Every Town - Longview SERIAL KILLER - Joseph Kondro - Longview, WA

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Joseph Kondro. An adopted child. father of six. And the man known as “The Longview Serial Killer”--------------------------------------------💀Watch Our Feature Film World Premiere! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/anangryboy/a-scary-movie-from-the-creator-of-scary-mysteries💀 Exclusive Video Content & Access https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries 🥇 Watch This Episode on Youtube!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utnrYDWKDgI&ab_channel=ScaryMysteriesSOCIAL👁 Videos not found on Youtube check us out on TikTok @andrewfitzgerald💀 Instagram @andrew.fitzg💥 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficialPODCAST🎧 Scary Mysteries Podcast for more content from ushttps://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579 Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Everytown. Thank you guys so much for tuning into our podcast. If you guys enjoy listening to Everytown, then I wanted to let you know that there are always a video component to eat episode over on our YouTube channel called Scary Mysteries. They're really well put together and put faces to the names so you can always head over to our Scary Mysteries YouTube channel if you want to view them. There's also two other videos that come out on our YouTube channel each and every Monday and Wednesday where we cover strange and creepy stories from all around the world. Those can also be listened to in podcast form on our other podcast channel called Scary Mysteries.

We have tons of cool content for you all around. Thanks so much for the support and tuning in. Hope you enjoy the episode. Every town has a dark side. And many people have a dark secret deep down as well. This include your friends and family members. You yourself may even have one stuck so far down you don't even know it exists. Joseph Condro, for example,

have many friends, but unbeknownst to them. Beyond his friendship was a sinister plan to get closer to his friend's daughters. And over the span of 14 years, Mr. Condro ruined the lives of three girls, all of whom referred to him endearingly as Uncle Joe. There are child molesters, and they're the more despicable child killers. And when an individual is both of these, then society is in danger and the devil is at their door. I'm Andy Fitzgerald, and thank you guys for tuning in to this episode of Everytown. Now, let's head on over to Longview, Washington, where we get to know Joseph Condo, an adopted child, father of six, and the man known as the Longview serial killer. Troubles came too early in the life of Joseph Condro.

He was born in May of 1959 to a mother of Chippewa descent in Michigan, since there were six children in the family. and perhaps it was too much of a responsibility for his parents, Joseph's fate was altered when he was handed over for adoption. It's safe to say that Joseph was once a child victim of a period where native children were plucked out of their homes to be adopted by white middle-class families. So Joey, as he was fondly called by his adopted mother, grew up with his non-blood-related family in Castle Rock, Washington,

where he studied at a Catholic parochial school. But despite being a Catholic schoolboy, Joseph at a young age, exhibited behavior of a sociopath or a psychopath and had done very weird things. He got entangled into fights with other children, wielded knives, killed random animals, including their neighbor's pet,

and started drinking alcohol at just seven years old. He admitted to molesting young girls, while still a child himself, developing fantasies about murder as he grew, and began amassing a lengthy record, including auto and petty theft, drunk driving, domestic abuse, drug dealing, and forgery. In his own admission much later, he said he fantasized about hurting and raping girls. As a young teen, he put together a rape kit and kidnapped a young woman. When he became an adult, Mr. Condro fathered six children, but, he didn't have the opportunity to take care of them, mostly due to his drug addiction and seemingly

endless troubles with the law. So this makes one wonder, did all of these misfortunes in Joseph's life contribute to him committing heinous crimes later on? In the early 80s, there were reports of the disappearances of young girls in southwestern Washington, which couldn't be explained and baffled the authorities. One of the notable missing girls was Sheila Silvernails of Kalama, a city in Washington's Cowlitz County. Her mother Blanche described her daughter as outgoing and loving. She cared for everybody, she said. Anybody who was having a problem, she wanted to be right there to help. In school, if she sees somebody being left out of things, she'd go get them. Chila was only eight years old when she experienced a traumatic episode in her young life.

On April 20th, 1982, she was walking down their driveway to catch the school bus as her mom was watching her. It became Miss Silvernail's last memory of her daughter. Because that afternoon, Chila's family learned that she didn't ride the school bus, and so she didn't come home from Kalima Elementary School. The next morning, her family received some gruesome news. Caled's County Sheriff's deputies found her nearly nude body in a creek near Shirley Gordon Road, a little more than three miles away from her home on Martin's Bluff. The hapless girl was raped and strangled.

She'd been stabbed in the throat and asphyxiated, possibly by the killer, pressing a hand over her mouth and nose. As the mother, Blanche was the most affected, but among her four remaining children, she was worried about her youngest son, Scott. On suspension from school that day, Scott didn't accompany Sheila to the bus stop as usual, and he suffered with guilt ever since, according to Blanche. But how did Joseph Condro figure into this case? Well, it was known that he had dated Blanche before, but at the time he wasn't considered a suspect in the child's disappearance. Almost three years later, another young girl from Longview then went missing. Rima Traxler, an 8-year-old third grader at St. Helens Elementary School,

was described as a well-behaved and academically excellent student with no record of unpleasant behavior. On May 15, 1985, Joseph, then a 25-year-old laborer, was driving to a store to buy beer and cigarettes when he saw Rima walking from St. Helens Elementary School. The girl with dark, curly hair, loved her art class, so she proudly showed her art project to a neighbor, but she never came home. Mr. Condro was friends with Rema's parents, and they trusted him. For the young girl, he was Uncle Joe, a part of their family. On that morning of May 15th, Joseph was at the Traxler's home drinking beer with Rema's stepfather Rusty, who happened to be a high school pal of Uncle Joe. When he saw Rima walking from school, Joseph pulled over and thought,

If she gets in my car, I'm going to take her out to the woods. And the innocent girl put her trust on Uncle Joe, and just jumped in. Joseph drove to a remote swimming hole called Germany Creek, which was west of town. There, he raped, bludgeoned, and strangled his pal's daughter, and then buried her in a shallow grave behind a tree near the crime scene. For him, it was a simple escape from this crime, hide the victim so well that no one would ever find her. He said,

I figured if I could take her and bury her in a place far enough away. There was no way they'd go find her or go looking for her there. And the child killer was right. When Rima didn't return home from school, her desperate mother, Danielle, went to Joseph for help. She asked if Rima was at Joseph's house, then she started crying. She also used Mr. Condro's phone. to report that Rima was missing.

Police then launched a massive search for the girl, but their efforts were futile. They also questioned Joseph during their initial 1985 investigation, but no evidence was discovered linking him to her case. As years passed, the hope in finding Rima faded, which left her mother scarred forever. Danielle decided to leave Longview, Washington, and remarried a few years later. Then, it was an 11-year respite before Joseph went on the hunt for other victims, and his sights were set on 12-year-old Kara Rudd, a student at Monticello Middle School in Longview. Like Rima, Kara was a popular girl in school with no behavioral issues.

She had a clearer relationship with Mr. Condro, who had been a childhood friend of her mother's, and he, in fact, stayed in the family's garage for her time before he was evicted due to his excessive of drinking. And, just like Rima, Kara and her sister would call him Uncle Joe and thought he would be protective of them like any doting uncles would do for their nieces. But in November of 1996, Carrie's young life took a different turn, one that led to her untimely and brutal death at the hands of Uncle Joe. Prior to that, Joseph took Kara and a friend to an abandoned house on the banks of the Columbia River on a fall day that year. According to him, it was like a test run, a grand rehearsal for the big show he was about to stage.

I was planning on raping and killing them both, the child killer said. Joseph had already made a plan, choosing the place where he would dump the bodies, a spot chosen on one of his many long drives through the dense forests around Longview. His cruising was part of the game and a chance to savor the anticipation. Then, the day finally arrived on a cold November day in 1996. Uncle Joe met Kara and her friend near their school while he was on his way to submit his job application for him. He stopped and took time to converse with the girls and agreed to help Kara skip her class.

When he came by the school later on, Kara hopped into his gold Pontiac Firebird. This was known to Kara's friend, whom she had told about skipping class, and it seemed to her ride off in Joseph's car. This made Mr. Condro, technically the last person Kara was seen with before a disappearance. He invited her to take a ride along the banks of the Columbia River west of Longview. He then took Kara to an abandoned house near a popular swimming hole, which was deserted on that cold November day. Joseph said he just planned to have sex, but things just got out of hand. This translated to brutal acts of beating, raping, and strangling Kara. Then the last thing was then loading her body into his vehicle.

He drove up to Mount Solo Road, dragged her body down a ravine, then lodged it under the shell of a red, rusted out Volkswagen, he found there. According to Joseph, the search for Kara started right away. He said, the school called her mom and said, Hey, your daughter's absent.

Kara's friend, almost shared her fate, told authorities about Mr. Condro, being the last person Kara was seen with. Once again, like in Rima's case, Joseph fell under suspicion. By then, he had covered his tracks by washing his clothes, taking a shower, and throwing his shoes away. Police searched his home and questioned him, but they didn't get substantial information. Joseph confidently said, I knew they didn't have any solid evidence.

I knew they didn't have a body. And so, police still lacked sufficient evidence to arrest him. But after six weeks of a grueling search, that didn't yield results, local detective Scott McDaniel ordered an inspection of the Mount Solo area just on a hunch. It was near the Columbia River

where Joseph frequented, so the detective thought his team would find something there. And Detective McDaniel's hunch proved right. The search team spotted Kara's black Reebok t-shirt inside the abandoned Volkswagen, and they found what was left of her corpse after being raped and strangled.

After so much time, they had little hope of recovering evidence. But the car had acted like a makeshift refrigerator, preserving the lower half of her body and the critical forensic evidence. So they recovered enough DNA from semen to tie Joseph Condro to the crime and sealed the case against him. The seemingly unremorseful monster said, I should have buried her in a different place. Still, it took them 49 days to find her.

He was arrested for Kara's murder and then admitted to his murderous plans against Kara when he was interrogated. Mr. Condro faced the death penalty, and he had to do something to avoid it. He was in an isolation cell for nearly 18 months before prosecutors offered him a deal. Avoid a possible death sentence by admitting to murdering both Kara Rudd and Rima Traxler. So he and his lawyers struck a deal with the prosecutors in which he would make a confession. In the case of Rima's murder, it was a secret he had kept for 12 years, which he bartered for his life. Joseph said, Police had given up on Rima's murder.

They couldn't find her. They even admitted they couldn't do anything without a body. In February of 1999, Joseph made a bombshell announcement. He pleaded guilty to first degree felony felony. murder for the slang of 12-year-old Kara and second-degree intentional murder for the killing of eight-year-old Rima. He explained that he was already known and liked by the Trachsler family, and he was able to trick Rima into entering his vehicle by mentioning the word unicorn, a safety password taught to her by her parents and which he had learned from Rima's stepfather.

Then he raped, bludgeoned, and strangled the young girl at Germany Creek, burying her beside a tree. His confession really brought closure to two of the most horrible crimes ever to be committed in Colette's County, Washington. As Mr. Condro read the statements into record, Kara's mother, Janet heaved and sobbed, while Rima's mother, Danielle, grimaced with anguish. Following his plea deal, Mr. Condro was sentenced to 55 years in prison at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Authorities also strongly suspected that Joseph had been involved in the unexplained disappearances of other preteen girls throughout the region based on his violent tendencies and checkered criminal record. Since investigators had established the pattern of Joseph's

M.O. and the location of his crimes. They were convinced of Mr. Condro's involvement in the disappearance of Shilis Silvernails in 1982. Plus, it was a fact that Joseph had dated the mother, so he somehow had established a connection with the girl, which was part of his scheme. When asked by Judge Jim Worm, whether he also committed a sex offense against Kara, Joseph replied, yes. While he was sitting motionless, twitching one foot and wiggling his toes. In an interview with Longview Police Detective Scott McDaniel, Mr. Condrell revealed the whereabouts of Rima's remains.

But the location should remain undisclosed in the interest of protecting the crime scene. Investigators searched the area in 1999 but were unable to locate any sign of Rima, and remains haven't been found. Detectives wanted to question him about other unsolved disappearances. But Mr. Condro refused because of concerns about capital punishment. A full-blooded Chippewa, Joseph claimed, to have returned to the ways of his Native American ancestors. He believed his religion required souls to write wrongs before they die or be doomed to torment in the spirit world. He also said he didn't confess to the killings just to avoid the death penalty, but he really wanted closure for the victim's families and his own children.

Deep within, Joseph knew who he was. I'm sociopath, psychopath, psychopath, I've done a lot of weird things he said. I can remember as a little kid being a sexual deviant with kids in the neighborhood, and it never stopped. My victims never got older. I've been a serial child rapist ever since I was a child myself. He believed that he deserved to be put to death and said, If someone did what I did to my family, I'd want them on death row. Joseph Condro may have dodged a death sentence, but he suffered and doubted.

died in prison of liver disease, likely related to a hepatitis C infection. But in the end, he found his desired closure for coming clean with his victim's family, and especially with himself. So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Tune in next week for another one, filmed with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because who knows? Maybe your town will be next.