Going West: True Crime - Dana Pastori // 108

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

In March 2002, a spiritual writer in New Orleans went missing after a supposed accident right before she was planning to move out of the area. She would send vague messages to her family over the years about the dream life she was living- But when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans 3 years later, all secrets were revealed, and the truth shook everyone who knew her. This is the story of Dana Pastori. *BONUS EPISODES* patreon.com/goingwestpodcast *CASE SOURCES* http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/corporationsearch/SearchResultDetail?inquirytype=EntityName&directionType=ForwardList&searchNameOrder=FRANCORESTAURANTNORTHWESTFLORI%20V415780&aggregateId=domp-v41578-53d87c22-630e-451f-8605-bc4066d7f812&searchTerm=FRANCO%20PLASTERING%20INC&listNameOrder=FRANCOQUALITYIMPORTS%20P000000141610 ( http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/corporationsearch/SearchResultDetail?aggregateId=domp-v41578-53d87c22-630e-451f-8605-bc4066d7f812&directionType=ForwardList&inquirytype=EntityName&listNameOrder=FRANCOQUALITYIMPORTS+P000000141610&searchNameOrder=FRANCORESTAURANTNORTHWESTFLORI+V415780&searchTerm=FRANCO+PLASTERING+INC ) https://www.tributearchive.com/obituaries/10460313/Frances-Nardine-Cela https://www.nola.com/news/article_8cdfa28a-6af0-5592-9d16-da79ecc3d72f.html https://disappearedblog.com/updates/ https://www.leagle.com/decision/inlaco20110118257 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1998-06-03-9806030202-story.html https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/211765858/dana-marie-pastori https://www.nola.com/news/article_8cdfa28a-6af0-5592-9d16-da79ecc3d72f.html https://www.nola.com/news/article_206e5cf2-4ad1-551e-bedf-baa3ed081e44.html https://cases.justia.com/louisiana/fourth-circuit-court-of-appeal/2010-2010-ka-0044.pdf?ts=1431464440 https://www.investigationdiscovery.com ( https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/ ) https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1030/?name=Pasqualla_Pastori&pcat=42&qh=wnwxVUs%2FBOkR1hLihjz8DA%3D%3D https://www.nola.com/news/article_b1487e48-7b9d-5583-a84b-8f842cbe6ed1.html https://www.nola.com/news/article_206e5cf2-4ad1-551e-bedf-baa3ed081e44.html Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on through crime fans? I'm your host Tee and I'm your other host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Thank you so much for tuning in to Going West today. Hope everyone's having a wonderful week so far. This case today is such a freaking wild ride. I can't believe it's so little known. And with Marty Grau around the corner,

I thought this was a good time to cover this very tragic and complex case. Did you just have a Southern twang to your voice? I thought this would be a good gosh darn case for us together. Oh, good. I did that. I think when I get excited, just accents come out left and right. Different ones. Yeah, maybe it's the Oregon living. I don't know. Anyways, yeah, we're really excited to get into this story today.

Thank you guys so much for being here with us. I also want to remind everybody that we do have bonus episodes if you're all caught up on our current episodes. That's over at patreon.com slash going west podcast. For everyone who has joined, we do shout out to the end of the show, so make sure to listen for your name because we love saying thank you to you guys for signing up. Also, I'm wearing a genuine going west dad hat right now. I posted that on my, or I think definitely posted it on our Instagram, but if you guys are interested in getting a genuine going west dad and genuine head over to goingwestpod.com

and click the shop tab. Yeah, it looks really good on you. It's a black dad cap and it says going west. It's very stylish. It's a stylish one. All right, guys, this is episode 108 of going West, so let's get into it. In March of 2002, a spiritual writer in New Orleans went missing after a supposed accident right before she was planning to move out of the area. She would send vague messages to her family over the years about the dream life she was

living. But when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans three years later, all secrets were revealed, and the truth shook everyone who knew her. This is the story of Dana Pastore. Dana Marie Serrette was born in 1966 in Corpus Christi, Texas to her mother, Francis Chela, and she had a half-brother named Mark. Dana grew up in Dayton, Ohio and was raised by her mother because her parents weren't together, and Dana actually didn't know anything about her father growing up since he was kind of just someone that her mother, Francis, had a fling with. Everyone who knew Dana described her as being incredibly loving and people just kind of naturally gravitated towards her.

Within a few years of graduating high school, Dana married a man named Frank Pastore in Santa Barbara, California, and they went on to have their first daughter Giovanna in 1987 when Dana was about 21 years old. Then two years later, they had another daughter Angelina. At this point, Dana and Frank were living in Pensacola, Florida, and in October of 1992, they opened an Italian restaurant in town called Franco's. Around the same time they were starting the restaurant, Dana received a call from her birth father, Peter Serrette, and they spoke for the very first time. So she actually didn't have any contact with her dad until she was in her 20s. Wow, that seems like a very strange time to contact your daughter.

I know, but I mean, and he actually told her that he had three other kids, meaning that Dana then had two half sisters and a half brother who grew up in South Carolina where Peter lived. And this was really exciting for Dana as well as the half siblings, especially one of Peter's daughters named Kathy. So this was really good news who was really excited to hear from her dad and they just developed a relationship immediately. In the early 1990s, Dana's half sister Kathy was still living in Charleston, South Carolina, but she made the drive down to Pensacola to meet Dana for the very first time.

This was a really important new relationship for both of them, and they instantly became incredibly close. So close, that Dana eventually felt she finally had someone to confide in about the struggles of her own life. Dana wasn't happy in her marriage and felt like she wasn't living the right life for her, even though things seemed perfect on the outside. Her two beautiful daughters, husband, and business in the restaurant industry all seemed pretty great, but Dana was very spiritual. She loved reading tarot and newer husband didn't share her same beliefs, and she didn't

feel that she was passionately in love with him, so she wanted out of the marriage to live the life that she had dreamed of, and to find someone that she really connected with. She wanted to get out of Florida and move to New Orleans to find herself, which I'm sure Daphne can agree with, awesome, awesome city. But of course, she had to think of her daughters as well. So she stayed with Frank and tried to make it work, but two years later, things really came to a head, and they finally split up. Dana finally had the opportunity to move to Louisiana, and although she didn't want to live away from her young daughters, she told him that once she settled into New Orleans, that they could come live with her.

Yeah, because Dana's daughters were her entire life, so her goal was to find a place that they could all be comfortable, save up money, and then they could have a wonderful life together just them girls. But this meant that the girls would have to live with their father a little bit longer, and this didn't prove to be an issue with Dana at first, but months later when their divorce finalized, Frank officially got custody of their two daughters because he explained to the judge that Dana abandoned the girls and moved away. As devastating as this was to her, she made sure to visit them down

in Florida at least a few times a month so that they could spend some time together. Eventually, the girls moved with their dad to Ohio, where he married a woman named Karen, but Dana still made sure to visit them as often as she could. About six months after the divorce was finalized in December 1995, the girls went on a court authorized week-long visit to Dana's home in New Orleans

when Dana noticed that both of the girls had bruises. She immediately feared that something very bad was happening at their dad's house. Dana took the girls in for a psychological evaluation and hopes that they would tell a trusted professional what was going on and they did. They were both being physically abused by their new stepmother and one of the girls even had to get stitches on her face after one incident. Dana trying to do the right thing by her girls refused to let them go back to an abusive household, so she had her attorney write up a letter to Frank and Karen explaining that,

due to set abuse, Dana would not be bringing the girls back to Ohio. This began a multi years long nightmare for everyone involved because Dana essentially went on the run with the girls and traveled around the US, from Louisiana to Florida to Seattle, etc. and hoped to get them into Canada where custody laws wouldn't be valid. And some would argue that this wasn't the best way to go about the situation, and that she could have used the evidence of abuse and court to gain full custody of the girls, but in Dana's mind, she felt that she needed to get them out of that situation immediately, and this seemed to be the only way to do it. Unfortunately, it meant for the next year the girls would be absent from school in an ever-changing environment.

The girls' father, Frank, hired a private investigator to track Dana down and informed law enforcement that his ex-wife kidnapped their children. So this became a really big issue. And one year after fleeing with the girls, Dana had to turn herself in so she didn't have to face 10 years in prison. And I'm sure that this was a really frustrating situation for her because she's like, I know my kids are getting abused, but I mean, I don't know what to do at this point. It's really hard because, you know, she thinks she's doing what's best, but then the girls are out

of school, they're on the run, like, that's no life for them, but she's also like, I can't stand to watch them go back to that house. So it's really messed up. Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, the legal system comes into play in this particular situation. She has to do things legally or else it's kind of her ass. Exactly. And it got really hard because it was difficult for her to prove that the girls had been

abused by Karen. So after numerous court dates, Karen and Frank Pastore were ultimately found not guilty of this accusation. During the time that this whole court battle ensued, the girls were placed in foster care. But then they returned to the custody of their father two years after having visited Dana in New Orleans. So this was like a long time common situation. Very long process. Yeah, long long process. And I know that social workers did visit the home after to ensure that the girls were not being

abused and everyone just kind of carried on after this. Either way this was very hard on Dana because she just didn't feel comfortable with them at that house. So she made it her mission to get the girls back when she could. But very hard on Dana because she just didn't feel comfortable with them at that house, so she made it her mission to get the girls back when she could. But despite her efforts, Dana still wasn't out of the woods quite yet with the law, and she stayed in South Carolina with her dad for a while until her trial regarding the kidnapping charges. Lucky for Dana, her father Peter actually worked in law enforcement, so he was doing everything

that he could to get her out of this situation. Spending time in Charleston gave Dana lots of time to reconnect with her half-sister Kathy and figure out what her next steps were going to be. And this is when she fully realized her interest in talent in reading tarot cards. Dana fully felt that she had a gift in predicting people's futures, so she kind of tested this out with Kathy who was a huge skeptic. So one night while they were hanging out, Dana read her tarot cards and explained to Kathy that, within the next year, she would be divorced from her current husband, lose all of her money, but then meet her soulmate

who was from a different country. And according to Kathy, all of this came true. She did end up getting a divorce and was then in a very poor financial standing, but then she actually ended up meeting a man from Canada named Bill, who she married, and they're still together to this day. In the summer of 1998, Dana was sentenced to two years' probation, so she wouldn't have to serve any jail time for taking her daughters. So 32-year-old Dana heads back to New Orleans to put her clairvoyance to good use by working

as a tarot card reader in the French Quarter. She did this all on her own, though, on the street in Jackson Square, but she loved it. She was making pretty good money and was saving up to hire a lawyer to help her regain custody of her daughters. Dana was living in the city and meeting a bunch of new people and quickly met a fellow tarot card reader named John Morgan. And his birth name is actually John Robertson, but he took the last name Morgan when he moved to New Orleans to signify the rum brand and the pirate, so this kind of shows you John's quirkiness. That's very strange, but okay. Yeah, that's just John.

So Dana was so happy at this point, and she felt as though she had truly met her soulmate, someone who protected her, loved her, and shared her very same interests and beliefs. John also worked as a delivery man at the quarter master, Delhi on Bourbon Street, and Dana expressed to him that she was looking to make some more money to save up, so he helped her get a job there as cashier. And they got to work the graveyard shift together

and everything was going great, business was good, Dana moved into John's apartment, which I think was like less than a block away from their work, so super close. And Dana finally felt like things were coming together for her. But unfortunately, things weren't as great as they seemed. New Orleans, as many other big cities, can be a very dangerous place. And later that year, her dad Peter felt that Dana working on the street wasn't safe

for her, and that she should consider moving out of the city and maybe even back to South Carolina. And he kind of gathered this opinion by visiting her in New Orleans. But Dana was dead set on staying and she wasn't scared, especially since she worked on the street and in the deli with her boyfriend, John, who as Daphne just mentioned, always wanted to make sure that he was keeping her safe and out of harm's way. But a few years later, in 2002, 36-year-old Dana came around to the idea of leaving. She eventually realized that she couldn't do what she was doing forever, especially if she was trying to get custody of her daughters to get them out of their father and stepmother's home.

Also, Dana absolutely loved writing, and a big goal of hers was to write a book. So she came up with a plan to quit her job at the quartermaster, Dele, move out of Louisiana, get her daughters back, and write a memoir about her life. And she explained this to a few of her coworkers, and she actually gave her two week notice in early March of 2002. Dana had a couple more shifts left at work, but in mid-March, she didn't show up to one of them. This was not like her to do, so all of her coworkers were very concerned about her.

Since she didn't have a cell phone, they couldn't reach her to see what was up, so they had to call her boyfriend John, who again was their coworker too, but he didn't answer the phone either. Then the next day, Dana once again didn't show up for work, but John came in with an explanation. He told their co-workers about an accident that Dana had been in the day before with her friend and explained that she was in critical condition in the ICU. Of course everyone was incredibly worried, but luckily, John updated them on her condition every day and promised to give her all the well wishes from them since he was able to go

see her. But around this time, co-workers started noticing a lot of suspicious activity and questioned what was really going on with Dana? According to Dana's co-workers, they noticed John Morgan acting very differently after Dana's accident. Since they were his co-workers too, they were around him a lot and some of them sensed that he was doing hard drugs. John was the guy that always smoked weed, but now it appeared that he was taking it further than that.

And this really affected his work ethic, and he went from organized and responsible to an absent-minded wreck. They also began noticing that his personality seemed off, and he was very bossy. But they also noticed this right before Dana planned to move away. One of the co-workers even caught John verbally harassing Dana and putting her down at work just weeks prior. But apparently this side of John wasn't new. And Dana's father Peter had sensed his cruelness when he had visited.

He didn't witness anything bad, but he just didn't like them together and didn't like the life Dana was leading. And it appears Dana had come to this realization too, hence her decision to move. Dana was a very private person, so she didn't tell anyone about her relationship issues or anything that was happening behind closed doors. But a source close to the couple said that, just weeks before she was last seen and during Marty Grah, Dana and John had a really bad fight. And shortly after that fight, was when she decided to move away.

But with Dana getting into this car accident, her coworkers had to just wait around for her to get better and then hope to see her turn things around. With John still updating them on her progress, he explained a few weeks after the accident that Dana's parents came to town and picked her up. Apparently, Dana needed further treatment and they were going to get that for her, but just not in New Orleans. And after she started recovering, John excitedly told co-workers that she was on the up and up and actually, her dad was sending her to Prague for a few weeks so that she could get started on her memoir in a more inspiring environment.

And then just a few weeks after that, John said that Dana would be staying in Prague indefinitely because she loved it. And this meant that he and Dana wouldn't be together, but she was happy living in Europe and everything was great. So it kind of seems like there's just a lot of things going on with Dana. She's, you know, going into this recovery process, she's then going to Prague and she's writing this book now. Right.

So her coworkers are kind of like, wow, that's, but they were so happy for her. They're like, okay, cool. So she went through a terrible accident and she healed and she's fine. And now she's like living her best life. That's just a lot of things to happen in a couple weeks. But of course, things really weren't as they seemed.

At this same time that co-workers were hearing that Dana was happy and she was living in Prague, Dana's half sister Kathy wasn't getting that same news. Since Dana didn't have a cell phone, the only way that Kathy could really get a hold of Dana was by calling John or by emailing her. So that March when Kathy was casually trying to get in touch with Dana to catch up in chat, John would always have an excuse for why Dana couldn't come to the phone. Usually mentioning that she was at work or she was busy and she would have to call her back later.

So Kathy resorted to email, and after a few days, she finally heard back from Dana. Dana sent Kathy an email explaining that everything was great and that she was so sorry that she hadn't called her back yet, but everything was going really well in New Orleans. And this relieved Kathy, and they just continued to chat over email like that ever so often. Nearly three and a half years later, in late August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the southeastern United States, wrecking absolute havoc on New Orleans and the surrounding areas in Louisiana,

as well as Georgia, Mississippi, and beyond. It caused over 1,800 deaths from drowning, being inside a building that collapsed, etc. and hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in US history. Norland's was hit the hardest and was almost completely flooded with water and struck with intense winds and rain. This was an incredibly terrifying and tragic time for the area. I mean, it was apocalyptic, and every life in this area was put on paws. And you can just imagine the streets at this time and during the aftermath because people were without homes, they were frantically looking for loved ones and just completely displaced from life as they

knew it. Yeah, I remember actually watching all the news of that and just seeing people on top of their roofs just hanging out trying to get rescued. Some people were like, you know, in canoes and rafts trying to get out of the area. Yeah, and I also read that because it was so hard to get to people to, you know, help them save them from being on their roof or wherever they were, a lot of people actually even died from dehydration. So this was just really, really terrible. Yeah, and on top of that, I mean, just a little fact true crime wise, a lot of evidence that was locked away in Louisiana for different true crime cases was actually destroyed.

Yeah, you're right. A lot of that evidence is just completely gone now. And just for perspective, the hurricane lasted over a week. But it happened to be a huge turning point in Dana's story. Family who had only heard from Dana via email for the last three and a half years, worried immensely about her safety in the storm, and finally felt the need to speak to her and hear her voice. But because of the destruction of the storm, making and receiving a call was incredibly difficult since power lines were demolished and services were down.

So Dana's family just hoped that she was okay and had survived the horrible event, and they waited on pins and needles to hear from her. But weeks passed, and that call never came. So as the storm settled, her father Peter reached out to a law enforcement friend in the area because remember if he was previously in law enforcement, and essentially asked them to check and see what the status of her apartment was, and to have them go out looking for her. Obviously, this was going to be difficult because as Daphne just mentioned, over 1,800 people died in this disaster.

So they had a lot in their hands. And even a whole month after Katrina hit, there were over 7,000 people missing from New Orleans out of the nearly 480,000 people that lived there. Yeah, and I actually read that the population of New Orleans one year later was 230,000. So over half the people who lived in New Orleans, if not more, left after Katrina hit. And this is probably due to maybe them losing their home and needing to relocate, but this

is a lot of people. So it just goes to show you how horrible this tragedy really was. But despite all this, police did check into Dana's potential disappearance and they couldn't find her. So now Peter was concerned that something had happened to her in the hurricane, because he really just believed that she would have reached out to them and told her family that she was okay,

and no one had heard from her at all. Peter got smart here and remembered that Dana had a prescription that she relied on for her glaucoma, so he had his law enforcement friend see if he could do one more favor for him. Check with the pharmacist and see when Dana last picked up her prescription, because this could help him track her steps. So the officer did just that and came back to Peter with some bizarre news. Dana hadn't picked up her prescription since the very end of 2001. Two months before John told Dana's co-workers that she had been in a car accident, which

again was over three and a half years earlier. She got this prescription almost every month, so there was no way she could go that long without it or else her eyesight would be at major risk. So finally, Peter called John Morgan. At this point, her family didn't believe that they were still together anyway, but called him just in case he had heard anything, and he had. John explained to Peter that she was doing great and actually had received some disaster relief money and went to Europe with it. Obviously, this contradicts past stories that John Morgan has explained to people in Dana's life.

Three and a half years earlier, he told their co-workers at the quartermaster Delhi that she had moved to Europe with the help of her parents. And now he's telling Dana's father that in 2005, she just left for Europe? Since Peter didn't know about the story discrepancies, he actually felt relieved by this news, but confused as to why she didn't call him or Kathy to explain this to them herself. Peter told Kathy what was going on, and she was so happy for Dana to finally be off in Europe where she wanted to be and working on her memoir. Back to New Orleans, it took a very long time for first responders to get around the city to help everyone because of the multiple feet of water that flooded the streets.

So some areas didn't receive help for a very long time until law enforcement and relief workers could physically get to those areas after the flooding subsided. Two months after Katrina hit in late October 2005, detective Gregory Hamilton was called to the Marony neighborhood of New Orleans, which is just a stone throw from the French quarter, after someone had found a body in a pile of garbage from the storm. In these days, this wasn't too alarming of a call because of the amount of bodies that were being discovered at this time of people who had died in the hurricane. But when Detective Hamilton arrived at the scene, he noticed something very different about this body.

The woman, named Kathy Greer, explained to him that her husband was going through stuff in their home to determine what of theirs was salvageable and what wasn't since so many of their belongings had been destroyed. So he was kind of pulling things outside and kind of compiling them into this area in the yard. And he came across a trunk, think like an antique chest, in their home and opened it up. And that's when he found a practically mummified body inside. And that's why the detective knew this was different, because whoever this person was had died long before Katrina hit. Obviously, this was a huge concern, but a weird element of this was that the trunk didn't belong to Kathy Greer or her husband. And it had actually belonged to their

daughter's boyfriend, who had left it behind when they moved out of the area after Katrina hit. Their daughter had been living in their house with her boyfriend for the last year, but he had left behind this trunk, and Kathy had no idea where they were living at this point. But Kathy was able to give Detective Hamilton some useful information, a lock box that belonged to the boyfriend that he had also left behind. Within the box was some personal information along with some photos and some other belongings. That's when the detective found out that the boyfriend's name was none other than John Morgan. At this point, they're still unaware of who

the remains belong to and why they were being stored in a trunk and kept in the Greer's home. But Detective Hamilton was determined to find out. And can I just say how seriously creepy this is, like these parents welcomed their daughter's boyfriend to live in their home, and then he and their daughter move out after the hurricane hit the area, and he leaves behind a bunch of his stuff, and one of his belongings has a corpse inside, and you just realize that said corpse has more than likely been living inside your home with you for the past year, and you don't know who the remains belong to, and all you know

is that your daughter's boyfriend is potentially dangerous, and you have no idea where they are. Like talk about stress. Yeah, no kidding, and the fact that the body had been there well before the hurricane hit, it's just very, very creepy and eerie. And it also makes you wonder how long it would have remained there if the hurricane didn't hit. Since the detective doesn't know where John Morgan is at this point, he tried to put all the pieces together.

Kathy Greer explained to him that John's ex-girlfriend was named Dana Pastore, and they lived together in the French Quarter, and she was wondering if the body possibly belonged to her. So Detective Hamilton tried to reach Dana, but with no luck. His next step was to visit John and Dana's landlord from their previous apartment, and see if she had any information, and she did. She actually thought that Dana's absence was very strange. So back in 2002 when a few weeks had gone by and the land lady hadn't seen Dana around, she decided to ask John about it. And John explained to her that Dana had gotten

into an accident, but this accident story was different than the one that he had told his co-workers. He told Maria the land lady that Dana had been driving in a truck when a toolbox hit her in the back of the head and she got a concussion. When she later checked in with John on Dana's progress, John told her that Dana had actually moved to South Carolina to be with her dad. And I mean, this wouldn't have been too weird to hear because Maria doesn't know Dana too well personally and is obviously just going to believe what John's telling her.

But little does she know, John had told other people in Dana's life very different stories. Detective Hamilton explained a bit of what was going on without giving her too many details and then asked the landlady Maria if she had recognized the trunk that the body was found in but he didn't tell her that the body was found inside he just showed her a photo and the asterisk she recognized it and she said that a little over a year earlier when John was moving out she saw John carrying that trunk out of his apartment. And after he moved out, Maria actually noticed a disgusting smell inside of the apartment, but she chalked it up to just thinking that maybe some rats had died inside the walls

or something. And as nasty as it is, that smell was still there a year later when the detective inspected this apartment. So Maria was just thinking that the apartment walls had been infested with rats and was still working on having it inspected, but Detective Hamilton knew that wasn't the case. He knew that it was the smell of a dead body, and the smell was coming from the apartment's crawl space. And for the crawl space, that's what they call it.

It's near the kitchen. It's almost like this tiny little closet area where there's just a little kind of door, but it's not like a door with a handle, it's this weird little, closety area, but they call it the crawl space. So when forensic specialists worked inside the crawl space, they were able to determine that there was human blood present, indicating that the trunk had been kept in the crawl space and had possibly leaked. After running the blood and other bodily fluids for DNA, they were able to confirm that

it belonged to 36-year-old Dana Pastore. And just within a couple days of this, they were able to determine that the cause of death of the body they found in the trunk was strangulation. There had been a curling iron found wrapped around the body's neck, and this indicated that they had been strangled by its cord. The manner of death was homicide. However, they still didn't have DNA results back on the body, but they knew it was Dena's. This made the hunt for John Morgan even more intense, and luckily, they were able to quickly find him living with his girlfriend in Mecklenburg, North Carolina.

I think it's Mecklenburg. Since DNA hadn't come back on the body, they couldn't arrest John so they could really only question him. And while casually questioning him outside of his home, John said that he hadn't seen Dana in years because she moved away. So now we have so many different stories from John, this guy's just a liar. Indeed. Since police were confident that the body belonged to Dana,

Detective Hamilton called Peter to explain what was going on, and he was completely caught off guard, because the last that he had heard, she was in Europe. So he truly felt that the detective had made some kind of mistake. But in John's lock box at the Greer's home was Dana's license, her passport, birth certificate, social security card, and other important documents. So this was obviously a very bad sign, because you can't travel without those things. Or live like if they broke up and even if she did move away she's gonna need that shit. Exactly. And also in the trunk where the body was found, there were other items as well. And the body was clothed wearing underwear, green sweat shorts, a bra, and a Lake City Police Department t-shirt, which is who Dana's father

Peter used to work for. Dana had this t-shirt in her possession, so it was very obvious the body belonged to her, and she had been murdered in it. But Dana's family sat in agony for nearly two years. The DNA testing was severely delayed due to a heavy backlog, so the results didn't come until the summer of 2007. But the results were exactly what they thought they were. The body belonged to Dana Pestory.

And John, of course, had been free this entire time. But now that they had the remains, they went back to his house and arrested him for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Dana Pastore. Once John Morgan was brought down to the station and questioned again, his story changed, which as we say is never a good thing. Of course it changed. He had previously stated that he didn't even know Dana was dead and that he had nothing to do with whatever happened to her.

But once at the station, he said he didn't kill her, but he helped dispose of her body, and he knew who did kill her. But once at the station, he said he didn't kill her, but he helped dispose of her body, and he knew who did kill her. Oh my god, this guy is such a fucking moron. Yeah. So the story goes, John and Dana hadn't argument about his heavy drug use and involvement with drug dealers. Dana then threatened to tell the police, which enraged John, so he left the house and headed to the quartermaster deli to call his drug dealer who was supposedly named Pepper and tell him that Dana was going to rad on him.

With that, Pepper went to John's apartment and murdered Dana. First of all, I mean, I don't even think that drug dealers really go for the curling iron corn cord for their murder. Yeah. No, I don't think so. It just doesn't sound right. So the next morning when John came home, he found her dead and realized that he had to get rid of her body somehow.

But why though, if you're not the one who murdered her, why wouldn't you just go to police? Exactly. That's why this doesn't make sense. So he says that he went down to a local antique shop, bought the trunk and put her body in it. And as John explains what he did next, he said it was disgusting,

but he said it with this really awkward chuckle. He then very calmly and bluntly explained that he had to dismember her at the knees and abdomen, so he would be able to fit her body inside the trunk. Police believe that he did this, but they didn't believe his story about somebody else murdering her. Because obviously none of that added up.

Especially once the detective kind of learned more about their relationship and the abuse that Dana suffered by Jon's hand, so it's just, it's looking like Jon is definitely the guy. Yeah, and the first time you showed me a picture of Jon, like I remember you were saying like, he does not look like the type of guy that would be abusive, or I mean, he looks like a little fucking nerd. He does, you guys should go look at photos on our social media. Instagram is at Going West Podcast,

and Twitter is at Going West Pod, and then we're also on Facebook. He just looks like he honestly looks like a nice nerdy guy like my dude looks like he's literally gonna fix your computer He does he does so go check it out. I mean looks obviously can be very deceiving the trial took place two whole years later in July of 2009 so seven years after Dana was murdered. Presented at trial was all the important personal documentation and identification that belonged to Dana that were found inside John's lock box.

Maria the Land Lady also testified along with Dana and John's co-workers in Kathy Greer. Kathy Greer also mentioned that John had only ever said negative things about Dana and told her that she had moved to the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, Dana's remains were in her home. Many other people testified and painted the picture of what really happened and all the details we explained above were presented to the jury.

And by the way, part of Dana's moving plan was to break up with John, so we can guess moving plan was to break up with John. So we can guess that she was trying to do just that and it enraged him enough to murder her. And the district attorney quoted John saying, she told me she was sick of me, sick of New Orleans and sick of the quartermaster. Then, DA Bridges explained,

and that was John's life. He wasn't going to let her walk out, and he didn't. Their relationship went bad, and the day she decided that their relationship wasn't going forward, was the day that her life ended. Although pleading not guilty in the summer of 2007, John Morgan was found guilty of the second-degree murder of Dana Pastore and sentenced to life in prison. And John never explained why he kept Dana's remains all that time, so I mean, we can only imagine.

And it's crazy to think that he likely would have gotten away with this if he had just disposed of her body. Because positively identifying her remains is the only thing that brought this case to justice. Because remember, when they had the body and they didn't know if it was hers or not, for sure sure when they were awaiting the results, he was a free man, so it's just wild to think about. Well what's also scary is that again he was a free man, so is there anything else he could have done during that time? I mean obviously he's sick, you know. Yeah he's a sick individual so he

could have murdered anyone else? Possibly and I can only hope that Kathy Greer's daughter got away after she learned about all this and that they weren't together during the two years that he was awaiting his arrest, I guess you can say, so I didn't read about that though. And I do wish that we knew a little bit more about the three and a half years that Dana was absent because that's a lot of time for her daughters not to see her or speak to her as well as her father and her step sister who she was supposedly close to. Yeah, I mean, I was going to say when she was in the hospital, apparently in the hospital in the ICU, it's really strange to me that none of-workers went to go visit her physically in the hospital. Well, they couldn't, so John told them that they weren't allowed to. That was the first thing they all said. They were like, oh my god, can we see her? Can we bring her flowers? And he was like, no, no one's allowed to see her. I'll just relay the message for you to her.

Of course, that's what he would say. Exactly. And I don't know. It just kind of gives me pause that all this time went by and they were just hearing from Dana on email Because I mean, I don't know over three years is a long time not to see your family member and not to actually talk to them on the phone Yeah, and maybe these emails were just really manipulative and John was making it really seem like she was living her best life And don't worry about me. I'm doing fine. I'm writing a book like, I mean, I'm sure that's, that was the case. I mean, at this time that this was all happening, her daughters were teenagers.

So I only imagine what they thought of all that time going by without seeing her, like that probably didn't feel good to them. I don't know, but, but yeah, it's, it's really creepy too to think about the fact that throughout all those years, John was still just emailing them back, pretending to be Dana.

Yeah, and I mean, through that horrible tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, I mean, at least this one good thing happened, because like you said earlier, if that trunk had just remained in a Kathy Greer's home, and they hadn't been pulling out all this old stuff. They may have never found that trunk or maybe they would have found it years and years and years later and John would have been gone by then. Or John would have come back for it and kept it hidden or gotten rid of it then. Exactly. So, I mean, yeah, and to think about it too, obviously eventually her family would catch on and say,

okay, where's Dana? But with no body, there's no crime. So they wouldn't have been able to figure it out, which is really, really insane to think about. Yeah, John could have just fed them lies forever. Yeah, and this was such a crazy and complicated case, and we can only hope that Dana's daughters had a great rest of their upbringing. And our hearts really go out to Dana's family after those years of torment. So may Dana Pastore rest in peace. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West.

Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and next week we'll have an all new episode for you guys to dive into. Thank you so much to everybody who has joined our Patreon over the last week. We really appreciate it. It's what keeps the show going. We have over 35, I think, now bonus episodes for you guys. We're about to release another one this week,

so stay tuned for that. Yeah, we gotta give thanks to those people who have joined us this week. Big thanks going out to Johnna or Jonah. I'm not sure which one, but thank you. I think it's Johnna. I think it's Johnna too. A big thanks going out to Monica, Amy, Jessica,

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