Criminology - The I-70 Killer

Episode Date: November 2, 2019

In the spring of 1992, a string of murders occurred in the Midwest. All of these murders occurred inside small businesses located near Interstate 70. All were shootings and the killer left no evidence behind. The killer targeted women alone in smaller types of stores but one man was killed during the series. The media dubbed this murderer The I-70 Killer. And then, all of a sudden, the killings stopped. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the murders of the I-70 Killer. Police have had suspects over the years but no one to date has been brought to justice for these murders. Similar murders have occurred along interstates in other parts of the country. Could it be that the killer changed locations but continued to kill? Or was this killer stopped in some other way? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 85 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you today? I'm doing great. How are you doing?

I'm doing really well, man. I am sitting here drinking my death wish coffee. Have you ever heard of death wish coffee? Now, that's a new one to me. So a fan sent it in the mail. And because I talk about coffee on true crime all the time a lot. So somebody sent it in the mail. It's got this big warning on the back.

Caffeine warning. And let's not forget, the name is Death Wish Coffee. But this stuff, I'm telling you, man, two or three cups and I drink a lot of coffee. But for me, two or three cups and I am laser focused. everything is crystal clear for a period of time. Now, four or five o'clock rolls around, I start to get a little drowsy, but that's probably just a big crash. I drank three or four cups a day myself,

but I've never tried anything like Death Wish, so that sounds pretty hardcore. Yeah, I believe it is. I believe it is. But, you know, whatever it takes to get things rolling, right? We got to keep the gears rolling. that is very important. So more if you and I both receive inquiries about our older episodes of criminology, you know, we always tell people they're out there. They're out there on

Stitcher premium. And we've had a lot of people that, you know, have gone and listened to some of the older episodes, especially, you know, people that have found the podcast recently, even some of the folks that have been with us a long time, they just wanted to go relisten. You know, case and point, probably especially the big season we did on the Golden State Killer, right? A lot of people want to go back and either listen to that for the first time because they didn't get a chance to or they want to re-listen to it. You know, it was a very good season. All of our episodes older than six months are always available on Stitcher Premium. And what I always tell people is they have a free 30.

day trial. Most people, the way that they consume podcasts, can get caught up on hours within that 30 days. But what we're hearing from a lot of people is they really like Stitcher Premium. You know, no ads, a ton of content. All of my true crime all time unsolved. The old ones are on there. But there's all kinds of other stuff, right? True crime, comedy, all different types of genres. You You get the new ones as well. Everything's ad-free. Yeah, I think we've got 50-something episodes on there at last I checked. And we've got the Zodiac season on top of the Golden State Killer season, you mentioned.

We've got the Ted Bundy season. And there's just a lot of stuff to really take in. So you've got nothing to lose with that 30-day free trial. Yeah. Yeah, we have the season that we did about the DNA convictions, which I thought was a collection of really interesting cases. and very topical because you're hearing it in the news, right? More cases being solved. More cases that they think they're about ready to solve.

And we talk about how a lot of those cases are being solved. So I think all of it very interesting. More if we had some new Patreon supporters. So let's give our shoutouts. We had Bianca Kraft, Barry Jordan, Don Black, Heather Scheminski. Matt Bertone and Rain Steinberg. So some great new support there. We really appreciate it.

Thank you, as always, for that amazing support. It means a lot and really keeps us going with the show. And if you'd like to help support us on Patreon, you can as well by going to patreon. com slash criminology. All right, buddy. I think we're ready to dive in to the subject of this episode. We're talking about the I-70. killer. So I think it's important to kind of talk about I-70, right? This is a big-time interstate highway.

It runs east to west from Utah to Baltimore, Maryland. It runs very close to my house in Ohio. So I'm very familiar with I-70. There are also more if a lot of true crime cases, I mean, involving serial killers, that happen to intersect, for lack of a better word, with interstate 70. You know, just off the top of my head of cases that I've covered in the past. I'm thinking, you know, her Baumeister in Indiana, there have been a number of, I think, the long-haul trucker type murders because I-70 is a pretty major interstate. And it covers a large part of the Midwest. not to mention the fact that it runs through some pretty big cities, Denver, Kansas City,

Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Baltimore. So you kind of get an idea of where this interstate flows. But it was in the spring of 1992 that a string of murders took place in the Midwest. All of them occurred in small businesses that sat near Interstate 70 or nearby connecting highways. And all but one victim was female. The killer shot all of the victims, but left no evidence behind. And while there were some witnesses who saw the suspect, police have never been able to catch the killer that has become known as the I-70 killer. And still today, police have no answers to who this man was, nor do they know what motivated him to commit these

horrible crimes. The first victim was Robin Fouldower. She was born on December 16, 1965, to Elliot, Norman Fouldauer, and Carol Lucas. She had two sisters, Lynn and Susan. Family described Robin as a very kind woman, intelligent, caring, and a hard worker. On April 8, 1992, Robin, who was 26 years old, was working at a payless shoe source store, located at 7325 Pendleton Pike in Indianapolis, Indiana. Robin was a store manager and working alone that day after her employee called in sick. Robin's district manager called the store several times over a 45-minute period, trying to get a hold of her.

When Robin didn't answer the phone, the district manager called the Speedway gas station next door and asked the clerk, Lucretia Gullet, to check on Robin. Lucretia walked into the store and saw the cash register drawer was open, but she didn't see any sign of Robin. Immediately she ran back to the gas station and called police. They arrived at 2.21 p.m. and found Robin dead in the back room of the store. She had been shot twice in the back of the head with bullets from a 22 caliber gun. Some sources say she was shot in the right side.

of her head. It was determined that the killer took only a small amount of cash from the register. Investigators pieced together that the murder most likely occurred between 1.30 and 2 p.m. The last transaction on the cash register was at 1.15 p.m. for a pair of both men's and women's shoes. Police wanted to speak with whoever bought these shoes. They made a public plea for that person to come forward, but he or she never did. Complicating matters, police concluded that after the time they believe Robin was murdered, one or more people came into the shoe store,

didn't see any employees around, and they stole some shoes. Police also urged that person or multiple people, however many it was, to come forward. They wanted to talk with them, but they never did. And let's be honest, Morf, who's going to hear a public plea know that they took advantage of a situation where, most likely unbeknownst to them, the store employee was dead. They just knew

nobody was in the store. And they said, you know what? I'm going to help myself to a pair of free shoes, maybe multiple pairs. They're not going to come forward and say, oh yeah, I did that. Now, police weren't concerned with the theft of the shoes at all, really. They just wanted to know if the thief might have seen anything that could help them solve Robin's murder. When police questioned employees of nearby businesses, they got a break. A man by the name of Jeff Mayrose, who was the manager of a paint store across the street from the shoe store, had seen the likely suspect in Robin's murder. Jeff first noticed the man walking down Pendleton Pike.

Jeff said the man was carrying a long bag, and he assumed the man was probably a hitchhiker because he had walked from the direction of I-465, just a few blocks east of the shoe store. That area intersects with I-70, a few miles south of Pendleton Pike. Jeff told police that he didn't recognize the man who was wearing a green jacket as anyone from the area. The stranger walked into the paint store, but left pretty quickly without buying anything. After the man left, Jeff saw him circle the building several times before sitting down on a nearby curb. Jeff said that it appeared the man was just sitting there staring across the street,

looking at the shoe store. He even later told the St. Louis Post Dispatch in May 1992 that the man was quote, talking to himself, giggling and looked like a guy who had been sleeping in his clothes. At the time, Jeff saw this man. He didn't think a whole lot about it and eventually went back to work. So unfortunately, Jeff couldn't offer investigators much to go on. And really, he was the only witness in the area at the time. Only three days after the murder of Robin Fouldauer, another sense of shooting took place about 700 miles away in Wichita, Kansas.

Police couldn't know it at the time, but it was connected to Robin's murder, and other shootings that would soon follow. It turned out to be the only shooting in this series that involved more than one victim. 32-year-old Patricia Majors was the owner of a Wichita Bridal Shop called La Bride DeElegance, located near Oliver and East Kellogg Street. Patricia also owned the adjacent store, Sur Night Tuxedoes, and Formal Wear. The store is close to I-35, which is the Kansas Turnpike. That seems like really smart business sense, Morph. have two businesses side by side, one for the bride and one for the groom. Double your sales volume.

You got to take advantage. But it was on April 11, 1992. Majors and her 23-year-old employee, Patricia Smith, closed up the shop at 6 p.m. They were waiting for a customer to arrive after hours to pick up his Cumberbunt for his tuxedo. The customer was running a bit late and didn't get there until. 6.30 p.m. When he entered the shop at 6.30, he saw a man coming out of the back room, carrying a semi-automatic weapon, and this guy was aiming the gun at him. The man told the customer

to go in the back room with him, but the customer refused and told the man holding the gun that he didn't see anything and that he was just going to leave. And miraculously, this tactic worked. the man holding the gun let the customer go. So this guy ran out of that store. I'm sure at a pace that he has never experienced in his life before or since. He raced to the phone, call police to tell them what had just happened to him. And he was able to give the police a description of the gunman. Police went to the store.

They entered it and they found both Patricia Majors. and Patricia Smith dead on the floor in the back of the store. Both had been shot with 22 caliber bullets. Wichita Police didn't have much to go on, but they did have a key witness. They brought in sketch artist Lois Gibson from Houston, Texas, to draw a composite sketch of the suspect based on the customer's account. He described the killers about 5 foot 8 inches tall with red hair, and he weighed between 150 and 160 pounds.

He had a faint beard and was wearing a brown jacket and dark pants. Police think that Majors and Smith mistook the killer for the customer and let him in. He then forced them to the back room and shot both women in the back of the head. In a sad twist, the medical examiner who presided over the autopsy of the two women knew Patricia Majors and was close with her. He had actually walked her down the aisle at her wedding when her own father couldn't. So I think there's something that you and I have never discussed. Being a medical examiner, I would think pretty tough job. The majority of the time, you're not going to know these people that you are examining, right? After their deaths, but the smaller of the town, I would think,

the greater the possibility that you would know someone. And how tough would that be more to have to perform an autopsy on someone that you knew, not to mention the fact, someone that you were actually very close with. I think that would be extremely difficult. I don't know if there's any typical etiquette as far as performing an autopsy on someone you know or if you would request that somebody else do the autopsy in that situation, but that had to be pretty tough for him. Well, I would think in a bigger area where there's a better chance, a better possibility that you could get someone else to do it, I think that's what you would do. But in some of these smaller towns, I guess you could call, you know, to a neighboring medical examiner and say, hey, can you come do this? I don't know.

And maybe most likely that's what they would do. I just think you are putting that person in a very difficult position if they have to perform the autopsy. Very rough. Wichita investigators initially thought the murders might be related to a similar case in Kansas City, Missouri that happened five years before. On October 11, 1986, someone entered the formal wear by Sir Knight store there and shot three employees. he's dead. The Kansas City shop and the Wichita shop were both licensed by the same franchise, Sir Knight, and served by the same warehouse, Anderson rentals in Kansas City, Missouri. Police had several suspects in the Kansas City murders, but they were never able to connect any of them to the

crime. Few details are available in that case, and it's unclear if it was ever actually solved. But despite the composite sketch and the physical description of the suspect in the murders of Majors and Smith, the investigation stalled pretty quickly. Another I-70 shooting, the third in the I-70 series, took place in Terre Haute, Indiana, and it was the only shooting involving a male victim. The victim was a man named Michael McCown. Michael McCown was born on December 29th, 1951. to Philip Milo and Sylvia McCown.

In 1969, Sylvia opened a store called Sylvia Ceramics along US 41 on the south edge of town. She operated the store for over two decades. Michael worked in the store. He also played the harmonica. He played the guitar as well in local rock bands on April 29th, 1992.

40-year-old Michael McCown was working alone in his mother's store, something that he had done many times before. At 4.30 p.m., a customer entered the store and found Michael dead in the back room. Michael had been shot once in the back of the head with a 22-caliber bullet. Police later said that they theorized that the killer mistook Michael for a woman. So apparently Michael wore his hair in a ponytail and he was killed from behind. Police believe that Michael was maybe kneeling or reaching for something on a shelf. When the killer approach from behind, it's possible that he was mistaken for a woman. Because you do have to think about it.

If these are all connected, which police believe they are, we're getting ready to talk about. it. Why would there only be one male victim? It's not like Michael was with a woman that the killer was targeting. He was alone in the store. So I think this is where this theory comes in from police that it's possible given, you know, a long ponytail quick glance, you know, from behind that the killer thought, okay, this is a woman. This is going to be my next victim. and it turned out to be a man instead. How the killer got in and out of the store without being seen is what puzzled police from the very beginning.

A man who managed a car rental agency south of Sylvia's ceramics told police it was a very busy Monday at his business. Someone should have seen the killer enter or leave the ceramics store, yet no one did. Parking wasn't allowed on the street in front of the shop, so the killer was likely on foot. Police believed he entered the store through a back door. A neighbor who lived across the alley behind the store never saw anyone or anything out of the ordinary.

To police, the murder of Michael McCown seemed like an execution and a motiveless crime. But police all along the I-70 were starting to take notice of the similar shooting deaths in stores along that highway over the previous three weeks. But unfortunately, despite their intuition that a dangerous killer was roaming the I-70, They had no idea if he would strike again or where. They wouldn't have to wait long to find out. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder 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. The next shooting took place in St. Charles, Missouri. St. Charles is a suburb of St. Louis. It's about a two and a half hour drive from Terre Haute, Indiana. The victim was Nancy Kitzmiller. Nancy was born on September 25th, 1967 in Oklahoma City, where she lived until she was about 10 years old. Her family then moved to the St. Louis area. Nancy was a cowgirl at heart. She loved to ride horses. She attended rodeos and horse shows.

She also had been a soccer player. Nancy was the ideal daughter. She didn't use drugs, rarely drank, never got into any kind of trouble. Nancy graduated from the University of Oklahoma and at the time had recently qualified to join a map-making team at the Defense Mapping Agency in St. Louis, now known as the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, she was awaiting her first assignment. In the meantime, she was working at Boot Village in the Bogie Hills Plaza, located at 279 Zumbell Road, just south of I-70 in St. Charles. Boot Village sold West Western clothing and boots. So I think that makes a lot of sense, Morph.

This was a woman who was very into that lifestyle, riding horses, going to the rodeo, attending horse shows. I think she most likely knew a lot about Western wear. Seems like a perfect job for her at the time. This is also a woman that had a lot going on for her, right? just graduated, was about ready to get her first assignment in something that, by all accounts, she was very excited to get into, but she's never going to get the chance. On Sunday, May 3rd, 1992, just four days after Michael McCown's murder in Tara Holt,

Nancy, who was just 24, was working alone in Boot Village. It was the only store in the shopping plaza that was open on Sundays. Nancy opened the store at noon and at 2.30 p.m., she was found dead by a customer. Nancy had been shot once in the back of the head, and the killer had stolen money out of the cash register. The bullet that killed Nancy was a 22-caliber bullet. Initially, police believed the motive was robbery. In the days and weeks prior to Nancy's murder, burglaries had taken place in three local businesses in St. Charles. Holras Hallmark store in Bogie Plaza on March 18th, setting trains.

on South Main Street on April 28th, and the Salvation Army on Drost Road on April 30th. After the robber stole money from the Hallmark store, he sprayed two clerks with Mace before exiting the building. Police believed at the time that this robber was also responsible for Nancy's murder. It does seem to make a lot of sense to me, more for what the police believe, based on the information that they have. Obviously, they have a string of burglaries. now they have one that ends with a murder.

I think maybe we'll see as we get further on in the episode that it's probably unlikely that all of these burglaries are tied together. I'm not saying they couldn't be. It just seems strange to think that this killer that we're talking about would have been in that location for that period of time because the burglary stretched out. over a month's time. Now, there are some reasons why it could be, and maybe we'll get into those. No one heard the shot that killed Nancy, but a witness did come forward to tell police about

a strange man. They had seen around the time that Nancy was likely killed. The man was coming out of the Boot Village store. Police believed this man was Nancy's killer and that Nancy. Nancy waited on him just before she was killed. The witness who saw the suspect described the man as a white male, 28 to 32 years of age, about 5-7 to 5-9, average build with dark brown hair and brown eyes. A sketch artist drew two composite sketches based on the witness's account.

One showed the man with a mustache and shoulder-length hair. The other showed him unshaven, cleaned up, and was shorter hair. The final shooting of the I-70 series took place at a shop called Store of Many Colors, a health food store located in the Woodson Shopping Center in Raytown, Missouri, which is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. The store had only been open for about a month and was owned by Sarah Blessing. Sarah Hart Blessing was born in Topeka, Kansas on March 3, 1955, to clearance in Wilma, She was married to Sunny Blessing, who had two children from her previous marriage.

The couple had been married for about seven or eight years. Sarah was a reflexologist, and Sunny worked for trans world airlines. On May 7, 1992, 37-year-old Sarah arrived for work at noon. Around 2.10 p.m. Sunny called Sarah at work, and they had a brief conversation. Everything seemed fine. By 6.15 p.m., Sarah, was working alone in the store. At 6.30, an auctioneer noticed a stranger walking into his auction house. The man walked around briefly before exiting the business.

Not long after that, Tim Hickman, the owner of the video attic store next door to Sarah's shop, saw a man walking across the parking lot. The man passed by his store and Tim took notice of this guy. wearing a gray sports coat, dark pants, and dress shoes. Tim also said that the guy was mumbling to himself as he walked through the parking lot. Tim didn't think a whole lot about this guy at the time that he saw him and he went back to work. And this is the second time we've said this, right? People have seen individuals that they took notice of. Well, why did they? Why did they? they take notice of these people because they were out of the ordinary. They were not known in the community. In this case, yeah, you see somebody wearing what is essentially a dress outfit

walking through a parking lot mumbling to themselves. You're going to take notice of that. But at the end of the day, what does it really mean to you? You have no context yet. It's not going to be until later on when you find out that someone was murdered that you're going to say, oh, now I remember this guy walking through the parking lot. At the time, you look at it, you process it in your brain, and you move on, right? There's nothing else to do. You're not going to call the police just because a guy is talking to himself walking through the parking lot. And I think that just shows that this guy that these witnesses saw was normal looking enough that they didn't feel a need to call police. It's not like he was exhibiting a gun or threatening anyone. So it makes sense that he didn't stand

out enough to call the police like you mentioned. Yeah, I think it's a good point. The guy is not the hunchback of Notre Dame. He also doesn't have ammo crisscrossed on his chest. And, and, you know, he's walking around with a rifle, that would be something to be alarmed about and to call police on. It seems like he mixed in very well to the environment. And isn't that often the case? When you're talking about a serial killer, I mean, what is one of their main goals? Well, they want to feed their urges.

You know, we've talked about that quite a bit, but they also don't want to get caught because that they get caught, then they lose the opportunity to do these nasty things that they feel compelled to do. So how do you not get caught? You blend in. I think a lot about the show Dexter. That was one of my favorite shows. Boy, I missed that a lot. And I think one of the appeals of Dexter for me Morph was that he was somewhat of a sympathetic character, which is kind of hard to say because he killed a lot of people, right? But the way they constructed his character, he had this compulsion, but he learned how to funnel it. Okay, he's only going to go after bad guys. So in that respect, you kind of think, I can kind of see what he's doing, even though he's killing people. But the main

point of it was that he was not like everyone else. He didn't fit in. He had to learn over the years how to fit in. And he did that by observing how other people acted. And he basically just mimic them. And I always like to use the expression that most of the people that do this kind of stuff don't look like oddest tool. They don't look like the serial killer that you immediately say, that guy looks like a serial killer. And unfortunately, that's what helps them go undetected. Yeah, I think it's absolutely correct. I also think more of that's, the reason why when it all comes out, right? What these people have done. We just got done doing Gacy on true crime all the time. People say, I can't believe it was him. This guy owned a business.

He was a pillar of the community. He threw block parties for crying out loud. Those are the type of people that are able to blend in and I think get away with their crimes sometimes for for long periods of time. A few minutes after Tim saw the stranger, he heard a loud pop and thought it was a gunshot. He opened the front door of his store and saw the man he had just seen a couple

minutes before, go around the corner and out of sight. He later said the man looked cool and calm as if he didn't have a care in the world. Tim grabbed his portable phone and entered Sarah's store. He didn't see anyone so he hollered out. Not knowing Sarah by name, he called out, ma'am.

ma'am, Tim stepped forward a few feet and found Sarah lying face down on the floor in a large pool of blood. He immediately called the police and they arrived soon after. Sarah had been shot once in the head. Once again, the bullet that killed Sarah was a 22 caliber bullet. Some money had been taken from the cash register, but not all of it. And Sarah hadn't been sexually assaulted. Tim described the suspect as white, around 35 years old, with thinning light brown hair. He stood 5-8 to 5-11 and was slight and built.

A grocery store clerk was gathering shopping carts in the parking lot and saw the same man climb an embankment to an I-70 access road and then vanish out of sight. Other witnesses reported seeing the suspect walking east on 59th Street about 10 minutes later, which is only about three miles south of I-7. Not long after Sarah's murder, police linked all the I-70 shootings to each other, first by ammo and then through ballistics testing. The killer used a semi-automatic, 22-caliber pistol in each killing. The making-and-model of the weapon was thought to be either an introtect scorpion or an Irma-Worky model ET-22. The ammunition used in the murders was CCI-brand-22-calibur long rifle with copper-clad lead blood.

bullets. So Mike, I know you do a lot of shooting. We talked about that before. Have you ever heard of an intratect scorpion or an armor worky brand? I have not heard of either. I did look up pictures. The intratex scorpion in particular is a very distinct looking 22. I really, I'm not seen a whole lot of guns that look like it. It almost looks like some little sub-machine gun that the German special forces would carry. Now, they would carry it in a much bigger caliber, but it has a look similar to something that you might see in a spy movie or, you know, a war movie or something like that. And then when you talk about the second one, the Irma Worky or Irma Work. I'm not sure exactly how you say it, Morph, but this thing again is a very

strange looking gun. It looks very much like a German Luger pistol, something that most people will be able to conjure up an image because they've seen that gun over and over in World War II films. It's a pretty iconic gun. It looks like that, except it has a much longer barrel and actually a stock. It almost looks like a Lugar pistol rifle, if that makes any sense. Yeah, they're both very bizarre in their own right. When I think of 22s, I think of the ones that I shot when I was younger, target shooting, and they're just six-shot revolvers that seem to be very common.

And they still make six-shot 22-caliber revolvers, but I think today, and this has been going on for quite some time, 22s are made in just about any configuration you can think of, semi-automatic handguns, semi-automatic rifles, rifles that look like AR-15s. There's all kinds of guns that shoot 22-caliber long rifle. It's a very popular caliber, for one, because it's very cheap, comparatively speaking. Now, I'm thinking as somebody that has shot a lot of guns yourself, and you've never heard of these, it's probably because they're not very common. It seems like that would have been an easier search for police to track down where those kind of guns might have came from or who owned them.

I think it is a very important clue in this case. Right. If we were talking about a Smith and Wesson model such and such that in the early 90s, they made tens of thousands, that would be different. But we are talking about some guns that I guarantee you they didn't make in those type of numbers. It seems like a very important clue to try to figure out a person that owned both of these guns. And it wasn't just the guns themselves that were unusual. The cartridges of the bullets had been polished with Jewelers Rouge, a compound used for buffing soft precious metals like gold or silver.

Again, as someone that does a lot of shooting, what's your take on that use of that jewelers rouge on the ammunition? And why would someone do that? So, yeah, so, Morph, this is something that is really, got me puzzled. 22 caliber long rifle. We even said the brand, CCI, it's a very popular brand, probably one of the most popular of 22s. I don't understand polishing the cartridges of a 22 caliber bullet. Now, it did pop into my head because I, I reload my own ammunition. Part of that process includes taking already fired cartridges.

Maybe they've been fired multiple times. Well, when you do that, the cartridges get very dirty. So to clean them up before you reload, you polish them. And I use a tumbler. It's got some media in it. You can use like little bits of corn.

Some people use walnut. I throw a little bit of car wax, liquid car wax in there. throw the cartridges and then this electrical tumbler works its magic for four or five, six hours, however long you want to go. And the cartridges come out nice and shiny. Now you can reload 22 caliber long rifle ammo. Most people don't.

It is a pain to say the least compared to reloading, let's say, nine millimeter or 380 or 45. So that is one thing that jumped into my head. But I don't think that's what we're talking about here. It seems to me, and I'm speculating, but it seems to me as though this killer bought this ammo, took each one out of the package and polished it up for whatever reason. I just can't think of any good reason why you would want to do that. So it sounds like it's typically done for cosmetic reasons. It doesn't improve the performance or anything. like that. I mean, not as far as I know. I've never polished a bullet that I've purchased right off the shelf. Never.

Because it's a brand new casing that they use. It's, it's shiny. It's nice. It's there's no reason to do anything to it. This part really has me stumped. I got to be honest with it. Once all of these murders were connected, police all along the I-70 corridor knew they had a serious problem. There was a cold blood. killer roaming the highway and pretty quickly they established a Midwest task force to try to identify this person and stop him. They sat down. They analyzed all of the clues that they had from each case. Tried to put things together, match this, match that. All the killings took place in shops near Interstate 70. All of the victims put up little to no resistance. and the killer stole less than $400 from each location.

I think in the minds of this task force morph, it seemed as though the robbery was almost an afterthought. In multiple instances, the killer only took some of the cash from his victims. So again, if robbery is your main motive, you're going to take every bit of cash you can. Police believed the killer had some type of job where he traveled frequently. So we're talking traveling salesman, truck driver.

I mean, there are a number of jobs that require you to travel around the country. But just as the Midwest task force was getting started, it seemed that the killings there abruptly ended. But then in 1993, similar murders in Texas had. had police wondering if the I-70 killer had changed locations and struck again. On September 25, 1993, Marianne Glasscock, who was 51 years old, was working alone in a small Fort Worth antique store called Emporium Antiques. She was found shot to death in the store. Just over a month later, on November 2nd, 22-year-old Amy Vest was found shot to death in an

Arlington Dance Apparel shop called Dancer's Closet. Police believe she had been shot the night before as she closed the shop. A couple months later on January 15, 1994, 35-year-old Vicky Webb was working alone in her Houston gift shop called alternatives. When a man entered the store, chatted with her a bit, looked around, and then shot her in the head. The shot didn't kill her. Vicky had an unusually large vertebrae which prevented the bullet from penetrating into her head. Vicki pretended to be dead.

the shooter put the gun to her head again and pulled the trigger, but it misfired. The man laughed and then walked out leaving the store. Vicky survived that shooting, but wound up passing away in 2012. The Texas stores were located near I-35, and the victims were all killed with a 22-calibre firearm. And just like the Midwest killings, they started and stopped within a short period of time. The main difference was that the gun used in the Texas murders was different from the one used. in the Midwest shootings. So Texas authorities do not believe the cases are related, but Midwest law enforcement thinks they may be.

It could be that the killer switched guns for some reason, but still prefer to use a 22 caliber. I think that's very possible, right? 22 caliber is a very popular caliber. I mentioned it. Number one, it's cheap. Now, what is strange to me is it's not the most efficient caliber to, to, you know, used to commit murder. Right?

It's a small caliber. People that are shot with 22s, ones, they don't always die. So for me, that's an odd choice for a killer. And more if I think there are a bunch of different places you could go with this. I mean,

obviously, it could be that these are two different killers. If it is the same killer, it could be that he ditched the guns, that he used previously thinking, okay, I don't want to be tracked. I'm going to use something different. Why this switch from the Midwest to Texas? Well, maybe he got transferred. Maybe his job, whatever it was that he traveled frequently with took him to Texas. And that's the simple reason for it. This is one of those cases where there's a lot of different things that could be or could not be.

But it's also what makes these types of cases interesting. But police did have some suspects in the I-70 murders. On February 29, 1992, a few weeks before the I-70 killing started, a 37-year-old man named Donnie Waterhouse, shot and killed his mother, Ella Louise. Ferguson and his stepfather, Thomas Ferguson, inside their Dyersburg, Tennessee home. Waterhouse shot them in the head with a 22 caliber rifle and vanished afterwards in his stepfather's gold 1986 Jeep pickup truck. His gun was never found. Police eventually found the abandoned truck in East St. Louis, Illinois, right off I-70. But they didn't catch Waterhouse until October 1993 in Oklahoma. And this came after an episode of America's Most Wanted, aired a segment on

the Dyersburg shootings. A resident had seen Waterhouse and called police. They arrested him on a bus in a small town in Oklahoma, but because he wasn't captured until a year and a half after the Dyersburg murders, Donnie Waterhouse was at large during the time that the I-70 murders took place. Kansas law enforcement officials thought Waterhouse matched the composite sketch of the I-70 killer. Waterhouse used the same caliber gun and the same brand of bullets that were used in the I-70 shootings. Kansas, Indiana, and Missouri authorities contacted the Dyersburg County Sheriff's Office to have the bullet casings tested. In June 1992, St. Charles, Missouri Police Chief David King announced to the public,

that Donnie Waterhouse was no longer a top suspect, but King did not completely eliminate him because the I-70 killer had not been caught. But King went on to say that Waterhouse was, quote, not the likely person to have committed these crimes. It was another dead end for police. In December 1994, Donnie Waterhouse took a plea deal and was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the murders of his mother and stepfather. In April 1995, Midwest of the 3rd, thought that serial killer seen Patrick Goebel may have been the I-70 killer. This one's a little tough for me more if, you know, his first name is spelled S-E-A-N. I would normally say that as Sean. I think most people would. For some reason, he pronounced

it as seen. So we're calling him seen. Goble was a long-haul truck driver who killed sex workers and dumped their bodies along interstates between January and March 1995. He was arrested on April 13, 1995, but his M.O. and his description did not match that of the I-70 killer. On New Year's Eve, 1999, years after the last confirmed I-70 killing, a 20-year-old college student named Amy Blumberg was found shot to death in her family's dance apparel store. in O'Fallon, Illinois, about 38 miles southeast of St. Charles, where Nancy Clatsmiller was killed. O'Fallon sits near I-65, and it's only about 30 miles south of I-70.

At first glance, it seemed as that the I-70 killer had struck again. Like the other victims, Amy was alone in the store, which sat in a busy shopping area. The motive wasn't robbery. No cash was taken from the register, and Amy hadn't been sexually assaulted. Amy Blumberg's murder had some strong similarities to the I-70 killings, but Illinois authorities were quick to say that there were many differences. One big difference was the type of gun that was used, and that led them to believe that Amy wasn't a victim of the I-70 killer. Eventually in 2003, police arrested an Illinois man named Edward Phillips for Amy Blumberg's murder.

Phillips claimed that he was innocent. he also claimed that he was set up by his wife because the two were going through a nasty divorce. Don Richie, Phillips now ex-wife, said that on the night of Amy Blumberg's murder, Phillips came home with blood on his pants and said he had been at the scene of Amy's killing. She did not report this until the divorce proceedings had started. Phillips admitted to being at the scene but told police that he found Amy's body when he went to the store to return a leotard that he had purchased for his daughter. He panicked and didn't call authorities.

So more if there's a lot going on here. You know, first of all, you go into a store and find someone dead. You really should call the police. I think everybody listening knows that. This guy's saying, I panicked. I left the store. Somehow I got blood on my pants. It doesn't look good at all.

But at the same time, you have this divorce. And the fact that his ex-wife didn't bring it up until the divorce proceedings started. There's a lot going on here. At Phillips's trial, one witness testified that he saw a strange man in a mid-sized white car sitting in the parking lot in nearby Fearview Heights. The man was holding a black handgun and acting as if he were in some sort of. sort of trance. The witness wrote the license plate down and gave it to the police when he heard about Amy's murder. The white car, as it turns out, had been reported stolen. Another woman also testified that she saw a white mid-sized car sitting in front of the dance store. Edward Phillips

drove a black pickup truck. Edward Phillips defense attorneys believed a man named John Sprowse, who was incarcerated at Potosi Correctional Center in Missouri, was Amy Blumberg's killer. A fellow inmate testified at the Phillips trial that he overheard Sprouse bragging about killing a blonde shop clerk in Illinois. This case against Phillips was largely circumstantial, but he was convicted of the murder of Amy Blumberg and sentenced to 55 years in prison in 2007. Another man, some believe maybe the I-70 killer, is suspected serial killer, Neil Faw. Falls had ties to Candace. In 2015, Falls, who was 45 years old, met a sex worker named Heather Saul on Backpage.com.

According to police, Falls, who was from Oregon, beat and shook the woman at her Charleston, West Virginia home. When he laid his shotgun down, the woman grabbed it and shot him once, killing him. Detectives found multiple weapons in his SUV, including an axe, a shovel, a machete, knives, and handcuffs. Investigators believe he may be responsible for missing and murdered women in several states, and while he does somewhat resemble the I-70 killer sketch, he would have only been 23 years old at the time of those murders, and the I-70 killer was described as being between 28 and 40 years old, which meant he was likely born between 1952 and 1964. Falls was born in 1969.

Yeah, but I always get into the area of these composite sketches, especially when you're talking about age. Age for me is very tough. I don't know about you morph, but I have a very hard time judging with some people how old I think they are. And sometimes I turn out to be very, very wrong. I mean like, you know, five, six, seven years off. I think it's important to remember that many times that these witnesses are under the rest or have some kind of shock in the aftermath of some of these crimes. So when they help to create these sketches, they may not be perfect representations of the person they saw. Yeah, I think it's pretty well proven that after that type of trauma, memories aren't always accurate.

The I-70 serial killer remains elusive to police to this day. So who was he? And why did he stop his killing spree? So we mentioned one possibility already. Maybe he moved. Maybe he began killing in another area along another stretch. It also could be that he was incarcerated for something unrelated to the killings, but obviously that ended his killing spree.

The one thing I do know is that it's very unlikely that this killer just all of a sudden stopped on his own, right? Maybe he was killed in an accident. Maybe he was killed in some other way. But more if we know, people that do this, they just don't tend to stop out of the blue. Yeah, I think in a lot of the cases we've covered, we don't see often where somebody just says, I think I've killed enough people. I'm just going to end it. It's usually they're not stopping until they are killed somehow like you mentioned or the police knock on their door and arrest them.

So we have those questions. We also have the question of, you know, will the victim's families ever see justice for their loved ones? The TV show Unsolved Mysteries covered the I-70 killer case on a pretty memorable episode during season six. I think it's important that we look at the I-70 crimes when considering what police have that may one-day ID the killer. Obviously, the murder weapon is a big one. If that weapon is ever found, it can be matched like a fingerprint through ballistics to the crimes.

As far as fingerprints themselves, it's not known if any were recovered. But this guy opened doors to go into these stores. Is it possible that he was wearing gloves? We don't know. When it comes to DNA, since this was a series of murders with very little physical interaction between the killer and victims, there was much less of a chance of DNA transfer as opposed to say in a rape case. But perhaps touch DNA could be recovered from the shell casings. And I think that's a very important point, Morp, in this case.

This was a killer who, like you said, had very little interaction with his victim. no sexual assault. In a lot of these cases, it seems as though very quickly in the interaction, as soon as these people turned around, he shot them in the back of the head. So if a person comes in wearing gloves, chances are not going to leave any fingerprints, not going to leave any bodily fluids. This is a tough case. If everything went down, that, way, there's probably not much in the way of evidence. But I also think we need to consider the type of killer that we're talking about here, the motive for these murders and the victim selection. So right off the bat, was this guy a spree killer or a serial killer? And I keep saying,

man, guy, I'm assuming this is a male. And I think that assumption is probably pretty valid. according to the FBI, the general definition of a spree killer is a person who commits two or more murders without a cooling off period. And I think that's the key, right? It's this lack of a cooling off period that marks the main difference between a spree killer and a serial killer. Well, I think when we look at this case, there were some cooling off periods. And I guess more for me, it comes to, you know, down to what do you consider a cooling off period. I mean, when you look at these murders, they all happened within what, less than 30 days, less than a month's time. And some of the murders occurred within just a few days of each other. So I think when you look at this perpetrator,

you could probably make the argument for both spree killer or serial killer. And again, we're talking about the known murders. Could there be more? Well, sure, there could. There absolutely could be more in jurisdictions all over the country that were just never put together. Maybe they didn't recover the spent shell casing. So they weren't able to get ballistics, never got into the database. It's an unsolved homicide somewhere in the country. That's absolutely possible. Yeah, I think I'm with you that you could go either way with this being a spree killer or a serial killer or both because obviously this guy knows what he's doing. He's intending on killing people and continues to try and get away with it. But these confirmed murders over such a short period of time that you could definitely classify him as a spree killer too.

Yeah, he's almost like a spree serial killer. Can we come up with a new classification that combines the two? to maybe. And then I think when you talk about motive, we mentioned it earlier, there were no sexual assaults. So robbery kind of appeared to be the motive on the surface, but then when you look at the facts, it really doesn't support that. I mean, this was a perpetrator that left cash behind at multiple crime scenes. And if you're there to get money, if you're there for robbery and you make the decision that you're going to kill somebody in the store to help you carry out the robbery. You're going to take everything you can. It just doesn't seem like that's the case here.

It seems to me as though the main motive was murder and, oh, by the way, I'm going to take some cash before I leave the store. That's the way it seems to me. And then I think finally the very the victims in the locations. All of the victims were women, with the exception of Michael McCown. And we said, because of his ponytail, the killer may have mistaken him for a woman from behind. All of the locations that we talked about are places that someone might think there would most likely be a woman working at the store. And most likely, because of the size of the store, and most likely because of the size of the store,

working alone. I mean, we're not talking about liquor stores, gas stations, right? These are different types of stores, quiet, out of the way clothing type stores, ceramic stores. So you have to factor all that in and ask the question, what does that tell us? Is it that the killer was targeting vulnerable women and trying to steer clear of, confrontations with men. And I think you can definitely make that leap. You can look at someone like BTK, for example, after his first murders of the Otero family, he tried very hard not to put himself in a position where he was going to encounter a male. It didn't always work. He got surprised one time, but it's well known. He went out of his way to try to do that. I think we might be looking

at something similar here with this killer. You could probably say the same thing of the Easterer rapist. He targeted lone women, and it wasn't until the newspaper mentioned that he had never attacked a couple until that's when he finally attacked his first couple. Yeah, my assumption is you can say that about a lot of killers who target women. they're not looking to put themselves in a position where they have to tangle with, I mean, number one, more than one person, but number two, a male that could potentially give them some serious problems. But more if that's it for the case of the I-70 killer. I do think this is a baffling case. Number one, you have killings in multiple jurisdictions.

they've been able to link a number of murders. But then you think how many more murders did this person commit that maybe have never been linked? I always think there's more. Always. But I did like some of the things that you had to say, you know, touch DNA, advancements. Do police have enough in the way of evidence to potentially pull something that could

allow them to solve this case so many years later. And I wonder if it might somehow be those rather unique guns that might come back to help identify him. Yeah, like I said, I do think that's a very big part of this case. Now, that's assuming that the guns were registered, that this person's name is attached to the gun, right? I said these guns, but whichever gun was the murder weapon. For all we know, he stole it.

Thanks to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode. As always, if you haven't done so and you love the show, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. Keep telling your friends that word of mouth goes a long way. And if you'd like to find us on social media, you can follow us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast. And if you'd like to, you can join our Facebook discussion group, which is called Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. All right. So that's it for another episode of Criminology. But we'll be back with you next Saturday night with an all-new episode.

So until then, this is Mike. And this is Morf. And we'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.