Criminology - The Murder of Cheryll Spegal

Episode Date: November 8, 2020

During the fall of 1971, 10-year-old Cheryll Spegal was brutally abducted, raped, and murdered in Highland Heights, Kentucky. Her killer has never been found. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the abduction and murder of Cheryll Spegal. Cheryll was a fifth-grader who was on her way to the school bus when she vanished. That day also happened to be her tenth birthday. Theories abound as to what happened to Cheryll and who was responsible for her death. Beth Rowland has investigated the case for years and she joins us to shed light on the case. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production 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 134 of the Criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Mike, what is going on with you? I'm right here with you, just hanging out, living the dream. How's everything with you?

Yeah, no, I'm doing good. I think living the dream is right. You know, this is what we wanted to do, right? and I talked about this years ago when we said we wanted to, you know, kind of rush full bore into podcasting. And we are living that dream. And it's good. I enjoy it. Now, it doesn't mean that you and I haven't experienced this 2020 pandemic in the same way that everybody else has. It's had a tremendous effect on podcasts in general and specifically ours, advertising and all that. It's just kind of come with the times that we're living in. Yeah, I look at every episode we do is

one step closer to the end of 2020. Yeah, one step closer to normalcy. And I'm using that word in quotation marks. So we have a good episode on tap for everyone. But first, let's do some Patreon shoutouts. We had Katie, Stephanie Stone, Shea Roach, Jennifer Critt. tell Cheryl Fink and Sarah Moscaratolo. So we appreciate all that new support more if you and I always do. If anyone listening out there wants to support the show, you can do so by going to Patreon.com slash criminology. And don't forget about Stitcher Premium. That's where you'll find all of our episodes older than six months. They have a free 30-day trial. So check it out. there's a lot of great content out there besides criminology.

There's a ton of podcast episodes. You have nothing to lose with that 30-day free trial. All right, more if it's time to get into this case. And this one hits pretty close to home in the sense that it's not too far from my neck of the woods. During the fall of 1971, 10-year-old Cheryl Spiegel was abducted, raped and brutally murdered in Highland Heights, Kentucky, her killer has never been found. Now, Highland Heights is in a town with a huge population. In 1971, the population was around 6,000.

But despite such a shocking crime occurring there, Cheryl's case has been forgotten by many in her community. But the determination and hard work of one woman might change all of that. Beth Rowland runs a website about Cheryl's case called Gone in the Fog. Video.Blog. Although Beth was from Cheryl's community, she wasn't familiar with Cheryl's case. It wasn't until a chance conversation ignited her inner sleuth, and she dove headfirst into Cheryl's case. And eventually her website became an online clearinghouse of sorts for the case. Beth joined us to discuss Cheryl's case, and you'll hear from her throughout this episode.

To fully understand Cheryl's case, I think, it's important to get a lay of the land. Highland Heights, Kentucky is a small town located in Campbell County, about 10 miles southeast of Cincinnati, Ohio. It's home to Northern Kentucky University. It really is the kind of town where, you know, a lot of people know each other. And I think that was probably even more true back in 1971. So Highland Heights now, it's still, the main highway that's still and see the town is called US 27, and it's just the straight highway down the center of town that goes into Cold Spring in south. And it sort of was a winding four-lane highway back in the 70s, but with modernization, it's been straightened out. And the claim to fame then in Highland Heights now is Northern Kentucky University, and it's become sort of a college town, but it has your restaurants and small shops and still some homes.

kind of dotted along the highway here and there, you know, typical banks and gas stations and more neighborhood pocketed off, off of roads that are off of 27. And I would say that in the 70s, when Cheryl disappeared, it was more neighborhood feeling that didn't have, you know,

big grocery stores and restaurants like Applebee's and big chains that it has now. And I think that's because of the college life that's going on there. But to me, it's small town. Every so many feet is a traffic light and you got a bank and you got a gas station and a restaurant. And it's, you know, there's plenty of homes throughout the town. But that's sort of the draw now is the university.

Beth tells us how it was that she first learned about Cheryl's case. So Cheryl was from a small town in northern Kentucky called Highland Heights. And I grew up one town south of Highland Heights. It's called Cold Spring. And I was born seven years after Cheryl was killed, but I lived my whole life there in the cold spring in Highland Heights area and had never heard of her or heard her story of how she disappeared from the bus stop and was found killed until I was about 16. And I had a boyfriend at the time, he's now my husband, but he and I had taken a drive and he slowed down in front of this house in Highland Heights with an older mom. sitting on his front porch, and it was right on the highway that I had traveled on hundreds of times in my life. And he said, you know, do you see that man on the porch over there? And I said, yes.

And he said, growing up, my dad always told us to stay away from him if he ever talked to us and to go the other direction if we ever saw his talk or he approached us. Of course, I asked why. and he said, I don't really know besides that they think he may have killed a little girl. And it piqued my curiosity at the time, but being 16 and sort of self-absorbed as a teenager, it was like that story was in my head. And I continued to see that man all through high school. And then I went to college locally and living here. And I never forgot that.

And a little backstory, my husband's dad, my father-in-law, was a police officer. And he was a cop there in Highland Heights in the mid-70s after Cheryl was killed. So I came to understand that he may have been privy to some details about the murder. Cheryl Ann Spiegel was born on October 19, 1961, in Covington, Kentucky. She has two older brothers, Mickey and Mark, and a younger half-brother, Darren. Cheryl and her brothers resided at 78 Rose Avenue with her father, Billy Joe, and stepmother Shirley. Cheryl's parents divorced in 1968, and her biological mother left town and moved to Virginia. The family lived in Pendleton County, and Billy Joe supported the family by working as a machinist

at the Mitchell Avenue Plan of General Electric in Cincinnati. Cheryl adored her younger brother, Darren, who was a toddler at the time, and she was rarely seen without him when she was playing outside. She was not allowed to put him down, so she placed him in a stroll. when she got tired of carrying him, she'd often push him all over. Cheryl also loved the freedom of wandering around the area close to her home. She'd sometimes lose track of time. And some of Cheryl's friends felt there were times when she did not want to return home from playing.

Sometimes when her parents hollered for her to come inside, she'd hide from them. Now, today, more if many of us would be very hesitant to let a nine-year-old one day, around for hours. But as you and I have talked about before, this was a different time. This was a safe, quiet area. So, you know, a lot of residents there were not afraid to let their kids play. In 1971, Cheryl was a fifth grader at Highland Heights Elementary School. She was described by teachers as cheerful and a good student. October 19th, 1971 marked Cheryl's 10th birthday. That morning, she got up early.

She was excited for her birthday and she got ready for school. She put on a long-sleeved gold blouse, a plaid jumper, and brown Oxford shoes. Cheryl's brothers wanted to walk to the bus stop with friends, so they left without her and caught the 6.30 a.m. school bus. Cheryl's next movements are a little bit unclear. Cheryl typically always walked to the top of her street with her two older brothers to catch the school bus. And for some reason, that morning, though she had been dressed and ready for school, she had fallen back asleep. The school bus came at 6.30 in the morning there in Highland Heights, and it was always dark, especially this was October when she disappeared. And the brothers were attending class at the high school, the county high school.

So if they missed the bus, their dad would have had to have driven them like, you know, 10 to 15 miles away to go to school. So according to them, their dad said, like, you do hurry up and get up there. I don't want to miss the bus as their sister was starting to hurry up and get re-ready, so to speak. And he kind of ushered her out the door. He said it was around 6.30 to catch up to her brothers and hop on the bus. and that's the last that anyone saw of her. And the brothers did say that they saw her that morning, and she was like emerging from her room, still tired,

trying to get ready again, and they went on. So then they got on the school bus with the crowd of kids that always congregated at the top of the street and really did not pay attention to the fact that their little sister wasn't on the bus because it was a bus full of kids and they all sat in their regular spots with the regular people.

And so when her school, the kids got off of the bus first, they didn't even, the little kids would have been in the front of the bus, that they didn't even notice that she didn't get off of the bus. They went on to their school day. Back then, the schools did not call home if a student wasn't missing or absent. Billy Joe said Cheryl left home just before 6.30 a.m. And he saw her disappear into the thick fog as she started to walk up Rose Avenue. towards the bus stop.

The bus stop was at the intersection of Rose Avenue in US 27. The fog was very thick that morning. Billy described it as you could not see four feet in front of you. Cheryl's walk from her home to the bus stop wasn't very long, but it was along a path that wasn't widely visible, nor was there a lot of traffic. When school led out later that afternoon and the students boarded the bus, her brothers realized Cheryl was not on the bus.

They later learned she had been absent from school and was unaccounted for at that time. The boys knew something was very wrong because Cheryl had every intention of going to school. She never missed school. In fact, she had perfect attendance in class before this school term. So when the brothers got home from school and their sister was not on the bus and never got off the bus. like to be delivered back home, they knew that something was wrong. And their dad had gone on to work that day. They had a stepmom that lived at the house, and they said that they convinced their stepmom

to call the school, and she did, and they said, you know, that Cheryl had not been to school at all. And the brothers knew, especially the middle brother that was only about 11 months older than Cheryl, like he said he knew immediately that something was really wrong. and when their dad came home from work and they said that the sister had been missing since that morning, they called the local police and they sort of him all around the typical like,

well, she doesn't think on 24 hours. Maybe she's just, it's her birthday. Maybe she's off playing somewhere. There wasn't much they could do then. And they did knock on doors in the neighborhood and we're asking around. And the people in the neighborhood were starting to get concerned because it wasn't like Cheryl to just disappear.

and be unaccounted for it. So they waited another 24 hours and it was dinner time the next night and they called the police back. And that was the time the police brought search party and they were going through people's yards and through the woods. And her oldest brother had said that they were looking like in drainage pipes. And he knew then that it was not good, that they were probably looking for a body that he didn't know of the young teenager that he just wasn't going to be a good thing. Once the police began searching for Cheryl, it didn't take long to mobilize. About 100 firemen from 13 departments combed the wooded area in their home on Wednesday, October 20th, until about 10.30 p.m. when they called off the search. Authorities formed another search party to fan out through the woods behind Rose Avenue, and officers also brought in a search dog.

Friends and neighbors were questioned, but no one had seen the young girl. investigators initially wondered if Cheryl had gotten lost in the fog and that maybe she could have walked into a densely wooded area at the rear of the Spiegel home that overlooked the Ohio River rather than up the street towards the school bus stop. But her family said that Cheryl didn't usually spend time in that area and they did not believe she would have gone there alone. One witness, a teenage girl who also lived on Rose Avenue, came forward to say that on the morning Cheryl went missing, she heard a rustling noise coming from a row of hedges that lined the street corner where she was waiting for the school bus. The noise frightened her and she let out a scream, then ran into the highway, crossed the street, and joined the other kids who were waiting for the bus down the road. Older kids confirmed that they heard her scream as they were walking up the street,

but due to the fog, they couldn't tell who screamed or where it came from. Besides the scream, they didn't hear or see anything out of the ordinary. It soon became obvious that Cheryl had likely been abducted. News of the missing 10-year-old quickly spread through the community, and it didn't take long for locals to start suspecting each other. Police looked into reports of a man who lived in a home near the Spiegel family residence. he was frequently seen sitting on his front porch and is said to have parked his truck at the top of Rose Avenue where residents of the street often spotted him sitting in his vehicle in the mornings,

typically around the time the bus came. Highland Heights Police Chief Wilbur Gastorf received the tip about a possible child molester who lived on Maple Avenue in Highland Heights. Neighbors reported that the man drove a brown sedan that he had crushed in days following the disappearance. Rumor had it that he preferred boys to girls and that investigators didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. So he was discounted as a suspect.

Police received another lead about an old black beat-up pickup truck that had been parked frequently in recent months at the corner of US 27 and Rose Avenue, usually late at night or very early in the morning. No one provided a more useful description of the truck. or its mail driver, but empty beer cans were often scattered near the intersection after the man had been there. The police discovered that the truck belonged to an employee of a company across the road. The man seen waiting in the truck had a variable work schedule. He often remained in the truck until his wife picked him up. But this initial string of persons of interest didn't lead to

Cheryl being found. The day after Cheryl vanished, there were several possible sightings of the young girl in neighboring areas. In Dayton, Kentucky, a town about seven miles northwest of Highland Heights, just over the bridge from Cincinnati, Ohio. A woman said that she saw a girl fitting Cheryl's description with a man in the car at a Dayton gas station on the night of October 20th, more than 24 hours after Cheryl vanished. Police checked with the gas station's manager, but he said the girl was several years younger than Cheryl. another sighting came from a cold spring man who said he saw a girl who resembled Cheryl sitting with a young man at a bus stop around 2 a.m. Wednesday.

This was about 17 hours after Cheryl went missing. This sighting occurred at US 27 in Marshall Lane in Highland Heights. The man assumed the pair were father and daughter and said that he just really didn't pay that much attention. A Campbell County school bus driver reported a girl matching Cheryl's description had boarded his bus at the Marshall Lane intersection at 6.30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 20th. This was around 24 hours after Cheryl vanished. The girl rode with him to St. Joseph's School and later to Campbell County High School, where she exited the bus. Another possible siting occurred in Ohio on the same day as the other sightings, Wednesday,

the October 20th, the day after Cheryl went missing, Billy Joe had a cousin named Gordon Rogers, who was a Cincinnati police patrolman. Gordon Rogers caught wind of an odd encounter that was reported to his department, and he decided to look into it. What he found was that a girl who resembled Cheryl, along with an older girl, both hitchhikers, had been picked up in the Clifton, Ohio area by a motorist late on the night of October 20th. The pair were dropped off at Pippen and Springdale streets in Cincinnati. From there, a man named Victor Duncanson stated that he was returning home from night classes at the University of Cincinnati when a girl about 16 years old jumped in front of his car on Ludlow Avenue. When he stopped, the girl whistled and another girl

several years younger came out of the bushes. The younger girl who appeared very nervous was wearing a gold sweater or blouse that resembled the clothing Cheryl was last seen wearing. It turned out that Cheryl's grandmother, Violet, lived in the Cincinnati area. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work

and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water.

Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. After checking with Cheryl's classmates, police found out that Cheryl had told some of them the day before she vanished that she might not be in school on her birthday, but Cheryl didn't explain her possible absence. bolstering what students told police. An employee at the school recalled Cheryl saying she wouldn't be at school on her birthday because she was going with her uncle to see her grandma.

Investigators considered that Cheryl might have been trying to hitch a ride to see her grandmother Violet, who lived on Glen Parker Road, but had moved to work road. Cheryl had lived with Violet for a while several years earlier, and had attended Kirby Road School in Cincinnati for approximately six weeks. The two mystery girls witnessed on October 20th in Cincinnati were never identified. Police also began to wonder if Cheryl may have left on her own to visit another family member. They considered whether Cheryl was trying to get to her mother's house in Virginia, but Billy Joe said at the time that she would not have done so.

And he didn't think she even knew her mother's exact location. Beth shared her thoughts about all of these. possible sightings. The newspapers are interesting. It's funny how they're printed so differently back then as they are now, but I counted, you know, and some of that time frame with those 13 days of probably like 10 different theories that were floated in the paper that she had jumped on a bus to Virginia to have a biological mom.

She was spotted in Cincinnati with another girl hanging out, like at a bar. And, you know, maybe she was seen in a car with a man at a local service station. But she was, it was literally her 10th birthday. See, to me now it's like, well, how would a 10-year-old be able to hop a bus to Virginia or even make her way by herself to Cincinnati? And I get that they had to pursue all those weeks, but it was like they were grasped in the show. They did not make it the worst-case scenario. They were trying to figure out what could have happened in all that time that they didn't

And even at school, her classmates have said that a lot of them felt like she just had run away. But nobody was thinking that she would have been abducted and murdered. They just didn't go there yet in their heads. The days following Cheryl's disappearance were different for her hometown. Understandably so. People were on edge and who could blame them. After Cheryl's disappearance, kids were scared to play outside, afraid of what or who could be lurking in the shadows?

The kids that lived on the street said that people were terrified. They weren't allowed to go up to the bus stop alone. They were all inside of me. Even when it was daylight, everyone was really nervous. I don't want to say suspicious, but just kind of wondering what was happening. And during the time she was missing, too, it was Halloween because she disappeared on the 19th of October and was found on November 1st. And they said that it was the most bizarre sort of trick-or-treat. Everybody was so scared that the parents were all out, the police were patrolling.

But even then, I would say the local police, most of them were part-time. There's probably only a couple of cruisers in the fleet. It was a very small department. So when you think, like, all the cops were out in patrolling, well, maybe you had three cops that were working at the time. But they still were all on a heightened sense of uneasiness. A week after Cheryl vanished, Highland Heights police requested the FBI's help in gathering fingerprints from the Spiegel home and from Cheryl's personal belongings. There was no evidence of a crime at this point.

So police were unsure if the FBI would help, but they did show up and assist in the case. The police mailed flyers with Cheryl's picture and description. to police throughout Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and even to some Florida cities. In addition, a reward fund was established, and authorities hoped the money would draw leads and tips, but nothing came from it. On Monday, November 1, 1971, the investigation into what happened to Cheryl Spiegel would turn in a new direction. That's the day when a milk truck driver found the nude body of a young girl around 10 to 11 years old. The driver had stopped in rural northeastern Pendleton County to

rest on Kentucky Highway 10 near Mount Auburn. He noticed a pile of rocks in a culvert. When he investigated further, the driver found the body beneath the rocks in about a foot of water. So there was a milk delivery man. He drove a milk truck from, he lived way far away in Kentucky in another county, but he would drive into. to Newport, Kentucky, which was, because she'd say it was north of Highland Heights, and he would pick up his milk, and then he would pass Rose Avenue, which was her street in the morning on his journey to delivering milk, but he did not deliver in Highland Heights or Cold Spring. He would just go out into the county via U.S. 27 to make his deliveries.

And so it was a Monday when she was found. So she was missing on a Tuesday. This had been almost two full weeks. And he had delivered all of his milk except for one last delivery. And this is out in Pendleton County, which is very rural. And there is a road out there that, to this day, is like a road that leads to nowhere. It's still there. And even the people from out there, so that it's always been just an old country road.

It connected a couple different places, but there's really no houses on it. so it's not frequently traveled. But he had to deliver with a couple houses at the top of the road. He continued down this rural country road and there's a little pull-off area over, it's like a small overpass, but it has a culvert underneath.

So when he stepped out of his milk truck on that culvert, that overpass to relieve himself, he looked down and saw an odd stacking of rocks in the creek bed below and decided to climb down to see what this mound of rocks was. And underneath the rocks, when he pulled a couple of rocks away, he saw her body or the outline of a child's body. And immediately got in his milk truck and drove to the last house

that he was to make his deliveries at to use the phone. And he telephoned the police. And luckily, Pendleton County, because it's rural, the governing police agency there is the state police. So when he called, they immediately sent the state police to his location there on New Hope Road in Pendleton County. And immediately the state police took over the investigation. At the scene, Pendleton County coroner James Taylor estimated the girl found had been dead at least 10 days. The body was severely decomposed, but had visible bruising.

although there were no signs of a severe beating. The girl's clothing was missing. Authorities transported the body to Woodhead Funeral Home and Falmouth, and then to the Hamilton County Coroner's Office in Cincinnati. A medical examiner concluded the cause of death was internal hemorrhaging due to multiple stab wounds on the front and back of her chest with a bladed weapon. The victim had been stabbed 25 times and was possibly sexually assaulted but due to the condition of the body, it was impossible to say for sure.

The girl was quickly identified as Cheryl Spiegel, and police were tasked with delivering the heartbreaking news to her family. At the crime scene, the investigation continued, and some of the police began to suspect that whoever had placed Cheryl's body in this spot must have known the area well. They also wondered about the half-hearted attempt to hide the body with her. rocks. We've really thought about this a lot because it's about 20 miles from her home to where she was found. And there's a lot of rural areas. And there's a, there's a road called Route 8 that

sort of hugs the riverbank of the Ohio River there in Kentucky. And you can take that road. And there would just be so many places really where you could have, I hate to say it, but like thrown someone out of a car, but it was like they found the most isolated road that they could, which you really wouldn't know was there unless you had traveled it at some point. And then not only, you could have dumped her at any part of the road, but they must have had to have parked and put her under that embankment in the culvert and covered her up with hops. You know, we've analyzed sort of what does that mean and what was that show when you could have really just this in that area there was known as a trash dump people were always dumping things from their cars down there from you know there were old

hot water heaters and just garbage you could have placed her among the garbage and and i think maybe that was the point a little bit was that it was where garbage was thrown but what does the stacking of rocks mean when you could have maybe disposed of her in so many other ways and maybe we're over thinking, but we think it could be significant. And when I say we, I mean, myself and readers of the blog and even her and friends and family have discussed that. After discovering the body, authorities from Highland Heights in Pendleton County search for clues within a one-mile radius around New Hope Road where the body was found. They were looking for any shred of a clue. They found nothing. Beth discussed with us what they found or what they didn't find,

as well as additional details of the crime scene. They found none of her clothing. There was nothing. There was no coat. There was no shoes. She wasn't known to have carried a backpack. They didn't really have backpacks back then, and I think she was in fifth grade.

She didn't have school materials. There was no murder weapon sound, and she was stabbed to death. So there was no knife or no instrument laying in the immediate area that supposedly that they searched, there were lots of rocks because it was a creek bed and a lot of garbage. Supposedly, they sort of drained some of the water from the creek. I don't know if they were looking for the clothes or maybe the murder weapon. That is sort of the frustrating part, is that there wasn't really forensic evidence discovered there. And from what anyone can tell,

it doesn't, we can't say for sure, but it wasn't a bloody scene. So, we aren't sure where she would even killed. It may not have been right there. It came to investigators attention that almost exactly a year before Cheryl Spiegel vanished. A 16-year-old girl named Cheryl Siegel had been found

murdered in Butler County, Ohio on October 18, 1970. Cheryl Siegel was found by horseback riders along Gregory Creek, east of Hamilton, Ohio. She had been raped, mutilated, and shot to death. She had knife slashes across

her throat, shoulder, and thigh, and her killer carved the letter Z into her abdomen. According to some reports, Cheryl Spiegel had a symbol of some sort on her body, too, although that's never been confirmed. But there was a key difference in Cheryl Siegel's case. The man that killed her was quickly caught. The night before her murder, Cheryl Siegel and a friend accepted a ride home from 29-year-old James Finley after spending the evening at the Firefly Tavern, the friend who was also 16, noticed a gun in Finley's truck and got a bad feeling

about him. Finley dropped the friend home first and this friend begged Cheryl to spend the night with her, but Cheryl declined. Cheryl Siegel never made it home after that and her mother called the police to file a missing person's report. Police arrested James Finley at his girlfriend's house and he immediately attempted to blame others for the murder, including his brother-in-law and members of his motorcycle gang. But everyone he accused voluntarily went to the police station to be questioned, and they were all clear of any involvement in Cheryl Siegel's murder. Finley attempted to give misleading statements to police, but it proved useless. Investigators had found a pool of blood on the passenger seat of Finley's vehicle. Now, he claimed he allowed his brother-in-law to borrow his vehicle and had no idea how the blood got there.

Finley said he later attempted to burn the seat with battery acid to get rid of the blood's stench. Police matched tire tracks found the crime scene to tires on Finley's vehicle. The final nail in Finley's coffin was the bullet that killed Cheryl Siegel. It matched Finley's gun. On January 25, 1971, a jury found. found James Finley guilty of her murder. He had been scheduled for execution on June 30th, 1971, but his defense attorneys discovered some portions of the court transcript missing. The court delayed his execution while his attorney filed a motion with the court for a new trial.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, and James Finley was removed from death row and was ineligible for parole. After his sentencing, Finley was quoted as saying, You're going to know I'm not guilty when you get the next one. He was referring to another victim. After Cheryl Spiegel is found dead, people speculated that two murders might have been connected due to the similarities in their names, and Finley's statement at sentencing.

The dates of the murders differed by only one day, and the victim's names by only two letters. Cheryl Spiegel's first name was spelled with two L's at the end instead of one, but Finley has been in prison since January 1971 and therefore could not have murdered Cheryl Spiegel. So it seems like just a very bizarre coincidence, but I think more if it makes you stop for a second and consider if somehow there could be a connection. Cheryl Spiegel's father, Billy Joe, passed away in 1988. He was 53 years old. Cheryl's brutal murder was the only murder Highland Heights had seen until January 8, 1993,

when 17-year-old Gary Gamfer murdered 8-year-old Jessica Buckler. In June 1993, Highland Heights police announced they were looking into fresh leads, but declined to elaborate, only saying they were taking the tips very seriously. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodont.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Around this time, Cheryl's older brothers, Mark and Mickey were interviewed in 1993 by Brenda, bro. of the Cincinnati Inquirer. At the time, they were 35 and 32 years old, respectively. Mark discussed his close relationship with his little sister and how her murder changed their lives. Mark and Cheryl were born 50 weeks apart and were as close as twins. Billy Joe used to say that Mark waited for Cheryl before growing up. Cheryl's body was found on Mark's birthday. He said to Brent. He said to Brent. And bro, I lost my best friend.

It's screwed up my life. Cheryl's murder devastated the Spiegel family. Mark and Mickey never received counseling, and the emotional scars lingered for decades. Mickey Spiegel said during the 1993 interview that the police had a possible suspect, but the police hadn't given him any further information. In May 1995,

investigators relaunched Cheryl Spiegel's murder case after a report was televised on WKRC TV in Cincinnati. Many people called in tips naming someone in particular as Cheryl's killer. The police suspected this man was responsible for Cheryl's murder, but they didn't have any evidence to prove it. The man lived in Highland Heights, but didn't have a criminal record. To this day, no arrest has ever been made in Cheryl Spiegel's murder. So the question remains, who murdered Cheryl Spiegel?

We talked about some of the people suspected by Lerl. locals, that never amounted to anything. But there are other possibilities. Beth discussed some of them with us. Where I started was with that man on the porch who was thought by so many people in the town to be a strong suspect. And I started with him because he was the one that was pointed out to me from the beginning. And I thought, well, I'm either going to understand why these people all suspect him or I'm going to be able to eliminate him and realize that he's just the town weirdo. And the interesting thing is that there are some things about him that make him a suspect in my mind or a person of interest, like his family owned the land on which Cheryl's body was found, and he was known to be out there a lot.

And you think, oh, he lives directly across the street from where her bus stop was and her body is found on his family land. And witnesses say they see him out there often. That they're alone. You're like, oh, that's making alarm bells go off. But then you take a step back and realize, like, he had a time card. And he had people saying he was at work when she disappeared. And then you, you know, he was sort of a creepy guy. He would stare at kids and follow school buses, but he never talked to anyone.

He never approached the children. He never touched anyone. He has no history of violent crimes. He's got no arrest records for molestation or rape. So then you think maybe he's just a weirdo whose family happened to live out there. And it's still a question mark, but I think now in modern thinking, he would have been that creepy guy in the area that people just felt quick to blame. And then they just ended with him. But then with further research, you realize, well, there could be even more viable suspects.

but he definitely was the one right away who people suspected. Just because he was weird in the way he acted. I'll say this is the issue for me is that with every suspect, there are like two or three things that give you pause and you think, oh, it could be that person. But then there's another two or things that sort of eliminate them. And that is the frustration is so many of these old cases, it becomes pretty obvious who the main suspect is,

and it's a matter of proving it. With this, there's three, four, five people that all seem like likely contenders. Then without physical evidence, it's hard to eliminate them. But there was a man who actually lived on the same street, Bachel, who was a heavy drug user. He was a part of a car theft ring. He was known to be violent. And a lot of people on that street of Rose Avenue suspected him and were scared.

of him. He was known to sort of be inappropriate with younger girls, just some of the things he would say and do. But I, and, um, he was investigated by the police and he said some incriminating things like he saw her that morning. He knew he was the last person to have seen her alive. He made eye contact with her, but she looked the other way, you know, and he drove on. Um, supposedly he had completely cleaned out his car. So when the police came, and looked in it, even so much so that he had pressure washed his trunk. There's a lot of things that, you know, that makes me uncomfortable. But when you look into his history further, he was arrested numerous times, but it was

for car thefts and drugs. He was never accused of rape or molestation. He was not known to ever interact with the kids on the street. He was violent. He had a temper, but it was usually related to the crimes he was committing. But that does. doesn't mean that that morning he saw her and was in a drug-induced haze and recognized her from the street and offered her a ride and then it went bad. And he was known to have dumped some of the stolen car parts that they didn't need out in the county where she was found.

And he would have been familiar with that area. So he was the one that was on the radar and still could be. It could be him as a suspect. You know, the family was looked at because her dad says he saw her leave out the back door, but no one else really has come forward to say that they did see her that morning. Besides her brother, she saw her at home. There was one woman who two weeks after Cheryl disappeared after Cheryl's body was found said that she thought she saw Cheryl that morning heading back down the street as if she

moved it to the top of the street and realized she missed a bus and was heading home. But you read that and think, is she sure it was that day? And how do we know it was that day? And she couldn't remember what she was wearing that day. So like maybe it was the day before. Maybe it was. So I still think sometimes, well, that's all according to the dad that she even left that house that day. What if she didn't? Now, I don't know what his connection to New Hope Road would be besides that his side of the family all lived out in that county. There's a serial killer who was picking up girls in Ohio who were walking to school. It means Eugene Gall. He's still in prison.

And this all happened in the 70s. And he's in prison now for life for picking up on two different occasions, girls who were walking to school alone, raping them and murdering them and leaving them in a deserted places. What if it's a person like that who literally was driving by and saw this girl at the top of the street and puts her up? We put Beth on the spot a little and asked her to share her theory on the case. I'm going on my own gut instinct. Here is where I have a hard time believing it was a completely random act, and that is that it was so dark and so foggy that morning and there were no street lights there by the engines to her street where she would have been waiting for the bus.

If she made it all the way up to the top of that street in the dark by herself and realized that the bus had already came and went, I don't see a 10-year-old standing up there in the dark by herself just waiting, right? I think most kids would turn around and hurry back home to say, I missed the bus. And her brothers have told me that their dad would have just driven her to school. it was, I mean, it was almost in walking distance of their house, but it wouldn't have been a big deal if she had missed the bus. So if she was standing at the top of the street and like, holy cow, I missed the bus, and at that moment a serial killer drives by or some other pedophile that wants to just grab her, it could. But what are the chances?

See, then you think, okay, well, then she turns around and she's going back home. or she was walking toward the top of the street and somebody intercepted her, who would have had to have been right there on the street. And that, to me, is more likely than it being so completely random because I don't know how she would have been spotted that day unless it was just right there in that passing moment of her standing alone at the end of the street. It is said that most of the time the killer is going to go somewhere where they're comfortable. So if you really have a body in your car and you need to get rid of it, you're going to go to a place that pops into your mind that I know this place where nobody's going to see me and that you know where to park and you know where to hide a body.

And maybe if you are spotted, it wouldn't be out of the norm because people have seen you there before. So it doesn't mean that it always goes that way, but it's because this place was so isolated where she was found, it would lead you to think it's not a place that just a real place that just a real place that just a real place. regular person with no experience out there would have found. He would have had no way that that road was there. One question that I still really grapple with was the fact that it was her 10th birthday, which it's just so heartbreaking because that's such a big deal to kids in general, but little girls, when you go from 9 to 10, it's just a special day. And I just know that she probably had to have been excited. It was her birthday. So I sometimes think, was it really just such bad luck that she happened to be picked up on her birthday,

or does that play into the story somehow? And the person who approached her either stopped her that day and said, isn't it your birthday? You know, happy birthday. Let me give you a ride to school and you used that to his advantage. Or was it somehow planned? And because it's your birthday, let's meet up or something and go do something and I'll take you somewhere for your birthday.

Now, in speaking with her family, they don't think that that would have been prearranged. and that she would have had a relationship with anyone who would have been able to do that and prearrange it and have her meet. So then that leads to the fact that this just randomly happened on her 10th birthday. Beth knows that this case may never be solved. And she accepts that. But she feels a strong connection to Cheryl and has committed to do what she can for Cheryl, whether it's continuing to work on Cheryl's case or making her final resting spot.

as beautiful as it can be. There's a couple sort of odd connections that on a spiritual level, I felt like perhaps there's something more at play here that I'm being called to do it. And I know that sounds sort of silly. But when I started researching and said that Cheryl was born on October 19th, 1961, and she disappeared and we assume was killed on October 19th, 1971, which was her 10th birthday. And my father-in-law, my late father-in-law, the one who had warned his kids about the man on the porch,

his birthday is also October 19. And I was like, well, that's kind of weird that they had the same birthday. And then when I'll research Cheryl's story a little more, I found out that she was buried in an unmarked grave. And from our understanding was that the parents of Cheryl just did not have the money to pay for a headstone. and sadly one was never put in. But when I found out when she was buried, where she was buried, it's within sight of my father-in-law's grave,

and they're in the same cemetery, which is a huge cemetery. They're close together. And then I started feeling like, I don't know, maybe this is a sign that I'm supposed to do it. So we started to go find me and we raised the money. We got her headstone. And once I got started,

And I am sort of OCD, maybe obsessive about things, but I kept thinking, well, when do I quit? You know, okay, well, how much do you tell the story and then you just walk away? And now I can't, I feel, like, until I feel that every avenue has been exhausted and every stone has been overturned and every person that was involved can be talked to or looked at, I'm not going to quit. And I can't really explain it. I just feel like I owe this child that much. I've since met her older brothers and meeting them. It's like, okay, I will do, I will do this for her, for her spirit and for her family. And it's also because I have a daughter at the same age, I think, that now as a mother,

I don't want to give up on this girl because I feel a lot of people did. So, Morph, this is no doubt an interesting but extremely tragic case. we haven't done an interview type episode in a while. I think some of that is due to COVID. We've had trouble getting a hold of people, but we were glad to get back to that. I know a lot of people like the kind of interview style snippets that we put into episodes. I thought Beth really added a lot of clarity around this case, especially because, you know, in some some of these types of cases. This is not a well-known case.

Some of the details are really kind of hard to find. I think any time we can have someone on with us to help walk us through the details and facts of the case, it's a benefit for us and for the listeners. Yeah. I mean, just additional insight that probably you and I can't gather on our own. I think that's always a plus. You know, when I look at this case, you have the kind of strange, bizarre similarities between Cheryl Spiegel and Cheryl Siegel. I don't think that police think there's any connection there,

but you can't argue the fact that it's bizarre, that the names are so close and the dates and everything like that. I think if someone had not been caught and convicted in Cheryl Siegel's murder, there would be a lot more conspiracy type theories that connect the two murders. Yeah, I think a lot of times in some of these cases where they're unsolved, especially, you can see why people leap to conclusions or go down certain avenues because there are sometimes parallels to other cases. But as you mentioned in this instance. And we know that James Finley couldn't have killed Cheryl Spiegel because he was locked up for Cheryl Siegel's murder, but still those parallels are there.

I guess it's not impossible that somehow there's some connections, but we know that he's not responsible at least. And then, you know, when you go back to the particulars of that day, right, Cheryl Spiegel doesn't make it to school, but in previous days, she had told people that she most likely would not be there. I think that adds an element to me. It means she had a plan or at least thought she had a plan for that day. So does that take out the fact that, you know, she was abducted at the bus stop, not necessarily, but it also to me means that she could have hitched a ride somewhere else, started walking. I mean, I just think it opens up a lot of possibilities about what could have

happened as opposed to a case where there's no indication that a victim had any other inclinations than to attend school. Then you're getting into, well, something must have happened between the house and the bus stop. And I think it's all of these unanswered questions and things circulating around different possibilities that enable different residents of this town to start becoming suspicious of each other and pointing the fingers at each other a little bit. Yeah, I think you're going to have that happen, especially in a, in a smaller town like this.

I think it also is what allows the amateur sluice and online detectives to delve down those rabbit holes, like you said, right? Because there are a lot of unanswered questions here above and beyond the big one, which is who murdered Cheryl Spiegel. There are all the details that kind of lead up to how that would have happened that will maybe hopefully someday break this case. Once again, special thanks goes out to Beth at gone and the fog. video.com for joining us in this episode. Thanks also goes with to W Buck at

TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out and give us a five-star rating. Keep telling your friends that are into true crime about a criminology podcast, that word of mouth really goes a long way towards helping us out. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at criminology pod. We're also on Facebook. You can find us by searching for a criminology podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, which is criminology podcast, discussion and fans. So that is it for another episode of criminology, the murder of Cheryl Spiegel. More if I think I speak for you,

when I say this is one we would love to see solved. I think that applies to all of the unsolved episodes we do. Yeah, I agree with you. We just want to see all of these murders sold. So Morf and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week.

Take care, everyone.