Criminology - Tina Marie Lauser

Episode Date: February 8, 2020

Tina Marie Lauser's parents learned early in her childhood that she was deaf. Tina struggled in school, primarily because there were no schools in the early 60s specifically designed to help her. Tina graduated, got a job, and met her future husband at the Wilmington Club for the Deaf. In January 1981, Tina left her job at the Bank of Delaware to drive to get something to eat on her lunch break. She never returned and the investigation into her disappearance was launched. Two months later, her body was found weighted down in a tributary of the Delaware Bay. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the baffling clues uncovered in the investigation into Tina Lauser's disappearance and murder. There was a mystery woman reported to have been seen with Tina during her lunch break. But, police have never been able to figure out who this mystery woman is. There has also been some speculation surrounding Tina's husband Tom Lauser. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Who Donuts.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. 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 98 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you?

I'm doing good. How about you? No, I'm doing great. And I am ready for spring, to be honest with you. We haven't had a bad winner at all. I keep knocking on wood every time I say that. But, you know, I'm ready for it to. warm up. I'm ready to go outside and do stuff. Yeah, I'm not going to move on this end too. I'm hoping that

we can get through March because in my area, if you can get through the end of March, you're pretty much home free. And I, I'm not looking forward to pulling out that snowblower. No, let's not do it. I'm just, we're just not going to do it. All right, let's give our Patreon shoutouts. We had some new support come in. We had MJC, Tatum Hans, Joanne Blankenship, Paige. Becca Casper and Catherine Haynes. So much appreciated. I recognize some of those names from our social media and they're big supporters. So thank you very much for that. And anyone else out there that would like to help support criminology on Patreon,

you can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. And just a reminder to all listeners. All of our older episodes are available on Stitcher Premium. And they have a free 30-day trial that a lot of people use. to catch up, especially if you're someone that has just found the podcast. We have a lot of great back episodes on the Golden State Killer, Zodiac, Ted Bundy, just to name a few. And we were just talking about warm weather at the start of the show. I'm looking for it to CrimeCon because that's in Orlando and that's coming up this May.

We're 90 days out. We'll be on podcast row. And we hope that we're going to see a lot of our listeners there. So if you want to go to CrimeCon and hang out with us, you can do so by visiting crimecon.com at checkout when you buy your tickets, use our promo code, which is Criminology 2020, and you'll save 10% on their standard crimecom badges. All right, Morf, let's jump into this week's episode. It was nearly four decades ago that a 25-year-old deaf woman named Tina Marie Louser

vanished without a trace from Wilmington, Delaware, after leaving work on a dinner break. Shortly before she disappeared, she was seen with a mystery woman at a local market. The two were communicating via sign language. Some of Tina's belongings later turned up, and then two months later, Tina's body was found in a frozen creek, 25 miles south of Wilmington. She had been stabbed to death. No one has ever been charged in Tina's murder. The mystery woman was never identified, but police believe she is the key to solving this case. But the question of who murdered Tina Marie Louser and why remains a mystery. Delaware is a very small state on the East Coast. The state's a popular destination for buyers of pricey appliances and merchandise due to the

lack of sales tax there. The city of Wilmington is Delaware's largest city, and it's located 30 miles south of Philadelphia and halfway between Washington, D.C. and New York City. More than half of all Fortune 500 companies are located in Wilmington. Wilmington made national headlines in 1996 when one of the city's prominent residents, Thomas Capano, murdered Anne-Marie Fahey, a case we covered on criminology in an earlier episode. But the city is also the location of another brutal murder that occurred 15 years before that in 1981. Tina Marie Hesse was born in Chesapeake City, Maryland on January 8, 1956 to Bob and Elizabeth Hesse. She is one of seven children.

Her parents later divorced and both got remarried. The Hessey family moved from Elkton, Maryland to the Willow Run area of Wilmington, Delaware in 1964. Her parents later divorced and both got remarried. But when Tina was still a baby, somewhere around the age of 18 months, she wasn't saying any words yet. And her parents became concerned. They took her to the doctor. Doctors told them it was because of her adenoids and tonsils.

So the family had them removed. But the surgery did not help the situation. And it was a short time later that. Tina's parents learned she was deaf. But as Tina grew up, she was determined not to let her hearing impairment hold her back. Tina attended a school for the blind in Germantown, Maryland. Tina attended a school for the blind in Germantown, Maryland, and also took special education classes.

At the time, there were no schools for the deaf in Delaware. Tina hated going to the Germantown school because the students were mean to her, and she had a hard time communicating with other people. And more if I can only imagine that that would be extremely tough. There are no schools in the immediate area for the death. So Tina ends up going to a school for the blind. I can't imagine that it was very well equipped to help her with her impairment. And it just makes you wonder if back in those days they only had a limited amount of schools

that could deal with those kinds of disabilities, whether it was blindness or deafness, and they sort of tried to put them all together, even though they were quite different as far as those impairments. Yeah, that's what it sounds like, but I think you can definitely think about how hard that must have been for Tina to communicate with the other students. It would have been nearly impossible. In the late 1960s, Margaret S. Stark School, for the hearing impaired opened its doors for the first time in Newark, Delaware.

According to the school's website, in 1960, space restrictions forced Pennsylvania's school for the deaf to bar additional deaf children from Delaware from enrolling. Parents of deaf children expressing concern led to the Delaware State Board of Education to initiate plans for building a school for the deaf within the state. Funding and planning took place from 1960 to 1968. Construction was completed in 1968, and the school opened in 1969. The building was named in honor of Margaret S. Sturke. For Tina, this new school was just what she needed.

Tina thrived at her new school and genuinely enjoyed going there. She became fluid in sign language and in lip reading. She could also communicate a little bit using her voice, although she was hard to understand to some people. When Tina wasn't in school, she enjoyed playing baseball, with the neighborhood kids. She graduated from the Margaret S. Sturke School in 1975. And Morriff, I think I've mentioned it before, but my oldest daughter is a freshman in college, and she's going for speech pathology. And so one of the classes that she's been taking

this first year is American Sign Language. And she loves it. She really enjoys this class, and there's a volunteer part to it. And I'm so proud of it. of her because she gets such enjoyment out of this volunteering twice a week. And it's just really bringing something out in her to give her time freely and to also get enjoyment from it. I'm just, I couldn't be proud of. I think it's great that with more modern thinking and planning, they're able to accommodate a lot of these students that have these impairments and work with them so they can get a good and rewarding education. Yeah, they seem like at least at the university that she goes to, they really do a good job

of pulling in, like these are high school students from around the area. They bring them on campus. They even help them get jobs after high school, but they pair them up with students in this communications disorders program, which is what my daughter's in. So it's not just people that, you know, have hearing problems or sight problems. It's all kinds of different impairments. It seems like they're really going out of their way to help make a difference. And that makes me feel good.

After graduating high school, Tina landed her first job working at the University of Delaware. She also joined the Wilmington Club for the Deaf where Tina would meet her future husband, Thomas Louser, who was also deaf. In 1977, Tina was hired at the Bank of Delaware in Wilmington under a program to employ people with disabilities. She started out as a part-time worker at the bank. But within six months, she went full-time in the proofing office where massive amounts of teller transactions were checked weekly using a large computer that could process about 1,200 items an hour. Tina was a good worker, but she was also highly dependable. Tina never missed a day of work.

In her new job, Tina found that just like in school, she sometimes had a difficult time communicating with her coworkers, so she used gestures and facial expressions to get her points across. People knew when she was angry or happy. If she saw people gossiping on the job, she would yell at them to shut up. Tina felt that they were there to work, not goof off. Tina took her job very seriously, and her coworkers knew that. When Tina wasn't working, she was spending time with her boyfriend, Thomas Louser.

Friends described him as a really nice guy who was extremely talented and good with machines. Tina took him to her family's home that Christmas, and three months later, she moved in with Tom and his mother. The relationship flourished, and Tom and Tina married on September 7, 1978. Their reception was held at the death club. Tina was pregnant at the time. Her family and friends didn't know Tom very well. After Tina married Tom, they found out that he had a 10-year-old son from a previous marriage.

Tina gave birth to a girl named Karen in 1979. After the arrival of their new baby, the couple's marriage quickly deteriorated. They fought constantly. And Tina had apparently told her, family that one time Tom struck her. Tina loved Tom, but he didn't love her. According to Tina's family, there were things about Tom that Tina had issues with, such as drinking whiskey and flirting with other women. The two separated nine months after the wedding. Tina and her daughter moved in with

Tina's younger sister Linda and her husband Greg Merritt in the Garden Quarter apartments on Kirkwood highway. Despite their separation, Tom and Tina still saw each other on a regular basis because of their daughter. Right before Christmas in 1980, the two went shopping at Wilmington Dry Goods with a couple from the Deaf Club, James and Marie Bowen. Tom and Tina were splitting the cost of a tiny table for their daughter for Christmas. It was around this time that Tom and Tina seemed to rekindle their marriage and were discussing getting back together. Tina became pregnant again with Tom. But for some reason, that isn't clear. Tom wanted to wait until Tina was three months along before Tina could move back in with him. He later tried to clarify that by saying he wanted

to wait three months because it just seemed as if it made sense as far as timing. And morph, to me, that doesn't make much sense, right? That's not much of a clarification. I got to be honest. But it's one of those things that you read when you're researching a case that you kind of scratch your head about. Does it mean anything? Does it not mean anything? I don't know. We'll talk about it maybe more as we go along.

On the surface, it's strange to say, hey, let's get back together. We're rekindling this marriage, this relationship. You're pregnant with my child. But I want you to wait three months before you move in with me. Yeah, I want that first trimester out of the way. It was kind of head-scratcher to me when I read it, so I'm right there with you. As Tina waited for the time to pass before she could move back in with Tom, she continued working at the bank.

She was supporting Karen. As a proof operator at the bank, Tina's normal shift started at 1 p.m. And she would normally take her dinner break or sometime around 4 or 5. The proof operators either ate their dinner in the employee cafeteria in the basement of the building, or they would order out from the nearby Central Grill or Melrose Sub. On some days, Tina went for snack runs for her coworkers. She often bought sodas and potato chips and sometimes in occasional People magazine for herself from Ray's nitty-gritty store that was located in the bank lobby.

On Fridays, the proof operators worked late because that day was a heavy day for processing bank transactions. The Proofing Office handled all the transactions for the bank's branches in Newcastle County, as well as the transactions from five branches downstate. The employees always started at the usual time, but often stayed until midnight. When they arrived to start their Friday shift, the employees parked as close as possible to the bank, located at 300 Delaware Avenue. Then on their evening break, they would move their vehicles closer to the building, so they wouldn't have to walk far after work.

This was a regular routine for all of the employees, including Tina. On Friday, January 30th, 1981, Tina Louser was in a good mood during her long shift at 7.15 p.m. She grabbed her coat and wallet and started to leave with two other employees for their 30-minute break. But the telephone rang, and one of these other employees took the call. So Tina left without them. Right before she left, Tina ran her. totals on the machine in case it broke down while she was out. That way she wouldn't have to start over completely when she returned. Tina got in her car and drove the short distance from

the bank to the Arco mini-mart, located at Pennsylvania Avenue and Van Buren Street to pick up something to eat. When 755 p.m. rolled around and Tina hadn't returned to work, her co-worker, Sue Janeman started to worry. It wasn't like Tina to be late. Employees did a quick search, but didn't find Tina. At 8.15 p.m., someone called the Wilmington Police Department, and they arrived at the bank about 30 minutes later. Initially, police officers couldn't really do anything because Tina was an adult and hadn't been missing long. About 15 minutes later, the bank's security director Sam Brown arrived, and he started making phone calls. The head of Tina's department, Robert Heyman, came back in and helped police and bank security search the immediate

area for Tina. When this initial search yielded no results, police called Tom Louser at the Deaf Club and told him that Tina was missing. Tom said he last saw his wife on January 25th when they were out together. He had no idea where she was. Police called Linda, Tina's sister, who said that she last saw Tina on January 29th, the day before she disappeared. The official search for Tina Marie Louser began, and police put out the following description to officers to be on the lookout for a 25-year-old Caucasian female with dark brown, shoulder-length hair, and brown eyes. She stood 5'6 and weighed about 135 pounds.

She was last seen wearing a turtleneck sweater, blue jeans, and a light blue ski jacket. At around 1 a.m., police found Tina's blue Pontiac Astra, parked on a one-way street at Park Place in Van Buren Street. The car had a flat tire, and the keys were still in the ignition. That location where the car was found is only about 200 feet from the Arcoe Minimart and a mile from the bank. Police inspected the tire and determined it had been delivered. deliberately damaged. Because of where the car was found, officers assumed at the time that Tina left work drove up West Street to 10th, then drove out to Van Buren. Police originally thought that Tina hadn't made it to the Arco Mini Mark, where she was headed on her brake. Authorities later found

Tina's wallet, about three miles south of Port Penn near Delaware Highway 9. This is an area about 24 miles south of where Tina's car was found, torn checks from Tina's checkbook, and her mangled credit cards were scattered on the ground near her wallet. Police had no idea how the wallet or its contents got there. They also found a pair of shoes, later confirmed by her mother to belong to Tina. The shoes appeared to have been cleaned and carefully laid side by side on a section of frozen pond. But this pond wasn't very close at all to the spot where Tina's wallet and the contents of her wallet were found. It was a couple of miles away. Despite finding so much of Tina's belongings,

there was no sign of Tina herself. Over the weekend, the police continued an extensive search for Tina Louser and announced that they suspected foul play after finding her belongings. By Sunday, Two days after she vanished, Tina's employer, the Bank of Delaware, offered a $5,000 reward for any information leading to her whereabouts. The Monday after Tina's disappearance was hard for her coworkers, and they were glad to have a busy day to help keep their minds off their friend. But the atmosphere of the bank was dark and bleak. On Saturday, February 7, 1981. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutal. murdered.

Number one, which emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a week after Tina vanished. About 100, policemen, firemen, and volunteers continue.

searching for Tina in a 15 square mile area south of Delaware City. Marine police used an airboat to search a partially ice-covered creek near the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. The search began at 8 a.m. But after several hours was called off when they didn't find any evidence during the search. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Mom's 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. Not long after Tina vanished, there was a report of another death. woman who went missing. Initially, the thought was that it was the Philadelphia police that were searching for this woman, but it later came out that the woman was not from the Philadelphia area. She was actually from Western Pennsylvania. And you could see more of how Delaware authorities would be interested in this case, right? If this woman is from Philadelphia and goes missing,

which Philadelphia very close to Delaware, it could somehow be related to their case. But Western Pennsylvania much further away. The woman went missing after a fight with her husband on the night of January 7, 1981. She was 24-year-old Lene Ray Rogers, who apparently ran out into the bitter cold winter storm without a coat after this fight and disappeared. She left behind two small children and all of her personal belongings, including her hearing aids and eyeglasses. She was never found. Her case wound up not being connected to the Tina Louser case, but police seriously considered whether the cases were connected early on.

A little over a week after Tina disappeared, Wilmington police announced they were seeking a female who was seen with Tina shortly before she went missing. An unidentified caller phoned the police and told them that he or she saw the woman in Tina's car at the Arco Minimart. The woman was in the car when Tina pulled up to the gas pumps and bought $5 worth of gas. The two were communicating with one another using sign language. The woman left the mini-mart with Tina in her car. This was the Arco Mart the police originally didn't think Tina had made it to when she left for her break. since Tina's car was found back 200 feet short of the Arco on a one-way street after Tina drove off of the woman, it appears that Tina or someone else had to have driven the car back to where it was found and left it there. And Morve, I think this is where the case would have taken a turn for police.

They get this call from an unidentified caller saying that a woman was seen with Tina. at the gas pump, right? So that now tells police that if what this caller is saying is true, Tina did make it to the ARCO mini mark. But then you go back to the way that the car was found 200 feet from the ARCO on a one-way street pointing towards it, as if it almost made it there but didn't quite. Well, now police know that's not the case. So how did Tina's car get from?

the gas pump at the Arco Mini Mart to the place where it was found, right? 200 feet away facing it. And unfortunately, that area back then didn't have any kind of surveillance video or anything that police could go back and check to see who parked that car there and when. But you know they had to be very perplexed by this because the thinking had to be. Why would Tina do that? Right. If she went to the Arco Mini Mart, she did whatever she went there to do, including getting gas,

you would think her car would have been found headed back towards the bank. This unidentified color described the mystery woman with Tina as a Caucasian female, 20 to 25 years old, 5'4, with a medium build and shorter length brown hair. The woman was wearing a green jacket and blue jeans. A state police artist drew a composite sketch of the woman and it was released to the public. This really was the first and only real lead that police had at this point in the investigation. Tina's family had never seen the woman in the sketch before. The sketch didn't resemble any of Tina's friends that they knew about.

Yet from what the caller had said, It appeared to them that Tina knew this woman pretty well. The question for police was, how did she know her? Was the woman a member of the Deaf Club? Did she attend Tina's former school for the Deaf? Nobody knew. Now, later on, years later, there would be people that would theorize who this woman might have been. And we'll get into that later in the episode.

While police were looking for the mystery woman, Tina's husband, Tom Louser, gave interviews with the local media, and stated he had no idea who would want to harm his wife. He also said he never had any plans to divorce Tina because he loved her. At around 10 a.m. on Sunday, March 29, 1981, James F. Dill Sr. and his wife, Gainel, of Newcastle, of Newcastle, were fishing at Silver Run, a three-mile-long tributary of the Delaware Bay and the Augustine Wildlife Area. That's when they found a body floating in the river. The deal was called police shortly after.

Two state police divers recovered the body, which turned out to be that of a woman. The body was clothed in a light blue ski jacket and blue jeans, similar to the clothes Tina was wearing when she went missing. The body was also bound and waded down with a cinder block and found in six feet of water under a bridge off Delaware 9, about 25 miles south of the Bank of Delaware. This was very close to where Tina's wallet had been found earlier. The authority suspected that the body found was that of Tina Marie Louser since the clothing matched. On top of that, they didn't have any other missing women in the area.

The state medical examiner performed the autopsy the following day. The cause of death was determined to be massive internal hemorrhage due to stab wounds of the neck with perforation of the trachea and stab wounds of the left chest with perforation to the aorta. Police had to wait on fingerprint analysis to finalize the identification of the body. Due to her work in the bank, Tina's fingerprints had been taken earlier for her job and sent to the FBI headquarters in Washington.

Wilmington detectives were awaiting word from FBI technicians for verification before positively identifying the body. And it was just a few days later that police officially announced that the body found belonged to Tina Marie Louser. They also announced that they had determined she was killed not long after she disappeared. On April 2nd, 1981, Tina's funeral was held at the McCrary funeral home on Kirkwood Highway. It was so crowded that many mourners had to stand.

During the service, a sign language interpreter translated the eulogy for the deaf people in attendance. authorities were still working on identifying the mystery woman seen with Tina prior to her disappearance. Despite widespread circulation of the sketch of this woman, not one person came forward to identify her. There was something else that nagged at police, and that was Tina's shoes. Searchers had found them neatly placed side by side in the middle of a frozen pond, and it appeared they had been cleaned off, but her body was found in Silver Run, close to the location where her wallet was found. They had no idea why the killer put the shoes there and not with the other belongs. And Morve, I really understand why this would nag at police.

Because I think it's a strange fact in this case. You know, these shoes, they weren't found, you know, just as if they were thrown out the window. To appear to be cleaned and to be placed almost neatly side by side, it's a very strange clue. Why would a killer do that? If you'd lay out on a map, Tina's work where her car was found, where the wallet contents were found, where the shoes are found, you see a progression going south. So perhaps the killer went down that way, disposing of different items and eventually Tina's body along the way and potentially drove the car back to where it was found. which makes logical sense.

But what doesn't make sense is for someone to get out of the car, place the shoes on this frozen pond. Number one, it takes time. And you're exposing yourself for the lack of a better term to maybe people passing by. I just, I don't get it. You would think that someone in that situation would just throw them out the window as they were driving Tina's car. It's almost as if they wanted them to be found, which completely conflicts with the fact

that Tina's body was chained and anchored down into the water in hopes that it wouldn't be found. Yeah, it's a great point. You know, I think you can ask the question, were the shoes placed there deliberately by the murderer to maybe throw police off or to get people to look in a. different direction. Because outside of that, I don't understand it. In August 1981, Gaynell Dill, who along with her husband found Tina's body, filed suit against the Bank of Delaware over the $5,000 reward money. When Gaynell went to claim the money, the Bank of Delaware refused

to hand it over. A bank official told her the reward was to be paid if Tina was found a lot. Gaynell was quoted in a local paper at the time as saying, That's not my fault. I didn't kill her and I didn't want to find her. It ruined my day and I haven't been the same since. The Bank of Delaware originally offered the reward to anyone with information leading to Tina's whereabouts. There was no prerequisite stating that Tina had to be alive. The bank finally did end up paying Gaynell the money to save the house.

to save the hassle of going through a long drawn-out lawsuit. She dropped the suit after they paid the money. But more if this is one of those things, right, that you find in a case and you're like, I get it. Someone found a body. They believe they're entitled to the reward money. And I don't want to speak ill of this person at all. But to read that quote in the paper, that's not my fault.

I didn't kill her and I didn't want to find her. It seems callous. It seems a little callous to me. Yeah, I don't think anyone wants to find a body. And the part where she added about her day being ruined, I think anyone that found a body, their day would be ruined. Yeah, it just seems like it's very callous to make that type of statement. I get it.

You think you're entitled to this money and you want to collect it. I don't know. Maybe I'm making too much out of it. I think better words could have been chosen. Let me put it that way. But ultimately, she did end up getting the money. And it sounds like she should have, right? There were no caveats to the money as far as Tina needing to be a lot.

And after all, they did find the body. So if it hadn't been for them, maybe the body wouldn't have been found. And I'm actually surprised, to be honest with you, that the bank put up such a fight in the beginning, over $5,000. I mean, we're not talking about a $250,000. thousand dollar reward, you know, $5,000 for the bank, not a lot of money. Especially because it's one of their employees. Yeah, it seems to me like the publicity and, you know, the kind of the bad press, it's not worth it, right?

It's not worth the $5,000. Most banks wouldn't want that. So I was a little surprised about that. It's been almost 40 years since Tina Marie Louser was brutally murdered. There have been no arrest in the case. and the case appears to have gone cold within a year after she was killed. In 1983, Tina Louser's family posted poems to Tina in the memoriam section of Wilmington's newspapers, one on her January 8th birthday, and the other on the anniversary of her death.

Today, Tina's daughter, Karen, is about 40 years old and resides in Wilmington. She has two adult children. Tom Louser resides in Newark, Delaware, according to, his Facebook page. But the question remains, Morph, and we mentioned it earlier. Who murdered Tina and why? What was the motive? There have been people over the years that have accused Tina's husband, Tom, of being involved. We couldn't find a lot on it, but my assumption, Morph, is that police looked at Tom very hard. I mean, that's always the case, right? In this type of disappearance, the spouse is going to be looked at, the immediate family is going to be looked at.

There are a lot of people that have asked the question. If Tom didn't want to be with Tina, he could have just gone through with the breakup when they called it quits earlier. He didn't have to rekindle this relationship. There are other people that make the argument that maybe the motive was money related. So you might have had alimony. You might have had child support payments. to factor in. But as far as I know, there's no evidence that Tom was involved in the disappearance

and murder of his wife, Tina. And I think it's worth reiterating, too, that police did talk to him and he apparently had an alibi for the time that his wife went missing. So that gets him off police radar for committing the murder himself, right? That's what an alibi does. But there are some people that have theorized over the years that, okay, it wasn't Tom, he had an accomplice. And some people have pointed out over the years that the woman in the sketch looks very similar to a woman that Tom started dating and later married after Tina's murder. Now, more, if we're not saying that this woman had anything to do with Tina's murder, but it's an interesting observation that people have made. I think one thing that's a safe bet is that whoever the woman seen talking to Tina before her murder was, it's very likely that she knows something or maybe was involved because it's such a small state.

And in that area, she would have undoubtedly seen that police were looking for her to talk to her. So why not come forward? Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that. I mean, we're not talking about New York City where, okay, it hits the news and maybe somebody doesn't see it, right? In this area, this would have been a very big case. Whoever that woman was in the car with Tina, I don't think there's any way that she would not have known that police wanted to talk to her. So the very fact that she never came forward leads people to believe that she had some involvement in what happened to Tina. You know,

to me, more if in these cases, it always comes back to motive. What's the motive for someone to want to end the life of someone like Tina Louser? She wasn't leading a high risk lifestyle. She wasn't putting herself in positions that you would think could cause her harm. So it's either something very specific or it's completely random, right? What else could it be? And I think that's what's so frustrating in this case. There's nothing there that really jumps out to make you say, aha, that's what it might be.

There's just really nothing there at all. And to me, it's always that aspect of it being random that is very scary. I mean, they're all scary, right? Whether it's someone you know that targets you. But to think that you're just going about your daily life, you're on your dinner break, you're going to run down to the mini-mart to gas up and get something to eat, someone sees you and you become a target of a killer. That's a very scary thought. I think it's that randomness, though, that also makes a lot of these cases very hard to solve if they are in fact perpetrated by

a killer that has no connection whatsoever to the victim. That makes it so much tougher to salt. Special thanks goes out to Gray Hughes on the Gray Hughes Investigates YouTube channel for supplying us with files and materials related to this case. Thanks also goes out to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistants in this episode. If you love the show, please take a minute. If you haven't done so, go out, give us a rating. Keep telling your friends. Word of mouth is huge for criminology. If you want to find us on social media, we are on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for

criminology podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast, discussion and fans. All right. That is it for the case of Tina Marie Louser. And that's it for another episode of criminology. But Morph and I will be back with everyone next Saturday night within all new episode.

So for Mike. And Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.