Criminology - The Springfield Three

Episode Date: March 14, 2020

In June 1992, Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter, and Stacy McCall vanished from Springfield, Missouri. The three, and their disappearance case, would become known as The Springfield Three. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the mysterious case of The Springfield Three. The police had a number of leads and tips that they worked but turned out to be rabbit holes. Law enforcement developed a number of theories in the case and they had a number of suspects. But, they could never put together enough evidence against any suspect to charge anyone. 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 103 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you today? I'm doing good. How about you? I'm doing pretty good, man. I got to be honest with you. I'm a little panicky with some of the recent things that have come out about the coronavirus. I mean, I think everybody has to be, you know, at least somewhat worried about it.

I'll be honest with you, man, when everything first started breaking, I wasn't all that concerned. You know, I thought the information was a little hard to figure out, right? How bad is this? It didn't seem like the numbers were that bad here in the U.S. But it just seems like it could grow exponentially. And now we're seeing a lot of really bad signs. You know, the stock market has plunged.

You know, even my daughter in college, they basically said, go home and stay home for like a month. We're going to do online classes only. I know you're a big basketball fan too. They're canceling basketball and college games and March Madness. What's going on with all that? Yeah, the NBA has suspended their season. And I'm still trying to figure out what's going to. to happen with the NCAA tournament.

So yeah, I don't know. You and I are taping pretty late in the week later than normal. And it just seems like in the last day or two, there's been some scary things coming out. I think it's starting to sink in that it's going to be something more serious than some of the other things. Maybe we've had to deal with in the past. Well, and I think that speaks to the panic. Right. I mean, people get panicked.

And that's what you see. The stock market run on grocery stores. things like that. People are worried. There's no doubt about it. Well, hopefully everyone out there stays safe and washes her hands and stays healthy. Yeah, no, definitely. I'm looking forward to the day when the coronavirus is not the dominant topic, right? At some point, we've got to reach the point where we're on the tail end of it,

when things start to kind of trail off the number of cases. but right now we are not there. All right, Morp, if we had some new Patreon supporters. So let's go ahead and give our shoutouts. We had Doug Kaplan, Amy Marie Hall,

Amanda, Kate Smoka, Brooke Ellis, Sharon Spiller, and Bethany Bound. So a lot of great new support there, and we really appreciate it. Yeah,

that's amazing and we can't thank you enough. And if there's anyone out there that would like to support criminology on Patreon, you can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. And I kind of want to put it out there more if, you know, a lot of people are asking us about where they can hear all of our older episodes, right? All of our episodes older than six months, they're available in one place. That's Stitcher Premium. And we're talking full seasons on Zodiac, Ted Bundy, and the Golden State Killer.

Yeah, we also have multi-parters on Son of Sam, Gary Ridgway. and so much more. There's over 75 commercial free episodes free on Stitcher Premium. And best of all, that comes with a 30-day free trial. So if you're looking for that stuff, download the Stitcher Premium app now and start your binging. All right, buddy, it's time to jump into this episode. And we have a very fascinating case,

one that gets requested by a lot of listeners. In June of 1992, three women disappeared without a time. Trace in Springfield, Missouri, known as the Springfield 3. Cheryl Levitt, Susie Streeter, and Stacey McCall have never been found. The case made national headlines, and it continues to intrigue amateur slews across the country. People continue to ask the question, what happened to these three women who have become known

as the Springfield 3? Springfield, Missouri is a decent-sized town, situated. in the southwestern part of the state. It's known locally as the Queen City of the Ozarks. Suzanne Susie Strader and Stacey McCall were two beautiful young women who were looking forward to high school graduation. In early June 1992, the two friends were set to graduate from Kickapoo High School in Springfield. Susie was going to follow on her mother's footsteps and become a hair dresser while Stacy was headed to Southwest Missouri State for college in Springfield. They had big dreams and rigorous pursue them. Susie and Stacy had been good friends in elementary school, but they went there

separate ways by the time they entered high school. During the second semester of their senior year at Kickapoo High School, the two reconnected. And Susie started hanging out with Stacy and her popular friends, even joining them at the high school prom. Susie struggled living at home with her mother, Cheryl Levitt and moved out of Cheryl's home at least twice. During the summer of 1991, Susie moved in with her then 17-year-old boyfriend Mike Kovacs, who lived at his grandmother's home. In September of 91, Susie and Mike broke up and Susie moved back in with her mother at her mother's apartment. On October 23, 1991, Susie petitioned the Green County Court for a restraining order against Kovacs.

She alleged that he threatened and harassed her. In her petition, she wrote, quote, I'm afraid of respondent Kovacs, and there is an immediate and present danger of abuse to me. Kovacs denied the allegations, saying he never spoke to her after their breakup, although he did admit they had physically fought during their relationship. On the same day Susie filed the petition,

she and her mother, Cheryl Levitt, filed a police report accusing Kovac, and another woman of threatening Susie and twice slashing a tire on Susie's car. That police report read in part. Levitt is afraid physical harm may come to Streeter from Kovacs, along with this woman who wasn't publicly named. If this is not stopped now, Kovacs and the woman have repeatedly threatened Streeter on the phone and at Streeter school.

Susie's coworkers back the allegations. against Kovacs and said they walked Susie to her car after work because she was so afraid of Mike Kovacs. The court granted Susie a 10-day restraining order prohibiting Kovacs from having any contact with her. The order stated he was not allowed to abuse, threaten to abuse, molest, or disturbed the peace of the petitioner, which was Susie. He was also ordered to stay away from her home, school, and place of employment. The court set a hearing for November 5th, 1992 to possibly extend the order for several more months. Susie worked for several months as a receptionist at a health club, but left in February 1992 to work at a local movie theater. In early spring, Susie once again

moved out of her mother's apartment and in with her brother, Bart, who had recently moved back to Springfield from Seattle. But after an argument with Bart, too much. months later, Susie moved into Cheryl's new home. Susie was a creature of habit, almost OCD to some degree, according to one of her friends. She had a couple of birth marks, one on her chin and one on her arm, which made her self-conscious. She thought they were very noticeable, even though they barely showed up in pictures. Stacey McCall was born on April 23rd, 1974, to Stuart and Janice McCall. She was one of three daughters born to the couple. She resided with her parents at 843 East Meadow Lark Street in Springfield.

At Kickapoo High School, she got good grades. She was popular, although she didn't participate in many activities. She worked Monday through Thursday as a secretary at the Springfield Gymnastics Center. Stacey had beautiful, long, wavy brown hair that, went all the way down to her hips. She had so much hair that she had to use two different sets of electric curlers, and then her mom would have to braid it for her. Even though Stacey stood only 5'3, she had dreams of modeling.

And she often modeled wedding gowns for a local bridal shop called the Total Brine. Her friends and family called her Spacey Stacy. because when people told jokes, Stacey would blankly stare before it finally sank in and she got the joke, she laughed at herself. People laughed along with her. I don't think it was said more to be mean. I think it was more of an endearing type of nickname. Stacey was very close to her older sisters, Lisa and Mary. and the three sisters often bickered over borrowed clothes.

More if I can tell you right now, that is something that happens in my house on a routine basis. And not only with my two daughters, but with my wife as well, right? At a certain point, your kids grow up to be the same size as your wife. And that happened to me. It was like all three of them were sharing clothes

and fights start to break. break out fights. I say that. Not real fights, but you know what I mean. Because at a certain point, nobody even knows whose clothes or whose. And everybody's wearing everything. And then, you know, somebody gets up in the morning and they want to wear a certain piece of clothing. But it's already gone because somebody's left the house in it. So you're telling me that my nine year old and three year old bickering that's never going to end. That will never end. It will change. the type of bickering and what they bicker over, I think changes over time. And a lot of parents have experienced that. And then what you hope for is that at a certain point, they get to an age where,

you know, the bond just becomes super strong. That's what you're hoping for. And I'm starting to see that in my two girls. And it's a great feeling. Cheryl Levitt was a 47 year old single mother. Besides Susie, Cheryl also had a son named Bart Streeter, who was eight years older than Susie. Cheryl grew up in the Seattle area and had been married twice, although one of the sources we checked said three times. In 1964, she married the father of her children, Brent Streeter, but that marriage ended in 1973, shortly after the birth of Susie on March 9th of that year. In 1980, Cheryl married Don Levitt and moved from Seattle to Springfield, Missouri. The marriage lasted several years until 1989 when the two divorced.

Don moved back to Seattle and eventually remarried. Bart went to live with his father. In 1992, Cheryl worked as a hairdresser at New Attitudes Hair Salon, located at 210 West Sunshine in Springfield. And she was busy. She had about 250 regular customers. She worked hard to provide a good life for herself and Susie. In April 1992, Cheryl purchased on contract

a small three-bedroom home located at 1717 East Delmar Street in Springfield. It was her dream home. She hired workers to rewire the home and install central air conditioning. Cheryl put dead bolts on the doors for added security. By early June, Susie and Stacey were preparing for graduation. They were both extremely excited for their futures. They were young, beautiful. They had their whole lives.

right out there in front of them, but unfortunately their future was ripped out from underneath them. At 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 6, 1992. Susie and Stacey graduated from Kickapoo High School at Hammond Center on the campus of Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield. Afterwards, the two, along with Stacy's best friend, Janelle Kirby, posed for a graduation picture. The three girls are smiling. They seem incredibly happy. It's one of the last pictures taken of Susie and Stacey.

The graduation ceremony ended at around 6 p.m. And it was time for the students to celebrate. But first, Susie was going to grab a pizza with her mother, and Stacey was going out to eat with her parents. Both planned to go to Janelle's home in Battlefield around 7.30 p.m. They planned to drive to Branson later that night because they were joining friends at an amusement park there on June 7th. Janelle told Cheryl Levitt they would call her mother, Kathy Kirby, once they checked into the hotel.

Janelle also told Cheryl to call Kathy if she needed to get a hold of Susie. Kathy told Cheryl she didn't want the girls going to Branson and was going to try and convince him to stay. Cheryl said, well, good luck. I think they have their minds made up. Later that evening, between 8 and 8.15 p.m., Susie, arrived at the Kirby home in nearby Battlefield, Missouri, where the Kirby's were throwing a graduation party for Janelle. Stacey arrived at 8.30. Susie and Stacey left their cars at Janelle's house, and they walked with Janelle to a nearby birthday and graduation party at the home of a boy named Brian Joy, located at 5-002 Coach Drive in Battlefield.

At 9.30 p.m., Janelle called her mother, Kathy Kirby, to say that the three girls decided against leaving for Branson as they had originally planned, and they said they were going to stay at the party and leave for Branson in the morning. Stacey McCall called her mother, Janice, to tell her the same thing. Janice was relieved. because she kind of was really worried about the girls getting into an accident if they had made the choice to drive at night. At 1245 a.m., several people, including Susie, Stacey, and Janelle, left Brian Joy's party and headed to another party at the home of a fellow classmate, Michelle Elder. That party was located at 1532 East Hanover Street in Springfield. Susie and Stacy left their cars at the Kirby House,

and all three girls rode with others to the Springfield party. The party at Michelle's home had a lot of people there. Susie complained about her stomach hurting, but seemed in good spirits, as did Stacy. The police showed up at 1.50 a.m. after receiving a complaint and broke up the party. The girls decided to head back to Brian Joy's house in Battlefield with Shane Appleby, another classmate. They were accompanied by a couple carloads of friends. The girls wanted to stay the night, but Brian told them they couldn't because there were too many people.

So Shane drove the girls to Janelle's house at 205 a.m. The Kirby home was full of out-of-town relatives. Kathy Kirby told Susie and Stacey they could stay the night on a pallet with blankets. But Susie thought she and Stacey would be more comfortable on her brand new waterbed at her house. So they left the Kirby home at 210. A.m. Kathy overheard Susie tell Stacey, follow me to my house. And Stacey replied, okay, I will. Susie left in her red Ford escort, followed by Stacy in her red Toyota Corolla and the two-headed for Susie's Delmar Street home. But what happened between 2.10 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. is a mystery.

There are a number of discrepancies between the 1992 reports and more recent sources on the next sequence of events. I think because of these discrepancies, we're trying to be as accurate as possible. At 7.30 a.m. on Saturday, June 7.92, Janelle Kirby called Susie's home several times to see if the girls were ready for their trip to white, Water Amusement Park. This was located near Branson, Missouri. Each time she called, there was no answer. Susie's good friend, Nigel Holderby, also called regarding the Branson trip, and she too never got a hold of Susie. Nigel left the message for Susie to call her back, and then waited for the call that never came. Janice McCall called Cheryl's home several times trying to reach Stacy. When no one could get a hold of the girls, Janice and friends of the girls went to the Delmar Street home. Early reports

say it was 1230 p.m. But more recent reports say it was earlier in the morning. When the group arrived at Cheryl and Susie's home, they felt some relief when they saw Cheryl, Susie and Stacey's cars in the half circle driveway and carport. But Nigel noticed right away that something was not right. Cheryl's blue car was parked in the carport, but it was known that Susie always parked her car there. Susie's car was parked in the driveway in front of Stacy's car. This was just the first of many things that seemed to be out of the ordinary. Janice and the friends noticed broken glass from the porch globe light,

but the light bulb itself was intact. Mike and Janelle cleaned it up for Cheryl and then threw the broken glass into a nearby dumpster. Janice noticed the house was unlocked, so she opened the door and started yelling out for the women. There was no answer. So all of them walked into Cheryl's home. When they went inside, they saw that the living room was immaculate. The TV was still on, but the only thing showing on the screen was snow, and it appeared that she may have been in bed at some point in the night. Janice and the friends walked into Susie's bedroom in the back of the home and saw the women's purses on the bedroom floor near the steps by the doorway that led to the kitchen.

They went through the purses, and Janice noticed that Cheryl's purse contained a $900 hour deposit, and her cigarettes were there too. Cheryl was a heavy smoker and wouldn't have left without her cigarettes or her purse. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. A short while later, they found Susie's dog cinnamon and the dog was in a very agitated state. It was barking. It was yipping. then the telephone ring and Janus answered it. On the other end, the caller was making lewd sexual comments. So Janus hung up. Now here again, Morph, this is a place where reports seem to differ. Some reports say it was Janelle that answered the phone. Some say it was Janice. But sometime later, someone noticed that the message light was flashing on the answering machine

and they played the message. And just like the earlier call, the caller was making lewd, sexual comments, but someone deleted the message. And it's not clear if this was done accidentally or on purpose. Now, at that point in time, they didn't know for sure that there was anything wrong. But looking back,

obviously that was a mistake, right? Morph to delete this message because it could have provided some vital clues. Even though Janice was really worried about the girls, she didn't call 911 at this time because again, she thought they would be back at any point while Janice and the friends were waiting for the women to return. They started cleaning up the house and they even repaired and awkwardly bent window blind. According to Crime Watch Daily,

not realizing they were cleaning up a potential crime scene. As the day progressed, and the women never returned back to the Delmar Street home, Janice called police from the Levitt home at 9 p.m. When police arrived, they immediately knew something bad had happened to the women and told Janice they were going to take a report as a missing person's case

and added that they suspected there was some sort of foul play. Police started the investigation and treated Cheryl Levitt's home like a crime scene, but they had little evidence to go on. When Janice and friends cleaned up the home, they unknowingly contaminated any evidence that may have been present. There were no fibers, no hair, no blood, no DNA. And police couldn't recover the erased message on the answering machine. Police found something very strange.

In Susie Streeter's bookcase and her room, there were a lot of item regarding devil worshipping satanic cults and things like that. Police learned that Susie had dated a boy who had been accused of grave robbing. The boy's name was Dustin Reckla and he along with some sidekicks, Michael Clay and Joseph Rydell, broke into a mausoleum at Maple Park Cemetery. They stole some gold teeth from skulls. Reckla subsequently sold 25 gold teeth to a pawn shop for about $30. The crime occurred on February 21st, 1992.

The three men were later arrested and charged with felony institutional vandalism. Susie gave a statement to police on March 5th, which was said to have angered Michael, Clay, and Dustin Reckla. Susie broke up with Reckla. over this whole ordeal because she was disgusted by what they had done. Additionally, Susie agreed to testify in court against these two boys. Police wondered if Reckla was angry enough to kill Susie for what she had done. They tracked down the two men, but Reckla and Clay denied any involvement in the disappearances, and there was no evidence linking them to a crime.

The chief of police at the time cleared the boys of involvement, but current investigators have said they don't believe the men should have been cleared. Police also questioned Susie's brother, Bart Streeter, and her former boyfriend Mike Kovacs. Both men agreed to take a polygraph test, and they both passed. They were ruled out as suspects. Investigators discovered that Cheryl Levin had received a phone call from a friend around 9.30 p.m. On June 6th, there are some more recent reports, more effective. that list the call as having occurred between 11 and 1130 p.m. So again, there are some

discrepancies in this case. At the time, Cheryl was hanging wallpaper border and stripping a chair. But according to this friend, everything seemed fine. As the investigation pressed on, someone placed a sealed letter in a newsletter paper rack that led off. officers to the Boulevard Road Apartments. A local television station received a phone call from a man who told them that they could find the letter in the paper rack at Smitty's on Glenstone Avenue. The letter contained a drawing of the apartment complex with the phrase, use ruse of gas man checking for leak.

So police were very interesting. in this lead, they started knocking on doors at this apartment complex. They tried to search as many of the apartments as they could, but it really didn't lead to anything. A day before the search, a pair of women's panties and a Nike tennis shoe were found along railroad tracks near Sheryl's home. But police couldn't confirm whether these belonged to any of the missing women. Police then focused on two cars seen in the area of Delmar Street and Glenstone Avenue. between 2 a.m. June 7th and 7 a.m. June 8th. One was a burgundy 1987 two-door Toyota Supera. It was reported stolen from the Battlefield Mall parking lot between 4 p.m. June 6th and 2 p.m. June 7th.

The other vehicle was a dark blue 1985 Dodge van that had been converted into a finished-style motorhome. It was stolen from 1503 North Glendstone Avenue, sometime between 4 p.m. June 6th and 2 p.m. June 7th. Police pursued these leads, but nothing came from them. So police have a number of leads, but they all turned out to be rabbit holes. And then police received what they called a credible tip. A man named Steve Thompson was working at the APCO A-Mart on Fremont Avenue when he said Cheryl Levin stopped by and asked if he had seen her daughter, Susie Streeter, and two of Susie's friends. Steve said that Cheryl did not mention the names of Susie's friends. He said Cheryl poked her head in the door at 2.15 a.m. on June 7.

Cheryl asked him if he had seen the girls in the past hour, hour and a half. Cheryl had lived in that area before buying the Del Mar Street home. Thompson said it was a very quick stop. And when he told her that he had not seen them, she left. Getting into an older, larger, dark car, it definitely was not her blue Mitsubishi eclipse. But Thompson later changed his story and said it was possible that the car Cheryl got into could have been her blue eclipse. Thompson told police he did see Susie and Stacey McCall, but it was hours before Cheryl showed up at his place of employment. He said the girls were in the store

between 10 and 1030 p.m. on June 6th. They purchased a few items and they both left in separate cars. Stacey got into a dark gold car, something like a Monty. Carlo or a Grand Prix. When the girls' friends were later asked about, you know, a car with this description, they said they didn't know of one. Stacey was apparently with a white male in his 30s with dark, stringy, thin hair and a mustache. The man popped his head in the door and told the two girls he'd forgotten to buy cigarettes. So more if I think this is a good place, to kind of stop for a minute and talk about the story that came out from this man, Steve Thompson. It's kind of all over the place, right?

It's hard to reconcile some of the things that he said. All right. Cheryl pops in, says, hey, have you seen the girls? He tells her no. But then later says, okay, I did see them in the store between 10, 10, 30 people. PM and then goes on to give additional details, such as, you know, what car they got in, what this other man they were with looked like, what he said. It's kind of strange, right?

When you say some of these things out loud, they don't make sense. Yeah. I don't think it's necessarily because he's got something to hide. He may just not be a reliable person when it comes to recounting details. but you definitely brought up a good point about why not say, hey, I did see the girls, but it was hours ago. And then he originally said the car that they got into wasn't her car when she left, but then all of a sudden added later, it may have been the car.

So he doesn't seem reliable for one reason or another. Well, and I get it. I am a person that is not great with details. You know, if you asked me about something that happened a week or two ago, I would struggle to be honest with you, to recall very specific details of certain events, right? Because at the time, they don't mean anything to me. There's nothing standing out to tell me, hey, this is something you really need to pay attention

to so that you can regurgitate it later on. At the time, it's just another interaction. It's another day. The part that I really had a lot of trouble with is, you know, this. guy telling Cheryl never saw him. And then later saying, oh, yeah, I did see him. That part kind of boggles me because that is one thing that I think you would remember. To their credit, the police did question Thompson extensively over his sightings. He said that he only had about 10 customers a night at the store. He made eye contact with Susie, and that's how he remembered

her. But Janelle Kirby said she had been with the girls from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. and that they had been in the store. So Thompson couldn't have seen them in the store when he said he did. Janelle's mother, Kathy Kirby, also disputed his citing of Cheryl, claiming Cheryl knew Susie was at the Kirby house, and she would have called Kathy if she needed to talk to Susie. The problem with Kathy's statement is that the girls weren't at her house the entire time, because they had gone to two separate graduation parties at night. And at the time Cheryl was at Apco Amart, Susie and Stacey would have been on their way back to the Delmar Street. home. Thompson was pretty sure it was Cheryl, but in the end, he wasn't 100% positive.

Police continued searching for the Springfield 3. They searched Green Lawn Cemetery after receiving a tip and looked near a Ford dealership off Missouri 125 east of Springfield. They found nothing. A woman phoned in a tip saying she saw Susie or a girl that she thought looked a lot like Susie. Driving an older green panel van on the morning she went missing, the woman also said Susie looked scared or distressed and this woman heard a male voice threatening Susie. The van was only about two miles from Cheryl and Susie's home. So police have more evidence, another lead to check into. And they stopped a lot of similar vans.

They asked drivers to show them. their IDs. They also parked a van similar to the one that the tipster described in front of the police station, hoping that someone would recognize the van. But in the end, like a lot of the tips that they had checked out, this one led nowhere. Another woman, a waitress at Georgia's Steakhouse located at 339 South Glenstone Avenue, said she saw Cheryl, Susie, and another young woman, a Burnett together at the restaurant between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on June 7th. The women stayed about 45 minutes and left together. They all seemed fine to her. Police couldn't explain the possible discrepancies between Thompson's sighting of Cheryl at the convenience store and this one. The waitress

said Cheryl and Susie had eaten there before, but not for a couple months or more. Investigators started focusing on Cheryl Levitt's past, and they told the media that drugs could have possibly been involved in the disappearances. Rumors of organized crime and other illegal activities were rampant, but authorities called them bogus. Cheryl's parents were so upset by, you know, some of these rumors that they wrote a letter to the community in the local newspaper. The letter read, printed rumors, subtle innuendos, and not so subtle implications.

relating to some dark, shady past involvement for or by Cheryl are totally false and totally unwarranted. Friends and family said Cheryl was dead set against drugs and wouldn't even drive one mile over the speed limit. And it really wasn't long after this morph that police made an announcement that they no longer believe that hardcore drug use was a factor in the women's disappearances. One theory the police came up with involved transients in the area near Cheryl's home. For years, Delmar Street residents had seen their fair share of them. Many of them used to hang out in a dark parking lot behind a small shopping center on South Glenstone Avenue. This was located to the rear of Delmar Street. Police announced they were looking for one transient in particular,

who was seen multiple times in two days around Cheryl Levitt's home, once on the morning of June 6th, and again on the afternoon of June 7th. He was described as 35 to 45 years old, 5 foot 8, and he weighed about 145 pounds. He had shoulder-length sandy reddish brown hair. He also had a beard and freckled tan complexion. A composite sketch of the transient suspect was created, and it generated several hundred calls to police. But they had no solid leads on the man's identity until later that summer. It was later that summer that police received a tip.

from another Missouri County Sheriff named Bob Dotson. Dotson said that one of two men in Lebanon, Missouri, which is about 50 miles away from Springfield, resembled the composite sketch of the transient. So investigators traveled to Lebanon. They put these two men under surveillance for four days. And then had the men take polygraph tests. The test indicated that both men had no involvement in the Springfield 3's disappearance.

One of the two men question was considered capable of having some involvement. And I think in large part more if this was based on the fact that both of these men were suspects in the murder of a 19-year-old named Tanya Lynn Hastings from West Plains, Missouri. Hastings' decomposed body was found in La Clead County on September 8th, 1990. She was last seen alive August 30th of that year. The sheriff never had enough evidence to arrest these two men in connection with Tanya's murder. But you can see how them being possible suspects in the murder of this 19-year-old girl would lead police to believe that they were possibly capable of having something to do with the Springfield 3.

At the end of September 1992, Cheryl Levitt's home went up for sale for $46,900, leaving many in the community aghast and feeling that it was too soon for her house to go up for sale. But Cheryl's uncle, Cliff Williams, decided it needed to be sold. He had been appointed conservator of Cheryl's estate on such a substantial. September 11, 1992. By the time the house went on the market, the police had finished processing the house for clues. Two months later, and six months after the women disappeared, Oprah Winfrey covered the case on her daily talk show, which resulted in over 100 calls to police from California and several southeastern states. Some were about possible sightings. Others were about potential

jailed suspects on other charges. But unfortunately, nothing further came. from the broadcast. And more if I think you and I have talked about this before, you know, a case being profile on a big TV show, which Oprah Winfrey had at the time, her show was huge. But you can also throw in there America's Most Wanted or, you know, nowadays any number of true crime type shows. It can result in a lot of tips. And police are hoping, right, that it just takes one tip, one really good tip to bust a case wide open. The problem is it doesn't always happen. You get a lot of tips.

You spend a lot of time looking into those and nothing ever comes from it. It has to be very frustrating for law enforcement. Yeah, because probably a lot of those tips, well, some of them are good. Many others probably are not and lead police down the wrong. direction. Yeah, I'm assuming the majority have nothing to do with the case at all, and the few that do, potentially, don't pan out. But then one day a call came in from Florida, referencing a man by the name of Robert Craig Cox. Cox was a highly trained Army Ranger. He had been convicted of murdering 19-year-old Sharon Zellers in Florida in 1978, and he was sentenced to death row.

But on appeal, the Florida Supreme Court threw out his convictions on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence. 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 whodontes, where you're a go-to podcast for Mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. So Cox only served

about 18 months in prison for Sharon's murder. He was then returned to California, where he served a sentence for kidnapping and assaulting two women. He was later paroled and went back to his hometown of Springfield, Missouri. According to Cheryl's sister, this Robert Cox guy worked at the car dealership where Stacey McCall's father worked. He had moved to Springfield just weeks before the women vanished in June of 1992. Cox soon became a person of interest. After learning he had worked with Stacy's father, police thought that maybe he had developed a fascination with Stacy and that she was the intended victim. They wondered if he had followed her to Susie's home.

Police brought him in for questioning, but a lot of what he said didn't add up. Additionally, his girlfriend at the time gave him an iron-clad alibi, claiming they were together in church on the night of the disappearances. But regardless, Springfield Police kept their eye on Cox while they chased other leads. Cox eventually moved to Texas and was later arrested for aggravated robbery, after his arrest, his girlfriend recanted the alibi that she had given him, more if she said she had lied for him. She had no idea where he was on the night the Springfield 3 vanished.

In 1997, Cox told a Texas journalist in a television interview from prison that he knew the three women were dead. He said he would give more information, but only after his. His mother passed away. We know that as of 2017, she was still alive. Couldn't really find much out after that. My assumption is she's probably still a lot. Some reports say that Cox admitted to killing all three women and burying their bodies where nobody would ever find them.

But he's never given any information pointing police in the direction where the bodies would be. but to date police have not ruled him out as a suspect. And I think it would be pretty hard to rule him out. They know he was in the area at the time, had only been there for what? A couple of weeks. He has said some very strange things, things that you know make him a person of interest, if not a suspect in the eyes of police.

There are a couple of other suspects in the disappearances of the Springfield three. One is Gerald Carnahan. In 2010, a St. Louis County jury found Carnahan guilty of the 1985 rape and murder of 20-year-old Jackie Johns. He was sentenced to life in prison. He had been a suspect in Jackie's murder for over a decade before his conviction. DNA testing in 2007 linked into Jackie's murder. Carnahan was a Springfield businessman and is a suspect in several disappearances, including the Springfield 3. Another suspect is a man named Stephen Eugene Garrison.

He told authorities that a friend of his confessed to killing Cheryl, Susie, and Stacey. Garrison told police information that was not known to the public. This led to three search warrants at two different sites in western Webster County. Garrison also told authorities that a moss green van was used to haul the body. of the three women. Authorities believed Garrison enough that a judge issued a gag order concerning the three search warrants and police spent a lot of time on this guy. They tracked him and some of his known associates for more than a year before they backed off of Garrison. According to Springfield's newsleader, Garrison is serving 40 years in prison for raping, sodomizing and terrorizing

a female Springfield college student in the summer of 1993. So more if I think there are a few suspects here that police, you know, over the years were very interested in. And I think from the details that we gave, you can easily see why. These were bad people. They are serving time for some other heinous act. But they weren't serving time. when the Springfield 3 disappeared.

So they most likely had the opportunity. They were in the area. So I think you factor all of that in and you can see why police would be very interested in them. Now, they weren't able to make a case against them, but I think that's one thing to take away. This is not a case without persons of interest, without some pretty good suspects. And you see that in a lot of. of cases. But just because someone looks really good for the crime doesn't mean police are ever able to get enough evidence to haul them up on charges. And it seems like all three of these

suspects or persons of interest we mentioned in some way toyed around a little bit with police to peek their curiosity. And you wonder, is that because they had legitimate information or knowledge of the crimes? Or were they just doing it to mess with the crimes? Or were they just doing it to mess with the police as so many of these criminals we see like to do. Yeah, you and I have seen that in a number of cases. You know, these guys for whatever reason get their jollies out of messing with police. And it makes it very tough because, you know, they might have just enough facts to make it sound believable. Did they have anything to do with it? Did they not have anything to do with it? Are they just having fun at the expense of the police and the victim's families?

It's horrible, but it could very well be true. Around 2005, freelance journalist Kathy Bair, a native of Springfield, took an interest in the case and began her own investigation. She even started a blog so people could follow along. Kathy's investigation kept leading her to Cox South Hospital, specifically to a parking garage there. In June 1992, the hospital was under construction. According to Kathy, some of the original suspects had connections to the location. Several tipsters believe the girls had been buried there before the concrete was poured. So Kathy asked a man who operated a micropower impulse radar system

to examine the cement parking garage floor in the hope it would detect dental mercury or other precious metals or stones, which might suggest the presence of jewelry. Kathy said the results were, quote, interesting, but she needed something more reliable. So in June 2006, she hired Rick Norland, a ground penetrating radar specialist to conduct a scan of the area. Rick had a lot of experience in locating bodies beneath the earth. He had successfully found graves in the past. I mean, this guy was one of the experts selected to help out at. Ground Zero in New York City after the events of 9-11.

The results of the scan at Cox South Hospital were pretty interesting to say the least. Soon after starting the scan, Rick found three two-foot-wide anomalies, roughly three feet below the surface of the cement. Two were side by side, and then the third was all by itself. The soil changes were between five and seven feet. long. And while the scan could not show bones, the anomalies were consistent with what a grave site would look like, according to Rick. Kathy and Rick took their findings to police. Authorities were skeptical of the equipment as well as the process and they really didn't want

to have anything to do with it. And Morp, I think this is technology that's been used in a number of cases. Now, maybe at that point in time, police didn't know very much about it. They had doubts about it. And obviously, the results were not conclusive that somebody was buried there, but cases have been solved using this ground penetrating radar. The only thing I can think of is that at the time, it was just too new to them. To the police, they didn't think much of it. When Kathy was rebuffed by the police, she took her findings to the media, but police still refused to move forward, despite public pressure. Sergeant Mike Owen initially said the information wasn't worth spending, quote, the thousands of dollars it would take to verify the scan results. Kathy agreed to pay some of the

expenses out of her own pocket. Owen claimed his department had their own expert, who discounted Rick Norland's findings. To this day, authorities refused to dig up the parking garage floor at Coxham. South Hospital, which many local residents find strange. But Janice McCall doesn't believe her daughter, Stacey is buried there, or that she's even dead. She's never had her daughter legally declared dead. In 1997, family members of Cheryl and Susie did have them legally declared dead. It's been nearly 28 years since Cheryl Levitt, Susie Streeter, and Stacey McCall vanished into thin air. And really, Morp, if you look at it, police are no closer. to solving this case than they were back in 1992.

The case of the Springfield 3 has been featured on America's Most Wanted, CBS's 48 hours, and investigation discovery show disappeared. In February 2019, Cheryl's son Bart Streeter, who at that point was 54 years old, was arrested in a Smyrna, Tennessee nail salon for trying to take a 15-year-old teenage girl from the salon by posing as her grandfather.

Bart was arrested for public intoxication, disorderly conduct, and attempted false imprisonment, according to police. In 1995, Stacey's best friend, Janelle Kirby, married Mike Henson, the boy she was dating in 1992. They're still together today and have three children, all boys, and she's still searching for her friends. Janice and Stuart McCall still search for their daughter and we'll never give up until she, Susie and Cheryl are found. So Morp, as we're wrapping up this case, you know, like we said in the beginning, this is a case that a lot of people have followed throughout the years.

It's received a lot of attention online from amateur slews who, you know, have tried to get involved and solve this case. I think because of some of the mysteries, you add in a number of what appear to be pretty good suspects. And there's a lot here to work with. But police have never just been able to put it together, you know, to find that one piece of evidence or pieces of evidence that would conclusively link one or more persons to, the disappearance of the Springfield 3. You know, I think one of the things that really kind of jumped out at me was the search with the ground penetrating radar.

You know, is there something to that? Is there something there? It's hard to argue the fact that it's suspicious that there are these kind of large five to seven foot anomalies that too many would. would appear as though they could have been dug and filled with a body. And then obviously dirt put back over. And then somebody comes in and they finish this construction project. I get it.

Nobody wants to tear up a bunch of concrete and, you know, go through all that expense on what police may consider a hunch. But man, you just want to know what's there. Yeah. If you're the family of those women, you would want them to do whatever's possible. And if there's a chance, even that they're there, you know, if it was anyone in my family, I'd be hoping they'd dig it up. I'd be nonstop on them to try and do that.

And when we look at the disappearance of these three on its own, it's strange because it seems very difficult for one person to control three different people without some kind of fight them fighting back or they try and escape and then all of a sudden you're losing control trying to chase three different people. So I wonder how the crime unfolded, how the victims were controlled and how it went down basically. I think it begs the question. Was this one person acting alone, two people or maybe even more perpetrators? Because I agree with you for one person to control three people at the same time, it's not ideal. Doesn't mean it can't be done.

It's been done many times. But it's much tougher to do that on your own versus having an accomplice or two to help. And I think what may be handcuffed police along the way was the cleanup of the crime scene, the accidental cleanup. when there were some definite clues there that whatever happened probably happened at their house. You had their three purses there, their cars were parked out front. You've got the broken light on the porch. You've got a call coming in just right while they're there looking for these women.

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe it's not some kind of pervert on the line. So all this stuff just that message gets erased. It's just a lot of dominoes falling against the place. police and their capabilities to try and solve the case. Yeah, you've got all that. I think especially I kind of look at, all right, what evidence was cleaned up? And we mentioned it, right? Possible fibers, DNA, fingerprints. I mean, they didn't find any of that. The question is, was it there? And was it destroyed during the, the cleanup activity? I mean, obviously these people that cleaned up had no idea

that they were doing something to harm the investigation. And I'm sure they feel horrible about it. The erasing of the answering machine, the cleaning up of potential crime scene evidence. I don't believe that that was done out of any sort of malice or, you know, with any intention. But along with losing their friends, their loved ones,

I mean, these people have to live with that. And I'm sure it gnaws at them. It can't be a great feeling to know that you did something to possibly hamper the investigation. But at the same time, I don't, I can't put a lot of blame on them because I just don't think they were, they were doing it out of any malice or with any bad intentions. So more for me, the question comes down to what's it going to take to solve this case? And like a lot of cases, there have been quite a number of years that have gone by, right?

The case has gotten quite old at this point. So what are we talking? Somebody all of a sudden comes forward with information that they've been sitting on for, you know, close to 30 years. Or maybe at some point they do explore the ground penetrating radar evidence and, they uncover burial sites. And maybe there's some evidence in with the body. I just don't know. It's going to take something extraordinary. I think this many years later to solve this case. But the one thing I know for sure is that unless everybody involved has died, there's somebody out there that knows exactly what happened to Cheryl, Susie and Stacey. it's just a question of will they ever come forward?

Or will somebody find something maybe after their death written in a notebook somewhere, a journal? I don't know what else there would be. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistants in this episode. If you love the show and haven't done so, please take a minute. Go out, give us a five-star rating.

Keep telling your friends. Word of mouth is huge for criminology. You know you have a lot of true crime loving friends. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast. And if you want to join our Facebook discussion group, that's called Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans. All right, Morph. So that's it for the case of the Springfield 3.

but you and I will be back next Saturday night with an all new episode of criminology. So until then, from Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.