Criminology - What Happened To Randy Leach?

Episode Date: September 7, 2019

In April of 1988, 17-year-old Randy Leach attended a party in his hometown of Linwood Kansas. Many people saw Randy at the party that night but accounts of his actions vary. What is known is that, in the early morning hours of April 16th, Randy vanished and has never been heard from or seen since. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the mysterious disappearance of Randy Leach. There have been a number of persons of interest in Randy's case over the years. But, police have never been able to figure out exactly what happened to Randy and no one has been prosecuted. Rumors and possible sightings have cropped over the years, as have many different theories. Randy's mother, Alberta, joined us for this episode to help give some insight into what transpired. 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 77 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. This is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you? I'm doing good. How about you? No, I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I had to take my daughter to college last week. So that was a little rough. That was an experience that I'd never had before.

for. I'm sure a lot of people listening have gone through that. I knew it was going to be tough. It was much tougher than I even imagined. That's something you have to look forward to years down the road. Did you get choked up? I kept it together while we were in the dorm room. My wife was bawling. We got back to the car in the parking garage, got out on the highway, and I lost it. I almost cried the whole way home. But I was determined to kind of try to keep it together because there's a lot of people, right, in this dorm room, a lot of kids, a lot of parents. I was like, keep it together.

But it kind of all came out on the ride home. It's a big life-changing thing, I guess. My kids go back to school in this coming week. So that means more work time for me to get more stuff done. So I sort of use that to do more stuff around the house. All right. more if we have some new Patreon shoutouts to give. We had Rachel Deacon, Kelly, Leah Biddle, Mark Benson, Kipper Westbrook, and Angela Hiller. So big shout out to all the new Patreon

supporters. It means a lot. It goes a long way. Thanks so much for all the Patreon support. It really means a lot. It helps us out tremendously. And for anyone that would like to help support the show on Patreon, please go to patreon.com slash criminology. All right, Morf, in this episode, we're talking about the mystery of what happened to Randy Leach. In April 1988, one month before his high school graduation, 17-year-old Randy Leach of Linwood, Kansas, attended a pre-graduation party. And then he disappeared into thin air, never to be heard from or seen again.

Now, over the past three decades, there have been a lot of rumors, but Randy's fate remains unknown. There have been accusations made against certain individuals. And this is really a case in which accounts and statements of witnesses vary to a large degree. And we'll touch on that as we move along through this episode. Even the Leach family has criticized the investigation from day one. And you know more if the family really only has one goal. They want to find out what happened to their son.

But as the years drag on, their hope has to be diminished somewhat. This case is now over 30 years old. And the question still remains, what happened to Randy Leach? We talked with Randy's parents, Alberta and Harold, and you'll hear from Alberta Leach throughout this episode. Linwood, Kansas is a tiny town located along the banks of the Kansas River in Leavenworth County. It sits between Lawrence, Kansas to the west and Kansas City, Missouri to the east. The population here is less than 400.

So this is one of those towns that we talk about every once in a while, where everyone knows each other. In May of this year, an F4 tornado with maximum winds of 170 miles per hour ripped through Tornado Alley and leveled Linwood. The tornado's destructive path was about 31 miles long, with a width of a mile. Residents spent the entire summer rebuilding and recovering from the massive storm. While Linwood residents were no strangers to acts of Mother Nature, the small community experienced a different kind of tragedy in April of 1988, when one of their own went missing. Randy Wayne Leach was born on July 25, 1970, to Harold and Alberta Leach.

He was the couple's only child. In April 1988, the family lived in a rural home outside Linwood. Randy was 17 years old, a senior basketball player and star shot putter at Linwood High School. He was a typical all-around American boy. Randy was a strong young man. He was 6'3 and weighed 220 pounds. He loved fishing. He loved the outdoors, as well as helping his dad around.

the farm and driving the tractor. Randy was a kid that never failed to help do whatever work needed to be done. Those who knew Randy best have described him as an excellent student and hard worker. But of course, Randy's parents knew him better than anyone. He was like an exceptional kid. He started out at birth really tiny. He was three weeks early, premature, but he really, he grew fast. He was a big boy. He ended up to be six foot two, 232 pounds, I believe. But he was a kid that he was friendly.

He didn't really know strangers. If he was in a room with people, he knew everybody that was there. He acknowledged them. He was a good student. He was just an exceptional kid. Being an only child, he wasn't selfish. He had a lot of cousins. and friends, young kids that would come around and they'd go fishing in the pond or just

messing around with the animals. He had rabbits and he had a pig and a horse and cabs. And they were always outdoors just playing ball or whatever. But he just wasn't a kid that he just knew everybody. And like I said, he wasn't selfish. He wasn't like an only child that just had to have somebody around him all the time. He had cousins that they enjoyed their times together. And Randy did real well in school. He'd half the time he didn't have to study. He'd come up with good grades.

At one point, he got a couple Bs on his grade card with A's. And his dad told him, Randy, if you can get all A's, I'll give you a $50 bill. And that next semester, he got all A's, so he got his $50 bill. When Randy was 14 years old, he would break apart engines from lawn mowers just to see how they work and how they fit back together. He and his father, Harold, talked a lot about opening their own lawn care shop behind their house where they could repair mowers and also build a greenhouse. He talked about going to a community college in time, but that summer he wanted to kind of work around. and mow grass. He helped his dad in the lawnmower shop,

so he was well into lawnmowers. And him and his dad went to Lawrence, and we bought him a new John Deere lawnmower. So Morph, I think you can really tell from, you know, those snippets of Alberta, Randy seemed like a really good kid. It also seems like he was very close with his parents. On Friday, April 15th, 1988,

Randy had plans to attend a pre-graduation party for his fellow classmate, Kim Irwin. This party was to take place at Kim's family home, a rural spot about seven miles east of Linwood. That day, Randy mowed the yard with a new riding lawnmower Harold had recently purchased. The day that he disappeared, they brought the new lawnmower home, and he went down and mowed a lady's yard. And then he brought us home, and he mowed our yard. and he cleaned it all up and wiped it all off. He wanted to keep it nice. He mowed this lady's yard down the road from us and came home and mowed our yard,

took a shower, and we were going to have guests that night. We had a couple that we played Canasta with, and they were going to be here for dinner. So I was getting dinner and Randy was getting ready to go. And he gets me goodbye. and that's the last time we saw him. Randy had discussed with his father about driving to Lawrence before the party to buy wax to protect the paint on the mower. Harold gave him $50, $20 of which was for the wax. Randy left home at 6.30 p.m. wearing a blue pocket t-shirt, blue Levi jeans, white socks, and white low-cut tennis shoes.

And he was driving his mother's car, which was a gray 1985, Dodge 600. Usually he drove the truck. We had a pickup truck. He usually drove in if he was going down around Lelandwood just to visit in the evening. But I had cleaned the car all up that day. And his dad told him, he said, Randy, he'd just take the car. Harold was using the pickup. He had it loaded with a lawnmower to take a lawnmower back to a customer.

So Randy said, well, okay. So he took the car. I had just washed and waxed that day. and I know it had quite a bit of gas in it. He was happy. Yeah, there wasn't nothing alarming about him. Randy stopped by his cousin Darren's house around 7 p.m. But Darren had gone to Kansas City that day to help his grandmother with an errand.

So instead of hanging out with his cousin Darren, it seemed as if Randy decided to drive around Linwood for a while. One thing we know for sure is that at around 8.30 p.m., Randy picked up a friend Steve Doherty and the two drove to DeSoto. This is about 10 miles southeast of Linwood. Now, I don't know that it necessarily figures into this case, but it's worth pointing out that Steve Doherty was considerably older than Randy. He was in his mid-30s. So the two stopped at an auto body shop in DeSoto, located at West 83rd and Kil Creek Road.

The shop was beginning to restore Randi's. Randy's Red 1966 Ford Mustang. This was something that Randy's parents had given him as a graduation gift, and Randy wanted to check up on it. At 9.30 p.m., Randy stopped at Stout's convenience store in Linwood, which is now a store called Cynix. This is where reports seem to clash a little, because some mentioned Steve Doherty still being with Randy. Other reports say that Randy was alone. What is known is that Randy entered the store and bought two by a while. bottles of soda, better known as Pop, in the area where Randy lived. He also bought two candy bars and $3 worth of gas. Gas back then was under a dollar, so Randy could easily get a few

gallons with that $3. Randy arrived at the Irwin's bonfire party sometime between 9.30 and 10 p.m. The party was held by Kim Irwin's mother, Annie. They lived in a white ranch house just up the road from Linape Cemetery. The Irwin family had recently relocated from Kansas City, Kansas. Now, accounts differ on the amount of guests at the party, but the estimates range somewhere between 45 to 150 people. So I think more of either way, it's a pretty large party. But what I really take note of is the differing estimates on how many people were there.

It's not like some people said 100 and some people said 125. 45 to 150 is a pretty big range. I think you hit the nail on the head because I remember having parties or going to parties when I was a teenager and they're, you know, 7, 8, 10, 12 people. And it was still technically a party versus 50, 100, 150. That's, that seems like a really big party. Well, I don't know. That seems like what the parties I went to were. I don't think playing Dungeons and Dragons in your friend's basement is called a party.

but I've never played Dungeons and Dragons in my life. I'm just messing with you. You know, speaking about this party, the punch served there was spiked with 150 proof grain alcohol and party goers could buy a cup for $3 and get all the free refills they wanted. Now, let's talk about that for a minute more. I did a little bit of drinking in my younger days. I'm sure you probably did as well. 150 proof alcohol.

That's no joke. I don't really know why you would even need a bunch of free refills. You're going to be intoxicated pretty quickly. Yeah, and I'm not aficionado on alcohol levels, but that sounds like it's something like Everclear or something like that. Yeah, I actually think Everclear might be 150 proof. It's very potent. Annie Irwin purchased the alcohol for the party.

And most of the people in attendance were under 21. And I just mentioned it more. If I did some drinking in my younger days, definitely did some before I was 21, the thing that I've never understood, because I never had this happen for me when I was a teenager. I never had a parent supply alcohol. You know, when you're an adult buying and supplying alcohol to minors, and you are really opening yourself up for trouble. Yeah, I think you walk a fine line between. wanting to have your kids or their friends have a good time and doing something that's morally and legally wrong that could get in big trouble. Yeah, well, buy some s'mores, you know, buy some chocolate, buy some marshmallows, let them make s'mores. I just have never understood parents buying a bunch of alcohol for underage kids for a party that you're having at your

house, knowing, hey, all these kids are not staying here. Not that that makes it better, but they're going to have to, at some point, get in their car and go home. I've never understood it. Taking that type of legal risk makes no sense. Randy was reportedly stumbling or intoxicated at the party. Some people said they saw him drinking while others had not. Randy wasn't known to be a heavy drinker, and he reportedly told one friend that he felt funny. He was last seen in the early morning hours of Sunday, April 16th, between 1.15 a.m. and 2 a.m. by guest of the party. But Annie Irwin said she last saw him as late as 2.15 a.m.

She later said that she wondered what was wrong with him and told guests to keep an eye on him. Annie said he was stumbling, but didn't look drunk. She never saw Randy with a drink in his hand. It was around this time at 2.15 that she also saw Randy use the bathroom. but she didn't think there's anything unusual or strange about the situation. At around 1.30 a.m., Randy's friend John Burns put Randy into his car with designs on taking Randy home. But Randy said he didn't have his keys. So Randy went back into the house to look for his keys. In the meantime, John left to take some people home that needed rights. When John got back to

the house at 2.30 a.m., Randy was gone, and so was his car. No one at the party saw Randy, or anyone else, drive off in Randy's car. And after that, Randy Leach and his car were never seen again. The Leach's had a 1230 a.m. curfew in place for Randy that he never broke. They went to bed on April 15th and slept through the night. Alberta woke up at 6 a.m. on the 16th and noticed that Randy he wasn't in his bed? Well, he usually had a curfew, and our bedroom window was in line with our driveway, so I always saw the lights when he came in. But for some reason, we were up late that night with our friends, and they had gone home, and we went to bed, and I did not see any lights at all. And at 6 o'clock the next morning, I jumped up out of bed and come in, and he wasn't in

and then the car wasn't in the driveway. And before we knew it, we were both out in the driveway barefooted, we knew something was wrong because that had never happened before. He wasn't here, and something was definitely wrong, that he wasn't here. And had he had car trouble, he would have found somebody to bring him home. You know, he had a lot of friends around. And, you know, we thought he could have.

run off the road or something, but nothing out of the ordinary. But of course, like I said, it wasn't normal that he wasn't here. It wasn't typical for Randy to not come home. In fact, he had never stayed out before without talking to his parents in advance. As Randy's parents were standing in their driveway, Steve Doherty, who had gone with Randy to DeSoto the night before, drove by their house at about 10 miles per hour. He went by so slowly that Harold was able to see that it was Steve. At the time, Harold was too upset about Randy being missing to think much about seeing Steve Dardy. But later, Harold thought more about how unusual it was seeing Steve driving that slow because the posted speed limit was 55 miles per hour.

Alberta called her brother, who was a police officer, and they reached out to him to help start an unofficial search for Randy. My brother was a policeman in Lawrence, and we called him. came down immediately and he went over to where the party was and nobody seemed to know anything where Randy was. Harold and Alberta drove over to the Irwin's house where the party had been

they found some party stragglers still there. But when the leeches asked these party stragglers if they knew where Randy was they said they didn't know. One thing that Harold and Alberta noticed was that the entire place had already been cleaned up. That really stood out to them because this was 8.30 in the morning. And this sounds like it had been a pretty big rager. But the aftermath of the party that we know Morph had gone on into the early morning hours was already cleaned up. Harold and I went over there. And Harold went out. They had a big bonfire.

and they had a, they had the yard totally cleaned up. And later we heard the party was going on until 4 o'clock of the morning. So it was really strange that at 8.30, the yard was totally cleaned up. They had a bonfire going, burning all the stuff out of the yard. And Harold went out to where the bonfire was and talked to people out there. And I went to the house, and the lady that had given the party invited me in. And she brought off the bat. She said, can I get you a beer?

I said, ma'am, I want to know where my son is. And she said, well, I don't know. And then they started giving us names as to who might have taken him home. So we got in our car and took off and started going to the kids that had been at the party. And nobody seemed to know where Randy was. Nobody seemed to know. They didn't know when he got there. They didn't see him leave.

Since Randy wasn't at the Irwin's home, Harold and Alberta immediately thought that maybe their son got into a car accident after leaving the party. They decided to call the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Office, or L-C-S-O, to report their son missing. But police could not start the search until after the 24-hour waiting period. Once that 24 hours passed, the official search and investigation in a Randy Leach's disappearance began. And from the very beginning, the Leeches were worried that the police weren't doing a good job trying to find Randy. bat they thought he'd run away. And we knew he didn't.

The place where the party was, it took them five weeks and a half weeks to get over and investigate, cover the area, which Harold was onto them constantly. On April 18th, the LCSO sought information on Randy. They detailed his stats as being 6'3, 220 pounds. he was a 17-year-old white male with blue eyes, brown hair, and a mole on his left ear. They gave a description of what Randy had been wearing and the car that he was driving, along with the car's license plate number, LVJ 8-721. The next day on the 19th, there was an unconfirmed siding of Randy at Bonner Springs High School.

This was followed by another unconfirmed sight. on the 25th of a gray car driving erratically down Iowa Street in Lawrence, Kansas. But none of these leads panned out, and Randy's parents waited helplessly for any news about their son. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until,

New technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Days of Randy being missing turned into weeks. In late April, 20,000 missing persons posters with Randy's high school senior picture on them were created.

These were distributed around the U.S. by a Linwood resident who traveled through United States while on vacation. One month after Randy's disappearance, an anonymous person contributed 500 hours to an existing $1,000 reward fund that was established to help find Randy. But these rewards didn't lead to any breaks in the case. As time passed, Randy's parents felt what hope they had was slipping away. The first few months, of course, we had so many people here trying to help us friends and relatives and all. and we were so busy going here and there doing different things. But if we, if Harold and I went any place at all when we come home,

I'd always look in the driveway thinking maybe he'd come home. But after that, I knew it was too long. I knew there was something really wrong. It was around this time. This is a few months after Randy vanished, that a man came forward with a very bizarre and frightening story. He told authorities that Satanists had abducted and drugged him and held him captive for two weeks in a cave outside Linwood. He said this cave was about 100 yards

from an address 12755 Loring Drive near Bonner Springs. This man said that his captors threatened to cut off his left arm. He also claimed they had shown him a court. of a man hanging in the cave. This guy thought the corpse may have been Randy Leach. This man went on to say that he saw men dressed in robes. They had weapons. They were engaging in rituals and using drugs. But it wasn't until the end of August in 1990 when authorities actually searched the cape.

And when they did, they didn't find any bodies in the cave. gave. Police concluded that the man that told this story used drugs and he hallucinated this whole thing. But there is one source that says the man took and passed a polygraph test. But even if that was true, those results were obviously discounted by LCSO officials. Now, I don't know what they thought they were going to find more. This is two years after Randy disappeared, after this. This guy, you know, came in and told him this story. Two years later, they searched the cave and didn't find anything. Well, it's two years later.

Yeah, it's plenty of time to hide evidence or get rid of incriminating stuff. During the investigation in a Randy's disappearance, authorities tracked down every single person who had been at the pre-graduation party and questioned them. Two of those partygoers were men named Robert Marble, who was the same age as Randy, and Kelly Powell, who was about a year older than Robert and Randy. Marble and Powell were good friends. When he was in the ninth grade, Kelly Powell, along with his family, moved to the country near Linwood. He was involved in several school activities such as student council and football, and was reportedly a good student. But at age 17, he allegedly started using meth and quit the school

activities. By spring of 1988, Kelly was living in Lawrence. Both of these two men, Marble and Powell they didn't have the best reputations. It was also known that they liked to party. Kelly said that when he and Robert arrived at the Irwin party that night, he saw Randy staggering around with a drink in his hand in the Irwin's garage. Randy accidentally bumped into him. And Kelly has said that he told Randy he should give his keys to someone else. But Randy didn't want to do that.

And Kelly has said that he didn't pursue it any. further. In May 1988, two LCSO detectives pulled into Robert Marble's workplace in Kansas City, Kansas, and they asked to search his car. During the search, they found two knives and two books in the car, and they confiscated all of it. The police would later figure out that these knives belong to Kelly Powell. One knife he had apparently picked up at a garage sale, and the other one he said he bought because he thought it looked cool. So they've confiscated some books. One was the Satanic Bible and the other was a Dungeons and Dragons Handbook, which also belonged to Kelly Powell. The abduction story involving men in robes in a cave paired with the knives and books found

in Robert's car fueled rumors of a satanic cult ritual in which Randy was sacrificed. As bizarre as that sounds, some people actually believed it. Police focused their attention on Kelly and Robert as potential suspects, and even asked them if they were involved in satanic activity. Both men denied it. Police began following the men everywhere they went. At first, Robert and Kelly decided to mess with police by leading them on wild goose chases around Leavenworth County. Pal was heavily using meth at that time, and quickly realized the police were ignoring his drug use. The men began feeling untouchable, as if they could do whatever they wanted and get away with it. They also realized that wherever they went, people were afraid of them. All this contributed to their brazeness with police. But after a few months,

they realized how serious police were about it. And that just makes no sense, Morve, right? You are heavily into meth. You would think the last thing you want to do is mess with police while you are heavily into meth. But like you said, it's almost as if Robert, and Kelly had this feeling of invincibility. Like they knew the cops were out there, but they weren't going to do anything about them. But they weren't going to do anything to them. The cops knew they were taking drugs. They didn't do anything to them.

Well, that wasn't their main focus, right? Yeah, you think they want to walk a straight line and be squeaky clean while they were under scrutiny from the police. And these guys sort of did the opposite. Morve, I do think this is a case that has involved a lot of rumors, a lot of innuendo. There have been a lot of sightings, reported sightings. Someone came forward and said they saw Robert Marble with Randy at an arcade in DeSoto. There was another siding with them at a Walmart in Bonner Springs. Now, and all of these came after Randy had gone missing.

Another witness reportedly told police that they saw Robert holding Randy down. and forcing drugs down his throat. Another person claimed Robert held up a weapon and said, this is what I used to kill Randy. Robert Marble eventually got fed up with all of the police scrutiny. He was getting a lot of pressure from authorities, and they eventually talked him into taking a polygraph. When he did, they started asking him questions he wasn't prepared for.

They started asking him whether he had killed. old Randy, and they asked him where he disposed of Randy's body. Robert got angry about these questions, and he was told later that he failed the test. So, Morph, this guy has admitted that he was on meth at the time. But then comes out later and says, you know what? I was not prepared for the questions they asked me on the polygraph. That is not a shocker. I don't think a lot of people who are heavily into meth are ready for the

that type of interrogation. And I also wonder if any of that drug use had any hand in the results or played any role in how the results came out. I don't know if there are any conclusive studies, but you would think being under the influence of something like that day in, day out, it would have to affect the results of a polygraph, you would think. Police followed all the leads they received and eventually ruled out the occult theory. They also had no evidence tying robber.

Robert Marble and Kelly Pout or Randy's disappearance. Both men acknowledged that they knew Randy, but they were not good friends with him. Kelly and Robert's lives were forever changed by these events, and it took years for the men to be vindicated. In 2008, Kelly told journalist Frank Tankard that he saw Kim Irwin's little sister hanging around older kids at the party. Someone grabbed her and jokingly said something along the lines of, let the sacrifice commence. Randy overheard this, and yelled back, I'm not going to be sacrificed. Kelly also said that he and Robert and another friend, Scott Smith, left the Irwin party at around 1 or 1.30 a.m. And he did not know if Randy was still there. Robert Marble left Linwood in 1989 and moved to Lawrence. A few months later, he joined the army.

Kelly Powell decided to stay put in Lawrence. In July 2007, Powell finally got his knives and Dungeons and Dragon's handbook back from LCSO. These items were accompanied by a letter signed by then Sheriff David Zellner that said the items were no longer of evidentiary value. It was after this point that Marble and Powell were officially not considered persons of interest in Randy's disappearance. At some point after Randy Leach disappeared, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, or KBI, joined LCSO in the investigation. As I've mentioned, there were a tremendous amount of rumors being spread about Randy's disappearance.

One of these rumors was that Randy ran away after breaking up with his girlfriend. Another was that he was killed because he saw something he shouldn't have seen. There was a rumor floating around that he died of dehydration after being tied to a tree. None of these proved to be true. So you know the police are going to check into all of these things, right? They all proved not to be true, but these rumors had to be hell on Randy's parents. You know, you would think every time you get wind of something, a new rumor, it would tear you up. I think you can only imagine that it was probably like a roller coaster ride for his parents to hear possible news or hear

sightings only to have police dash those hopes by ruling those sightings out. Yeah, I think that's true in any unsolved case, as long as there is this mystery of what happened to your loved one, coupled with the fact that there's sightings, there's rumors, there's innuendo, that's going to be a roller coaster of emotions. Every time something new comes out, you have to process that. You have to deal with it. In March 1989, Steve Doherty, one of the last people seen with Randy before he vanished, claimed he was strolling along the banks of the Kansas River and found a severed foot in a tennis shoe. He showed the foot to police who searched the area for more remains.

They didn't find any, but they concluded the foot was not Randy's. There's no word if the foot that was found was ever linked to any person or case. And another strange twist to this case. The Irwin residence where the big party was held burned to the ground. Not all that long after Randy's disappearance. Harold asked the fire marshal about the house where the party was. It had also burned in 89, I believe. It wasn't too long after the party.

It had burned. And Harold asked him about that. And he said, well, that had been set on fire. He said there was gasoline poured down the hallway into the furnace room. It was around this same time that the leeches had a couple of odd things happen on their property. They couldn't help but wonder whether these strange occurrences were somehow related to Randy's disappearance. We replaced the car, I don't know, a year later with another car. We bought another car, family car.

and we had only had it, oh, just a month or so, and it was, it only had like 20,000 miles on it. And it was sitting out in our driveway. We had driven over to Yudora, which is four miles, to my brother's house that night. And it was in March, and it was cool. And we had visited with them, and we got home about 10 o'clock and pulled in the drive, and which the car was right next to the house. And we came in the house and Harold turned on the TV to listen to the 10 o'clock news. And I was coming back to the kitchen because I asked him if he wanted a piece of chocolate cake.

I had just baked that day. And as I come through the dining room, our phone was on the wall and it was ringing. And a neighbor man said, hey, what's burning up there at your house? And I said, well, I don't know. And just then we heard a big boom. And I ran out here and there was fire coming out from both front wheels of our car that we had just driven home. And, of course, I called the fire department immediately. And Harold went out and took water hoses and tried to keep the water away from the house.

He put the water on the house to keep it from burning. And the fire department got here and they put the fire out, which it just smoked it all up. really bad on the inside. We told Leavenworth County that there was something wrong that that was not an accident. We finally got the fire marshal out here

six weeks later. He got out finally and checked it and he said there was a the gas line had broken which 20,000 miles. It was cool at night. It wasn't hot. But he said that's what happened to it. Well, my theory

was gasoline was poured on both front towers because they both were rolling up with flames. And we had a dog, a German Shepherd. She disappeared, or he did, immediately thereafter. So there was things happening. Now, while these incidents were troubling, they couldn't be tied conclusively to Randy's case. But it definitely shows you where Harold's and Alberta's minds went to. Investigators kept digging for clues in Randy's disappearance.

and in the summer of 1992, this was four years after Randy went missing, investigators saw a picture of a young man in a National Geographic magazine. And in their minds, this man bore a striking resemblance to Randy Leach. But his parents didn't agree. The authorities figured out that this picture was taken somewhere in California. To them, they thought this guy looked very similar to Randy Leach. And they tried to track down the man in the photo. But that part of the investigation led nowhere. Over the last weekend in July 1993,

authorities arrested three men in connection with Randy's disappearance. The first of these three men was Steve Dardy, the older friend of Randy's who was with him on April 15th before the party. The other two men were Kenneth Huffman and Scott Smith, who left the party with Robert Marble and Kelly Powell. They were arrested because investigators, thought that they may have relevant information on the disappearance. Prior to these arrests, a man pretending to be a research journalist offered his assistance

to Harold and Alberta Leach. Apparently, he had been interviewing people about the case, including some of the people at the party. He also made a claim that he was investigating for the show Unsolved Mysteries. But the show later said they weren't doing a segment on Randy. So this guy went by two different names. He went by Terry Martin and Harry Lee Harper. So it never really comes out who this mystery man is. But what does come out is that he worked with LCSO detective Don Weston and they supplied information to each other. As a result of the information flow, Don Weston got arrest warrants for the three men

for the alleged kidnapping and murder of Randy Leach. But the men were released on August 2nd. When police had no evidence tying the men to Randy's disappearance, it was later determined that this detective was new and a little bit overzealous. I mean, the sheriff actually came out and said that. Not long after the release of these men, the detective and this mystery man, whatever his real name is, apparently left the state for a few days.

They were fearful for their safety. I guess more if they thought that since they kind of masterminded these arrests, there might be some repercussions by these individuals. If Steve Doherty did have information about Randy's case, he took it to the grave because he passed away in 1996 at the age of 44. But Steve driving very slowly by the Leach home early on the morning Randy, vanished, has always stood out to Randy's father. Perhaps he was cruising by their home that morning, trying to see if Randy had made it home. In September, 1993, just a couple months after

these three men were arrested and released, real representatives from the show Unsolved Mysteries, despite saying earlier that they weren't planning on doing a segment on Randy, must have changed her minds. That month, the show announced they would be covering Randy's case, and were filming in Leavenworth County from September 17th to September 20th. But after a breakdown in cooperation with investigators in Randy's case, the show canceled Randy's segment. In 2001, 13 years after Randy went missing, Harold and Alberta Leach had their son legally declared death. And as a parent, that has to be a gut-wrenching decision. You want to hold out hope forever. But at a certain point, Harold and Alberta must have known in their hearts that Randy was never coming back.

Five years later in 2006, 27-year-old Kansas University student Tim Macy spent over a year writing a play based on Randy Leach's disappearance. During this year, he interviewed Harold and Alberta for the play that he ultimately titled Leaves of Words. Harold and Alberta were thrilled to get more exposure on to Randy's case. Over the past 31 years, Harold and Alberta Leach, desperate to know the truth about their son, have consulted with several psychics and spoke to numerous reporters and TV producers.

They even went as far as to appear on the Jerry Springer show, where a psychic told them before the cameras began rolling that their son was still alive. But when the cameras turned on, the psychic said, quote, I guarantee your son is dead. It was another disappointment in a long, never-ending search for the truth. But as we've talked about in many episodes, as a parent, there's nothing most people wouldn't do to find out what happened to their child. And the leeches were no exception.

From day one of the investigation, Harold and Alberta made it clear that they were not happy with how police handled their son's disappearance. They wrote letters to the editors of the local newspaper. They even placed an ad. asking people not to vote for Sheriff Herb Nye during the 1992 election. They felt as though authorities were not just neglecting their investigation. They thought they were lying about the investigation as well. And they still feel that way today. Several times throughout the years, the leeches have petitioned the court to have Randy

sealed records open. They've failed every time. Under Kansas law, if an investigation is open, police have the right to keep the record sealed, and they almost always do that. In early 2014, the leeches learned for the very first time that the LCS, KBI, and FBI actually had a strong suspect back in the 1990s. The suspect was Eric Montgomery. In April 2014, three people, Kim Shrubis, Patrick St.combe, Patrick Cesar. Antwayo and Daniel Fergus were spending time at a bar in Kansas City, Kansas. That's when they began

talking about missing people. Of course, since Randy's case was well known in that area, his disappearance was mentioned. Kim had attended Linwood Elementary School from 1991 to 1992, so she was pretty familiar with Randy's case. The conversation about Randy was more than a casual one, and the trio decided to dig into Randy's case more. The three friends started an internet search for information on Randy's disappearance. It wasn't long before Kim found some court records tying Eric Montgomery and a convicted killer named Cheryl Gary Brinkley to Randy Leach. The group contacted the leeches with this information. Harold and Alberta were shocked when they learned about it. Police never told them about Eric Montgomery. It turns out that

Montgomery and Brinkley were tied to the murder of a man named Everett Bishop. In 1987, Everett Skeet Bishop was living alone a few miles from the leeches in his childhood home. Bishop had a friend in prison named Jerry Singer, who had been in prison with Eric Montgomery. Skeet Bishop met Eric Montgomery through Jerry Singer, and not long after, Skeet and Eric became friends. Eric had also been in prison with a man named Cheryl Gary Brinkley. After his release from prison, Brinkley got a high-paying job in the technology. industry. Eric and Skeet were also friends with Lloyd Folsom, who had a criminal background. Lloyd had mules that he boarded at Skeet's farm.

In April 1990, 52-year-old Lloyd Folsom disappeared. One month later, so did Skeet Bishop. Skeet was last seen by a lumber employee at his farm. The KBI joined the search for Skeet, and they found out that he was friends with Eric Montgomery. In July 199, Ninety. Investigators went to Eric's home in Kansas City where they found a stolen car and were able to tie Eric to Cheryl Gary Brinkley. A few days later, Eric went to the KBI office in Overland Park and spoke with detectives. He told them that Brinkley had given Skeet Bishop a stolen Dotson 280 Z during a trip to North Carolina. while Skeet was driving the car back to Kansas, it broke down in St. Louis, so he abandoned it in a parking lot. Brinkley worried that Skeet would talk about the stolen car to investigators if they contacted him. This guy Brinkley was a very dangerous career criminal, and he did not want to leave a witness that could tie him to any of his crimes.

Montgomery and Brinkley went to Skeet's house in Loonwood. Brinkley shot Skeet several times with a Tech9 semi-automatic handgun with a silencer from Skeet's own gun collection. Skeet had several metal barrels behind a barn. Montgomery used one of those barrels and stuffed Skeet's body in it. Then he and Brinkley put the barrel in the back of Skeet's van, drove to Montgomery's home in Kansas City where they welded the lid of the barrel shut. The men then took the barrel to the Missouri River,

chopped holes in it, and dumped it into the river. police charged Brinkley with first-degree murder, even though Skeet's body had not been found. While Brinkley took the brunt of the punishment, he had some different information that pointed towards Eric Montgomery. Brinkley testified that Eric Montgomery confessed to him that he played a role in killing Lloyd Folsom. Brinkley said that Montgomery told him that he and Skeet had an argument with Lloyd over a drug deal. And Skeet killed Lloyd at his farm. Eric Montgomery helped Skeet stuff Lloyd's body into one of his barrels and they threw the barrel into the Missouri River. But Eric Montgomery got worried that Skeet would talk.

So he killed him. Brinkley also said that Eric had something to do with Randy Leach's disappearance, which is how these men came to be mentioned in the case of Randy Leach. Authorities didn't believe Skeet killed Lloyd Folsom. In fact, Montgomery's story didn't make much sense. He claimed that Skeet murdered Lloyd, but then Montgomery became worried that Skeet might talk. Why would Skeet talk if he was the alleged trigger man? Brinkley's lawyer asked to review Randis and Lloyd's case files, but a judge denied the request. The prosecutor argued to keep any mention of Randy Leach out of the trial, saying it had no bearing on the proceedings. Brinkley was found guilty and sentenced

to 30 years in prison. He was also found guilty on federal felony charges in North Carolina. The bodies of Skeet Bishop and Lloyd Folsom were never located. More if it makes me think about, and it's a scary thought, you know, in a big river, how many bodies are in some of these big rivers that have never been located? I mean, you know, you and I do cases all the time. I mean, you know, you and I do cases all the time. Big rivers are a place where a lot of time killers dispose of bodies. Yeah, you can't think of many better places to drop something and most likely it's never going to be found. But it's something to think about the next time you go catfish and you're going to fry up that catfish. Well, just be careful because there's most likely a number of

dead bodies in any given river of size. 19 years later, in two, 2009. Police arrested Eric Montgomery for aiding in the murder of Lloyd Folsom. By this time, Eric was in his 70s and he was dying of lung cancer. He was found guilty and sentenced to 20 months in prison where he died in 2010. Police have never really said why they went after Eric so many years later. But again, here is another person who may have had some information about the disappearance of Randy Leach that died without revealing anything. Former KBI investigator, Timothy Dennis, had been lead investigator on Randy's case from 1998 until his retirement in 2010. He has a theory about Randy's case that doesn't involve satanic elements nor any career criminals.

He believes that Randy was highly intoxicated that night and drove his mother's dodge into a lake after leaving the pre-graduation party early on April 16th. In 2018, Dennis said Randy had two possible routes that he could have taken from the Irwin home to his family's home. He could have either headed north to Kansas 32 or south to take Golden Road. He said Golden Road was the back way to Randy's home and was less likely to be patrolled by police. He felt this was probably the route Randy would have chosen. Back in 1988, there was a single lane bridge on Golden Road that crossed Stranger Creek. According to Dennis, there were no guard rails on the approach to the bridge. Now, the bridge is no longer there, but Dennis believes that back in 1988, Randy drove off the bridge and into Stranger Creek.

I think a lot of his colleagues have had a problem with this theory. And a lot of it centers around the fact that they just didn't think that Stranger Creek was deep enough to hide a vehicle. But Dennis tried to back his theory up by showing his colleagues a scene from the movie Kansas in which a vehicle is knocked off Golden Road into Stranger Creek and it sinks. Apparently this movie was filmed over the summer of 1987 before Randy's disappearance. And I get it more if this is a former KBI investigator, probably has a lot of experience. I do think it's somewhat strange though to try to back up your theory based on a movie.

Even though, you know, it was filmed at that location where he believed it happened. We know there's a lot of magic. Sometimes it goes into movie making. Dennis and a group of investigators hired a team from Lee's Summit underwater rescue and recovery and searched Stranger Creek using sonar equipment. The sonar equipment actually detected a vehicle, but it wasn't Randy's. It was a Grand Prix, not a Dodge 600. But it was proof that the water there could hide a vehicle.

The team kept searching and later found a different vehicle downstream from the bridge. The force of the current had pushed the vehicle past the bridge pilings. But this wasn't good news. If the current could push a car that far, it could have pushed one even further. One expert said that was definitely possible, and the car could be anywhere between the bridge and St. Louis, Missouri. He said it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, nearly impossible to find. So more of, you know, when you hear talk from experts,

It kind of makes me rethink my stance a little bit. Now, I still don't know that basing your theory off a movie, but the research seems to have proved it out. It seems as though this Stranger Creek was not only big enough to hide a car, but the water had a strong enough current to actually move the car quite a long ways. Randy's parents said a fisherman had searched Stranger Creek a few months after Randy disappeared. And other searches have been attempted in the Kansas River, but it's too shallow and the bottom is very sandy. One other thing to consider is the water level of Stranger Creek at the time Randy went missing. We know what it was in 1987 when they apparently filmed this movie. we couldn't find information morph on what it was exactly in 1988.

At the time Randy disappeared, it could have been a time where they weren't getting much rain, which would have made the area along the bridge too shallow to hide a vehicle. I do give this investigator credit for thinking of all the possibilities because for that car to disappear, you know, obviously there's only a few choices. one, Randy took the car someplace himself and hit it to never be found again, or someone hit it after possibly doing something to Randy. And the third possibility is that there was no foul play

involved. There was an accident and somehow the car went into the water. So I think it's a good thing to try and explore all the avenues, including the possibility that the car wound up in the creek. No, I absolutely agree with you. I may have been overzealous in busting this guy's chops. I don't have an issue with his theory. I think the theory is good and all theories should be looked at, right? My only thing was trying to back it up using a movie and not knowing exactly how it was shot or, you know, what movie magic may have been at play. Today, what happened to Randy Leach is a question that, like the day he went missing, doesn't have an answer. If anyone does know what happened to Randy, they're still not talking. There's currently a reward of 25,000.

$1,000 leading to the solving of Randy's case. When the leeches look back at the investigation in their son's disappearance, they can't help but think that there were missed opportunities and perhaps politics getting in the way at times. I know they put a lot of time in. They had a couple investigators on it each time. They had the KBI. But they were doing things that seemed so irrelevant.

And I know they got their job to do. But in our mind, they weren't getting down to what was going to find the answers. It started pretty much right off the bat because we knew they weren't doing what we thought they should. In fact, Harold was calling the sheriff's office on a regular basis asking them, did you do this? Did you do that? And it was just like, well, we know what we're doing. we even had a KBI agent slam the phone down on he's there one day because Harold had questioned him about what they hadn't done. It was just there was no love between either one of us.

And to me, those kind of people should be trained to deal with frustrated parents, I would think. So it was just kind of fighting. It's been pretty much that way all through these years. we went through three, four sheriffs. And the first sheriff we had, I think Harold saw him maybe two times. He never did come to our home. The next sheriff, well, we fought and paid quite a bit of money to get him out of office, got the new sheriff in, and he promised us that he would look into the case.

He said, I don't guarantee I can solve it, but I will look into it, which that's all we asked for. It wasn't but about two months, and we found out he wasn't going to do anything. Somebody had contacted Unsolved Mysteries, and they were going to come back here and talk to us, which they did. And they talked for four or five hours. We had a few of the kids that was at the party here, and they talked to them. And Unsolved Mysteries went to Leavenworth because they had to have the goodness of Leavenworth County behind them to be able to do a show. And they went up there, and Leavenworth County told them they had to have.

a subject they had to check before they could do anything. Come to find out they had seen a picture in National Geographic, and it had a picture of a boy sitting on a bench, and they said it looked like Randy. It no more looked like Randy than the man in the moon. But they had to send a detective out there to check that out before they could talk to Unsoled Mysteries. And from there, Unsolved Mysteries left.

Harold tried to call him several times, and he never could get them back. so we lost out there. So Leiborff County wasn't trying to help us at all in any way, shape, or form. And we knew that right off the bat. We have asked different questions. We just feel like they never did check anything out because we have so many questions, and nothing was ever answered or checked out.

We've got 97 questions that we ask. They won't tell us anything. We follow a lawsuit against them to try to get the records. We had a Cora lawyer. and we went through the whole process of the trial hearing and everything. And after nine weeks, the judge sent us a 46-page letter and said, denied. Harold and Alberta Leach still have all of those 97 unanswered questions. They still live in the same house in Linwood.

They're now in their 70s. But they have never given up on trying to find their son. Harold Leach suffered a stroke. which is why you didn't hear from him directly in this episode. And although they know that their son is very likely dead, they still want answers. If you have any information on Randy Leach's disappearance, please call the KBI at 785-840-627. You can also visit the Facebook page in search of Randy Leach or the website in search of Randy Leach.com. So Morfin, kind of wrapping up this case, and I think there are a number of possibilities

of what happened to Randy Leach. You explored them, right? There could have been foul play. That's always an option in these types of cases. This could have been an accident as the former KBI investigator, Dennis, theorized. If it was foul play, there are a number of individuals many of whom we talked about in this episode that had a criminal background. The one thing we didn't talk about Morph because it's not out there. What would be the motive for any of the individuals that police looked at to murder Randy Leach, dispose of his body so that it was never found and get rid of the car? I think that's the tough question that, and I'm sure police have

asked it. But as far as I know, it's never been answered. And if this was foul play, that's probably why this case has not been solved. Right. If, if police could figure out the motive, that would probably lead them back to the person that did it. Yeah, I think that's a valid point because when there's no motive, it makes it that much harder to put those pieces together and track it to somebody like you said. But I also wonder how much time, they spent on these different people and how many directions it took them in if it somehow diverted them from looking at other people by getting mixed up in the satanic panic, quote unquote, and maybe led them down the wrong avenue early on. Yeah, that's one thing you and I didn't

expand on. We've talked about it in other episodes, but it was the late 1980s. From what I remember, that was the height, right, of satanic panic. And anytime someone was, murdered or if there was a disappearance and there was a whiff of satanic involvement, I think police really looked in that direction hard because of the time. Yeah, it was sort of a catch-all for all the bad things that happened. It must be related to Satanism. I think this is a very tough one to figure out. And obviously, because the police have been trying for many, many years,

Harold and Alberta have been trying for many years. If there's anyone that knows what happened to Randy Leach, that person has not come forward. And the problem I think Morph is now so many years later, many of the people that may have information may have already died. And so we may never know. That's got to be a disheartening feeling for Randy's parents to hear all these possible motives and hear about all these leads just to have them go nowhere and lead to dead ends. Yeah, very tough.

No doubt, right? This changed their lives forever. Completely changed the trajectory of their lives. Special thanks in this episode goes out to Harold and Alberta Leach and to Betty at Randy's Facebook page for sharing information and their time to help us tell Randy's story. Thanks also goes out to Debbie Buck at True. CrimDiva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode. If you like to show, go out, give us a rating, a review, keep telling your friends. All of that goes a long way towards helping new people find the podcast.

And if you want to find us on social media, we're always around. We're on Twitter with a handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for a Criminology Podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast, Discussing and fans. All right, Morph. So that is it for another episode of criminology, but you and I will be back next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.