more in detail. If you look at Google Maps Street view of the Anderson's property at 12-230

Darcy Drive, it seems to be a very isolated spot on the road. The road was a dead-end road, and it's not a situation where you'd have neighboring homes right on top of you on every side. In fact, the entire road seems very isolated running alongside woods, and the Anderson property backed up to an old cemetery, so witnesses wouldn't be plentiful. But police managed to find at least one neighbor who did see something, a white car that was parked in the Anderson driveway around the time the girls went missing. Unfortunately, there was next to nothing else to go on. Police needed to spring into action quickly to find the girls because time was of the essence as both girls had medical issues. Annette needed thyroid tablets daily and Milet had asthma and what newspapers referred to as a weak heart.

She required medication anytime she got too tired or too excited. The medications were found in the Anderson home. The search for Annette and Milet was quite large. Authorities and volunteers searched over 100 square miles, but didn't turn up as much as a single clue about where they could be or what could have happened to them. There were possible sightings of the girls, but nothing conclusive. One witness claimed to see the two at a school,

picking up bottles from the playground. Both sisters attended Lewis S. Sheffield Elementary School, but there is no mention of which school they were supposedly seen at. Other witnesses said they saw the girls in a pickup truck riding around town. The best lead the police had was that of a white car, but not really even a make or model of it or a description of its driver. And I do want to go back to, you know, the police taking this report very seriously. I get it. You and I have talked to a lot about, you know, police showing up, about someone missing and and kind of giving that answer that we've heard throughout the years, which is, okay, don't

worry, they'll come back. But, you know, here we're talking about an 11 year old and a 6 year old. in a six-year-old. So I'm glad that the police took that approach because I think at that age, you have to. And certainly today, police would, but even back then, I'm glad they did. And I think the police had their work cut out for them right from the beginning because they didn't have anything to really go on. There was, again, no sign of a break in, just this mystery white car that one person saw, but they couldn't even give any details about it. And, you know, this is a city, Jacksonville at the time, had a population of around 600,000 people.

So you think with that kind of population, it's a, there's going to be plenty of witnesses and plenty of leads that they can follow. But again, this was a very isolated section where they lived in on a dead end road surrounded by woods. So unfortunately, there just wasn't a lot of potential clues or witnesses to help facilitate the beginning of this investigation. But it does sound like things progressed rather quickly. I mean, you know, the, the police got into the search, volunteers did as well. And when he talk about searching over our 100 square miles, okay, that's no small feat. One man named Paul John Knowles confessed to abducting and killing both Milet and Annette. He was a confirmed bad guy with a serious criminal history. He seems like, someone who might have been capable of abducting two little girls. But as we'll get into, his confession may have been of the Henry Lee Lucas variety, and simply not true. Talking about the confession, Sergeant Dan Jansen of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office told First Coast News, I can't say that he's responsible for this. In fact, Jansen went on to say, I am leaning toward

he is not responsible. While the letter that he wrote confessing to the crimes hasn't been released, there were apparently a number of issues with some of the things he claimed happened during the abduction. And because of those mistakes in his confession, Sergeant Jansen said, it is a false confession just based on some of the facts that we know of this case. Knowles claimed that he had killed both girls and left their bodies at the end of Commonwealth Avenue. Even today, that area is heavily wooded with little around it. Authorities reportedly scoured the area around Commonwealth and found nothing. So what do we know about this Noel's character?

How bad was he? Paul John Knowles is commonly referred to as the Casanova killer. He was given that moniker supposedly because of his good looks. News 4 Jacksonville detailed how one journalist described Knowles as a dreamboat and a cross between Robert Redford and Ryan O'Neill. News 4 Jacksonville reported that while serving time in prison, he ended up writing letters. back and forth. With a divorcee from California, he proposed to her and she said yes. After his release, he flew to California and she was frightened by what she called the aura of fear that surrounded him. So she called off the engagement. So it seems like maybe there are some

Ted Bundy vibes here, someone who is disarming because of his looks and charms, but can be absolutely deadly. Knowles would later claim that he was so enraged by the rejection of his fiancé that night that he killed three people, just strangers he happened to come across in the Bay Area. No murders in this area have ever been linked to him. However, his serial killing spree in the Jacksonville area dates back to the summer of 1974, which would make him active in the area during the time that Annette and Milet disappeared. It was that summer that he escaped from jail by picking the lock of his cell. He was in jail because he had been arrested for stabbing a bartender. Knowles is believed to be responsible for multiple deaths but didn't have a chance to face trial.

The night he escaped from jail, July 26th, 65-year-old Alice Curtis, a retired teacher, was killed during a robbery after being bound and gagged. Her home had been ransacked. with money and valuable stolen. Her killer also took her car. At least one source, author Harold Schechter, claims that while Knowles was driving Alice Curtis's car, he saw Milet and Annette, who he knew. In the book Seral Killer Files,

Schecter calls them Little Girls who knew his family. His theory was that because of the girls knew Knowles and saw him in a stolen car, that he decided to kill them and eliminate them as witnesses. Knowles supposedly strangled them and dumped their bodies in a swamp. Alice Curtis's car was found in Lima, Ohio in September 1974, which is not that far from where I live.

Knowles abandoned it and stole William Bates' car after he murdered him. Other crimes connected to Knowles were that of 49-year-old Marjorie Howell, who was strangled with her stockings in her Atlantic Beach apartment. Her TV was stolen. In August 1974, 24-year-old. Kathy Sue Pierce was found strangled with a telephone cord in her home in Moussela, Georgia. Her three-year-old son, Joel, was present during the attack but left physically unharmed. In November of 1974, Knowles met Carswell Carr in Millageville, Georgia. After they went back to her

home, he stabbed her at least 27 times with a pair of household scissors. He also strangled her 15-year-old daughter. According to News 4 Jacksonville, Detective James Josie, now retired, recalled the awful car crime scene saying, that was the bloodiest crime scene I have ever seen. That same month, November 1974, two people, Edward Hilliard and Debbie Griffin, were killed while hitchhiking. You're making Georgia. Griffin is still technically missing. Paul John Knowles was linked to them as well. On November 16th, Knowles was pulled over by a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper, Charles Eugene Campbell. Knowles was somehow able to overpower him and take him hostage.

Using the trooper's patrol car, Noles pulled over an unsuspecting motorist and stole his car. Both the innocent driver and Trooper Campbell were found handcuffed to each other and then to a tree. They had been shot and killed. Noles was leaving a trail of victims by this point. And I don't think it can be overstated more. this guy Knowles was an absolute terror. He seemed to have no sense of good decency. He was killing people all over the place.

He was a seriously bad guy. Yeah, he attacked hitchhikers. He attacked people in their homes. He took people hostage, you know, in person to the police officer to pull people over. So there seemed like there was no shortage of, outlandish crimes that this guy might commit. As we were going through that, the thing that jumped out at me is, it's like the only

thing he didn't do was kill Kathy Sue Pierce's three-year-old son, Joel. So why is that? Was it because, you know, the child was so young, he couldn't possibly be a threat to Knowles or did he actually have some kind of line that he wasn't. willing to cross. And I think that's a question that I have of many killers. Because I often think for many of these individuals, there is no line that they're, you know, unwilling to cross. It's all about what can I get or what do I need to do to both get what I want and also to not get caught. I don't want to give this guy any. I don't want to give this guy

any redeeming qualities, but it's a possibility that there is a line that he was unwilling to cross. Doesn't change the fact that he was a very horrible individual. Yeah, it seems hard to really differentiate some of these killers from each other, but we know, like, in prison, for example, people who hurt children are looked down upon by a great deal of the inmates there that are in prison themselves for doing terrible things to people, but even they have drawn the line at kids. So it could be very possible that Knowles was just on that side where he didn't want to hurt young children. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit dread. It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security

and compliance, brings evidence into one place and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clear visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it calm clients get it join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust go to va nta.com in the suburbs of dc a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered oh one which 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 shut up. bed light on everything from heist to whodontas, where you're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. On November 18th, Knowles drove through a roadblock and crashed into a tree. He got out of the car and ran. Officers and canines followed him. He was caught by a hunter, armed with a shotgun, who performed a citizen's arrest. And police brought him in to be processed for all the

carnage he had caused. Paul John Knowles seemed to love the attention. Being known as a serial killer gave him. According to News 4 Jacksonville, he once told his defense attorney Sheldon Yavitz, brace yourself, I'm a mass murderer. Nolz sent audio tapes of confessions of his crime spree, along with specific details to Yavitz, who for a very long time refused to turn them over to police. after he and his wife were arrested for contempt of court, he finally gave the tapes to authorities. Although the tapes themselves reportedly disappeared from evidence, transcripts and summaries remained that laid out the terrible things Knowles had done. In 2011, details provided by Knowles were used to help identify the remains of 13-year-old

Imogene Sanders, who had gone missing in August 1974. According to a Georgia GBI report, her body was found in a wooded area off Georgia Highway 96 in Peach County. That statement from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation also included a summary of one of Null's confessions. It read, sometime in August 1974, Nulls picked up a white female hitchhiker named Alma, who represented her age as 13 or 14, but who appeared to be in her late teens. He carried this girl to a wooded area some distance from Macon, possibly west, He raped her and then strangled her and left her body in the woods between trees. Approximately two weeks later, he returned to the location and found that the body had been moved

eight to ten feet away, apparently by animals. The body was greatly deteriorated and barely identifiable as a human being. Knowles found her jawbone and buried it in the area. Investigators were able to use the details from this confession and the location to locate IMA's body and compare the DNA from her remains to the DNA of her mother and sister. Not only did the important detail of IMA's jawbone never being recovered match up with Null's claim of burying it in a different location, the DNA came back as a match. Paul John Noles killed Ima Gene Sanders.

Overall, Noles confessed to 16 murders in seven different states, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Nevada, Texas, Virginia, and Connecticut. According to News 4 Jacksonville, British journalist Sandy Fox met Knowles at an Atlanta Hotel Bar. They had an intimate relationship for days before they went their separate ways. After learning about the gruesome murders he had committed, Fox felt she nearly became his 19th victim. Knowles claimed 35 victims, but has only been linked to 20 murders in 12 states. So we mentioned this guy, Knowles, was no doubt about it, a bad guy, a very dangerous guy who was capable of killing. But was he the person who abducted Annette and Milet Anderson? Police wanted to find out.

Unfortunately, authorities didn't have a chance to question Knowles about the Anderson's sister's case. In December 1974, he was transported from the Douglas County Jail to a claimed evidence disposal site of his. According to Knowles, he had dumped a gun used in a murder in a specific location. Officers from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation transported him to the area in an attempt to recover the weapon. During this outing, Knowles picked his handcuff lock and got free. He tried to overpower an officer and grabbed their firearm. GBI agent Ron Angel shot Knowles three times in the chest with his revolver. This all happened while the car they were in was in motion on Interstate 20 in Henry County, Georgia.

according to the news for Jacksonville. The car went off the road and crashed. The officers weren't hurt, but 28-year-old Paul John Nulls died from the bullet wounds without police being able to see if he had any information about Annette and Milet Anderson. So no doubt about it, Morph, Knowles was a prolific killer. He was a nasty guy, a bad guy.

And I don't know that anybody, you know, is weeping about his death. But the way it happened, I think was a little tough for the investigation into the Anderson sisters. Obviously, they would have really liked to sit down with him and tried to get more information about his confession regarding the Anderson sisters. But what are you going to do when this guy, you know, picks his handcuff locks, tries to grab an officer's weapon? I don't know that they had any choice, but to shoot and kill this guy. And I think of the end of the day, they're left with a really bad guy and a confession linking himself to Annette and Milette Anderson. And they could have done what we saw in the Henry Lou Lucas case, just said, yeah, let's take him in his word and close his case out. But that wouldn't be real justice without conclusively linking him to the case and just taking his word for it.

Despite Noel's confession that he had killed the girls, Jack Anderson always held out the hope that his daughters were still out there somewhere alive. Even Sergeant Jansen noticed his dedication. He told First Coast News Jack's entire life. He stayed in the same house. He kept the same phone number. He made his wife promise that if he died before she did, that she would never change anything in the hopes that,

these girls would come home. Jack did end up passing away before Elizabeth did. He died in 1991. He was buried right next to a marker placed for his daughters with the dates of their birth. Always holding out hope. There was no death date after the dash on the marker for either girl. In 1998, Elizabeth Anderson disclosed that she had kept their promise to Jack. She still lived in the same house and hadn't changed their phone number because as Jacksonville.com described, Jack always thought the babies were coming home. Elizabeth Anderson passed away at the age of 75 in 2017 without ever knowing the fate of her daughters. So the Andersons never got answers to their questions, those being what happened to our daughters

and who is responsible. Many people, including some authorities, linked the disappearance of my latin and net to the disappearances and or murders of other young girls in the Jacksonville area at the same time, the summer of 74. And if they're correct, and there is a connection, the Anderson sisters were not the first victims in the series. On July 21, 1974, less than two weeks before the Anderson sisters vanished, nine-year-old Jean-Marie Shone, known to everyone as Jeannie, left her grandparents home on West 19th Street in Jacksonville,

and went to Hannah's food store at 17th Street, two blocks away. She needed to buy a pack of cigarettes for her uncle. As we've said multiple times already, 1974 was a very different time than 2004. Back in the day, it wasn't unusual for kids to be sent by their parents to the store to buy a pack of smokes, sometimes with a note. Jeannie made it to the store and bought the pack of cigarettes for her uncle, but for some reason she ended up leaving them at the store.

She must have realized she forgot them because a few minutes after she left, she made it back to the store again to pick them up. The clerk verified this with police. And Jeannie even mentioned to the clerk that she was going to the hangout, a local spot with arcade games. She planned to use change from the cigarette purchase to play pinball there. And to be honest with you, Morve, it does kind of blow my mind that a 90s, year old could walk into a store and buy a pack of cigarette. I get it. Maybe they had a note, you know, from their uncle or whoever, but, you know, I think that right there shows you just exactly how different the times were. Yeah, nowadays, you see the signs plastered all over.

When you go into the store right where the cigarettes are, you know, if you look like you're 24, what is it, 20, mid 20s or something like that or less. under 30 they're supposed to ask you for ID. So definitely a far cry from that. When I was growing up in the 80s, I didn't smoke at all, but I had a couple friends, you know, who at 13 did smoke. And they would forge letters from their mom saying they were buying cigarettes for their mom and just buy smokes. No problem.

Yeah, much different, uh, times for sure. And I think the other thing that you see here as in, and in many other cases during this time period was just how common it was for pretty young children to be walking to stores by themselves. I don't know how many parents would let their nine-year-old walk to the store today in 2024. I'm sure it just happens much less frequently. Yeah, I always think about that. I wonder how frequent it is, but I also wonder if I'm just overprotective because of all the stuff we cover and I don't let my kids out of the house that much on their own. But I remember back when I was

a kid at that age in the 70s going down to the corner store and picking up a soda or gum or something like that. And I usually wouldn't walk alone. I'd usually have someone with me, but we'd go almost every single day, we'd walk down to the corner store. It was a block away. And one thing twice about it. Well, I'm sure you and I are probably overprotective. You know, it kind of comes with the territory, right? When you're researching this stuff week in, week out, it does get to you. But I don't know if that's a bad thing. After leaving Hannah's food store, Jeannie did make it to the hangout, but they were already closed. The owner saw her and turned her away because the floors had just been mopped. Jeannie ended up at a laundromat near the Springfield Wind Dixie. It was

at that point that Janie disappeared, but she didn't just vanish. She was taken. Her friend saw a man riding a blue bicycle come up to them, but they didn't recognize him. He was a white man with light hair done up. According to the witnesses, he had an Elvis Presley sort of hairstyle. The man grabbed Jeannie and dragged her into the bathroom. A short time later, the man and Jeannie exited the bathroom. Jeannie was visibly crying, but she wasn't trying to fight the man off or run from him. He took Jeannie to his bike and made her get on and rode off with her. Jeannie's friends chased after them on foot but couldn't catch them. So these witnesses said that this guy had an Elvis Presley sort of hairstyle. Now, my question is,

is this 1955-56 Elvis or is this 1970s Elvis? Because those were two very different hairstyles for Elvis Presley. I think kids at that time that were describing this guy would have thought of the Elvis from that current time, the one in the white outfit with the gems on them and his big sideburns. And then you not only have the description of the guy, but you have a blue bike. So it seems like a very specific description of a Elvis looking guy on a blue bike. How many people in that area could have fit that description?

it seems like somebody would have recognized this guy. Yeah, although how many people had kind of big sideburns in the 70s? Probably a lot. Probably a lot. But the one thing that jumped out at me is, you know, we've done a lot of cases where people have been abducted. How many can you remember where someone was abducted by a man riding a bicycle? and for me, not many. Yeah, it definitely seems like they'd have a hard time controlling them and then you have to worry

about them screaming or trying to get away. Definitely seems like they're taking a chance abducting a little girl on a bicycle. Yeah, much easier to get away with something like that in a car, in a vehicle. No one believed that Jeannie ran away voluntarily. Again, she was only nine years old. Sergeant Dan Jansen told News 4 Jacksonville, she wasn't a troubled child. Jeannie's mother, Pam Shone, placed multiple classified ads in the local paper pleading with the man

who took her child. One read, this is a plea from Jeannie's mother to whomever has my daughter. I know you have her because you also wanted a little girl to love. But I love her desperately. Need her return to me, please. Her pleas didn't work. If Jeannie's abductor Redd, her mom's pleas. He ignored them because Pam never saw her daughter again. But I do think that this was a

very smart tactic. And we have seen this in other cases where there is an attempt made by the family to really humanize their loved ones to an adductor, a captor. That's a smart thing to do. You want this person to see the person who they've taken, not as an object or a trophy or, you know, something like that. You want to see them as a real human with people who love them because there's a greater chance with some that they may feel bad about what they've done. Now, not everyone because we know some of these individuals don't feel bad about anything that they do or have done. And I think even if they do feel bad by turning her back in, there's a chance that they're going to be caught and sent away to prison. So a lot of them are probably thinking about self-preservation as well. But again, not a bad tactic.

And if you're a parent of a missing child, you're probably going to try anything to try and get them back. On September 24, 1974, two months after Jeannie vanished and almost two months after the Anderson sisters, 12-year-old Virginia home walked up to the local store on Jacksonville's south side to buy some soap. 45 minutes later, her father began to worry about her and tried to retrace her steps. He learned that Virginia had made it to the store and had purchased the soap, but she hadn't made it home. Some people who had been in the area at the time remembered seeing a small red car, but didn't see anything specific relating to Virginia. Three days after Virginia didn't come home.

A red VW bug was seen pulled over to the side of New King's Road, near the county line for Nassau and DeVal. A good Samaritan couple tried to see if the driver needed any assistance, but found a young girl in the back seat. She had her knees on the floor of the car and her hands on the seat. It looked to the couple as though she was trying to sit up. The girl who matched Virginia's description looked very scared and her pupils were dilated. The driver of the red VW bug told the girl to get down and he took off when the couple saw her.

In his haste, he dropped a bag. Authorities have always hoped to get evidence from that bag. During the original investigation, the hope was that the suspect left his finger. on it. But over time, investigators hope to get the DNA of the person who dropped the bag. Fresh air, longer days, a chance to reset. This season let therapy be part of your spring cleaning. Clearing mental clutter, shaking off stuckness, and building something better. Grow therapy helps you get there. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 15th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent

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slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. I can trace it back to him. It's unclear though. What clues the bag has given investigators to work with, if any. One of Virginia Helms friends, a friend known only as Marianne, was approached by a man driving a red car. The day before Virginia disappeared, the man threatened Marianne and told her to get in the car or he would kill her. Instead, she ran. The hunt for a man in that area with a red car fizzled out. On October 12, 1974, 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Green was walking home from a store in Jacksonville. That day, she missed the bus to school, so she ended up staying at home with her mom. She had left her house around 10.30 a.m. to buy some soda. She made her purchase and talked to the store's

butcher, telling him she'd be back in later. She left the store through her side of the store. She left the store through her side door. It was just five blocks away, but she never made it home. Her case was quickly considered by some to be connected to the other Jacksonville cases. A $5,000 reward was offered by the city council for information leading to a resolution in the cases, but no one came forward with any information. On October 24, 1975, two and a half months after she vanished, the body of Virginia Helm was found in the woods near Beachwood and Beach Boulevard. A couple was out looking for pine cones to make Christmas ornaments when they found her grave site. She had been shot in the head with a 22 caliber bullet and then buried in a shallow grave.

She was not wearing any pants or shoes, only a shirt. Authority searched the area thoroughly in case any of the other missing girls had been left nearby, but nothing was found. In the summer of 1977, almost three years after she went missing, the body of Rebecca Anne Green was found near the mouth of the St. John's River off of Fort Georgia Island. It's believed she was strangled to death. A detective caught off a portion of her hair to preserve it for testing. In recent years, authorities hope touched DNA from the person who placed her body in the water can be recovered from the hair one day. In 1978, Lester Parmanner was one of the lead detectives handling all these cases.

he was determined to find the person or person is responsible for these abductions and murders, and he had a personal reason. His 14-year-old daughter had reportedly been approached by a man in a red VW bug as she was walking home from school. Some reports vary about this incident, but in this version, the man told her he was a firefighter. Luckily, it was raining that day, so her brother had been sent to pick her up. The two were able to remember the license plate number of this red VW, and this plate number according to some reports, would help track. down an infamous serial killer. That killer, Ted Bundy. According to Jacksonville.com,

Ted Bundy murdered Kimberly Leach in Lake City the next day, then was arrested, tried, and convicted, partly because of the help of Mr. Parmenter and his children. Detective Parmenter told Jacksonville.com, there's no doubt in my mind, learning what we found out later that my daughter would have been one of his victims. And we mentioned it, right? This story about Parmenter's daughter has various versions. One says that she ran to safety without a brother picking her up. And in another version of them getting the license plate number, it belonged to a suspicious van, parked nearby, not a red VW. We reached out to a friend of the show and Ted Bundy expert E.J. Hammondy, who wrote much of our Ted Bundy season, season three, to get some clarification. And she's

said that Ted Bundy never drove a red VW. So while this story seems pretty fascinating, it doesn't seem like it's fully accurate. And we've talked about this before more. I mean, how many cases have we covered where you have people who have gone missing or who have been murdered and the cases are unsolved? And what you see is that these infamous serial killers get drawn in. Now, does it make some sense? I mean, Ted Bundy was known to have been not that far away, committed crimes not that far away. So, you know, could he have driven to Jacksonville? Yeah, sure. But it's also pretty scary to think that, okay, you've got Ted Bundy operating around this area, but you potentially also have a, enough.

other very dangerous serial killer in the area as well. That's a scary thought. Yeah. And I think anytime you have Ted Bundy in the picture even adjacent to the area, people are going to naturally reel him into the conversation. But as we see in some of these news reports, depending on what version you see, the story just sort of changes. It's almost like I heard it from a person who heard it from another person and some of the details get bent.

and you don't get a fully accurate story here. So we've talked about a couple serial killers so far, the Casanova killer, Knowles, and Ted Bundy. Are there any other serial killers that have been thrown out there in any of these cases? Or is there any evidence that any of the cases we talked about may be connected to each other at all? One serial killer, Gerard John Schaefer, was active in the Jacksonville area at the time. Though he normally seemed to like to prey on two adult women at a time, he did prefer wooded areas, and at least one of his victims was shot with a 22-calibular bullet,

just like Virginia had been. Schaefer was a Martin County Florida sheriff's deputy, so you can imagine how a guy like Schaefer, a sheriff's deputy, could disarm potential victims, especially children if he had on a policeman's uniform or showed them a badge. Schaefer was caught after two of his victims escaped when he left to respond to an urgent call for service. he left the two victims bound and balancing on exposed tree roots, which were the only things keeping them from hanging from the nooses tied around their necks. But just like with Bundy and Knowles,

there's nothing physical evidence-wise that connects Schaefer to any of these crimes as far as we know. But the one thing you would have to say is that all of these individuals, obviously were very bad people. They did horrible things. Like you said, Morf, it's pretty common to look at, at these people and at least ask the question, could they be responsible for some of these unsolved cases? I think you have to do it. Again, it just scares me that there's the potential to have so many people out targeting, looking for victims, killing multiple people in and around the

same area at the same time. Yeah. And if this guy that actually was doing, the murders or some of the murders wasn't one of these high profile serial killers. He was able to sort of blend in with them and be overshadowed by them and maybe that helped him go free. And I do think Schaefer is scary because he was a sheriff's deputy. You think about the 70s, there was probably a lot more respect for police officers, certainly than there is today. You know, we put so much trust in these individuals.

They have a lot of power. So when you have someone who's intent on doing bad things, that power really gives them greater opportunity. You know, kids were taught to trust police officers. So if you have a bad one out there, they could misuse that trust very easily. Yeah, I think many times kids are taught, okay, if anything happened, you search out a person in a uniform, you know, and so if, for example, someone knocked on the Anderson sister's door that day, they may have known not to answer the door for strangers, but if they looked out and saw a police officer with a badge, maybe they would have let their guard down. So it's safe. We can open the door. This is a policeman. Or one of the other guys that we talked about, Ted Bundy, for example, he was some.

someone that would often fake injuries and have cast on his arm until they'd get people to let down their guard. And maybe to a child, they would let down their guard trying to help someone that they thought was in need of help. So I think it was clear that a lot of these predators use whatever tools they had at their disposal to, to fool people, especially children. And is one of the common denominators with these types of predators. They were so manipulative.

They were able to manipulate their victims often into thinking they were harmless or, you know, like you said, to let their guard down. There is also a key difference between the Anderson sisters and the other cases. Mylett and Annette were in their own home. The other abducted girls were all out in public. Is it possible that the person that abducted Annette and Milet Anderson was someone close to them? Remember, we talked about it. There was no sign of a break-in. So did they recognize their abductor and opened the door to them? Also, they were only supposed to be alone during about a one-hour window. So it seems like someone had to be either stalking them and pounced on the opportunity

to strike when the girls were left alone or maybe had some communication with the family. and knew the girls would be alone, or did the girls walk out of their home willingly and meet whatever fate befell them? Unfortunately, the clues in Milet and Annette's disappearance, all point in multiple directions, just as the clues in many unsolved cases do. In 2018, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office,

cold case unit, began looking into these cases with fresh eyes. There's been no movement and no new lead since then, unless it's been kept under wraps. Annette Lillian Anderson, Milette Josephine Anderson, and Jeannie Shone are still missing. The murders of Rebecca Green and Virginia Helm are still unsolved. If you have any information on any of these cases,

you can call 1-800-the-Lost, or call the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office at 904-630-0-5-0-0-0-0. So as we wrap this one up more, you know, we did say it right from the very beginning. It's a head scratcher of a case. I think, you know, mainly due to the fact that there's just so little information, there were essentially no clues for investigators to work on. Now, part of that is because of, I think, the secluded nature of the Anderson home,

the potential for, you know, a witness to see, you know, maybe what happened to these girls was pretty low. But I can't help, but go back to, you know, some of these really bad individuals that we talked about, you know, is it possible that one of these guys could be responsible for whatever happened to Annette and Milet? Yeah, it's possible. You know, obviously, when you have a really bad person who you know has committed crimes against young women, children, you have to kind of put them in the mix, especially if it is known that they were operating in and around the area at that time, which some of these individuals were. Again, it just scares me that so many bad guys were doing these bad things in the same area at the same time.

Unfortunately, there just seems to be no conclusive evidence that points in any one direction. Yeah, and I wonder if some of these bad guys that we mentioned, if they're sort of red herrings and the person that actually committed these crimes, the person or people, you know, somehow slid under the radar. And we talked a little bit about it. To have five young girls all vanish from Jacksonville in the summer of 1974, two of them later found dead, it does seem like there's a good likelihood that a couple of those cases at least, could be connected and that the same perpetrator may have done it, but I go back to the key differences. In the Anderson case, they're the only ones that were home and didn't go missing while they were out in public. So that's a key difference to me. And it really jumps out. And I don't know if that, again, maybe that means that whoever abducted them, knew them, knew their routine, knew their

property, or maybe someone saw their mom leave that day to go visit her sick sister and, and thought they could make an easy burglary and found the girls there and decided to abduct them for whatever reason. So I think it's easy to go down the rabbit hole of could the girls have been abducted by one of these predators, but it could just be some random person that happened to go to the house on a whim and found these two girls there and decided to take them. Yeah, well, that's the thing with these unsolved cases. I mean, you can go down a number of different avenues.

because we don't know exactly what happened. I think in the majority of these cases, you know, after 50 years, a lot of witnesses have obviously died off, potential suspects have died off. So at this point, it might take DNA, genealogy, something along those lines to solve one or more of these cases. The girls that recovered their bodies,

maybe there was some kind of DNA evidence that will one day lead to results. In the Anderson sisters case, their bodies have never been recovered. So unless there was something left at the crime scene that the police collected into evidence, we don't know if DNA will ever help in their case. Yeah, that's one thing that I often think about, especially when we do unsolved cases, is that this new technology is amazing. And you and I have talked about it at length.

But to be able to utilize it, you do need some evidence. You do need to have collected something. And in some cases, we know that the police did recover something. But in others, there's no mention of it. So they either don't have anything or they just never have disclosed the fact that they recovered something. And without that, it's going to be nearly impossible to take advantage of this new technology. Yeah, and we say new technology, too, when I catch myself saying it too, but it's hard to believe it's been coming up on six years since the Golden State Killer was captured using the same technology.

So it's really come a long way. It's got a lot of cases solved and it's really a great thing. I hope that continues. But in some of these cases, even if they've done DNA work in the past with evidence, if it was done five years ago, 10 years ago, they might not have been able to get results, but they need to reevaluate and see if new technology can do more with that DNA now. Maybe we can solve some of these older cases. Well, the one thing I will say is that I feel like as it pertains to these unsolved cases,

and especially some of the older ones, there's more hope than ever these days, given what we know is out there, what is available. Yeah, every week it seems like we see multiple cases in the news that are solved. Some of them are 34 years old. So maybe there's hope for a case like this one from 1974. Yeah.

And some of those cases, I'm sure people thought would never be solved because of the length of time and all of that. So it is amazing. But that's it for our episode on the Anderson sisters. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review. Also, keep telling your friends about the criminology podcast. Word of mouth really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on X with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to

Facebook.com slash criminology podcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast, discussion, and fans. So that's it for another episode of criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all. all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.