Going West: True Crime - Jodi Sanderholm // 70

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

In 2007, a 19-year-old girl went missing after dance practice at her college. Although the details weren’t all too suspicious, police began searching for her immediately. And it was quickly brought to their attention that a male in the area had potentially been stalking her. This is the murder of Jodi Sanderholm. CASE SOURCES https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/feb/03/victims-friend-defendant-spied-slain-student/ https://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article213214744.html#adnrb=900000 http://www.newscow.net/2009/02/03/archive-2733/ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/17390419/jodi-leann-sanderholm https://www.kltv.com/story/5917625/body-found-in-missing-kan-student-case/ https://jodislaw.wordpress.com/tag/justin-thurber/ https://www.foxnews.com/story/desperate-search-for-jodi-sanderholm 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 True Crime fans? I'm your host Tee and I'm your other host Daphne and you're listening to Going West. We hope everyone is staying safe and doing well. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. And just so you guys know, we actually just released a brand new bonus episode on our Patreon on the Appalachian Trail murders. It is truly an incredible story. These two lived such interesting lives before they were met with a monster on the trail. So go listen to that along with all the other bonus

episodes that we have on there Patreon.com slash Going West Podcast. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Going West Podcast. It just $5 a month, it really helps out the show and you get a ton of bonus episodes. So check it out. If you guys want to shout out on our show, make sure you head over to Apple Podcast and leave us a review. If you guys like this show, leave us a review. It really helps us out actually when you do that. So please go do that and we now do the shoutouts in the end of the show. So catch those later. Yes, and if you guys leave a five star review and your name and your location, we'll give you guys a shout out in the show. So that's pretty fun also.

All right guys, this is episode 70 of Going West. So let's get into it. In 2007, a 19 year old girl went missing after dance practice at her college. And although the details didn't seem all that suspicious right off the bat, police began searching for her immediately. And it was quickly brought to their attention that a male in the area had potentially been stalking her. This is the murder of Jody Sanderholm was born on September 26, 1987 in Arcanzus City, Kansas, which is the correct pronunciation. Yeah, it's Arcanzus, apparently.

That's how everybody says it there. And she was born to parents Cindy and Brian Sanderholm, and she also had a brother named Jason and a sister named Jennifer. Arkansas City is a pretty safe smaller town with a population of around 12,000 people. Jody grew up loving to dance and she was even a part of the Arkansas City high school dance team for all four years. And out of two of those years, she was the captain of the team and was an instructor for the Universal Dance Association. In high school, she was the captain of the team and was an instructor for the Universal Dance Association. In high school, she was also her class's valedictorian, and for those of you in countries that don't have valedictorians, it's basically the person in your graduating class

with the highest academic achievements. So she was basically a go-getter. Yes, go-getter, very smart, super outgoing, and she was also very well liked and had a ton of friends. Once she graduated in 2006, she began attending the local community college, which is called Cowley. Although she loved dance and still practiced it while in college, her chosen career path was to become a pharmacist. So she went into pre-farm, which is a two-year-long undergraduate course that you have to complete before moving on to a four-year program. But still, since dancing was also obviously a huge passion of hers, she was a member of the Cali Tigerette Dance Line, so basically her college's dance team. So while Jody was attending community college, she lived with her parents, which is a popular

route for a lot of students who go to community college. That's what I did. And her routine was basically go to school, come back while her parents were at work, and grab the mail from the mailbox before heading inside to fix herself some lunch, since she usually got home around noon. And then she would carry on with the rest of her day. Her mom Cindy would often call her around 12 pm while she was at work, to kind of check in with Jody and see how her school day was. But on January 5th, 2007, things went differently. And it was Friday, and at this point, Jody was halfway through her second year at community college. She was just a few months away from heading into a bigger university where she would continue

her work towards becoming a pharmacist. So on Friday, January 5th, 2007, Jody's mom Cindy called around noon to see what Jody was up to, but she didn't answer the phone. Cindy assumed that she was probably just taking a shower since that was also part of her coming home routine, so she decided to wait a few minutes and then call her back. But about five to ten minutes later, Cindy still didn't get an answer. She then reached out to Jennifer, who is Jody's then pregnant older sister, to see if she had spoken to Jody and she hadn't. Jennifer then tried to call Jody herself, but didn't get an answer either.

And this was a little strange because at this point in time, the whole family was making sure to pick up Jennifer's every phone call because she was very close to her due date, and any call could be the call when she'd be going into labor. So Jody would never have purposefully ignored Jennifer's phone calls. Jennifer tried to call back a few more times as the minutes passed, but still nothing. But Brian, whose Jody's father, was trying to keep Cindy and Jennifer calm. Not very much time had passed and there could have been a number of reasons why she wasn't answering,

so maybe she had gotten caught up with a friend, maybe she ran some errands that day, and maybe she was just taking a nap. And that makes so much sense, but it's so hard because once you get that idea and worry in your head that something's wrong, it can be so hard for some people not to panic, even though it's so true that it can be the simplest thing. Like I remember last year my sister's boyfriend called me worried because he didn't know where she was and her location on fine my friends wasn't showing up and she wasn't answering and he calls her texts for a couple hours and I started calling everyone in my family so freaked out and she ended up calling me back two or three hours later saying that she was just in a movie and her phone was off. You know, it's usually something like that. But then sometimes it isn't. So it can be good to just, you know, follow through and make sure everything's okay. It's one of those things, you know.

You're always going to worry when you're in that position. I mean, this is exactly how, you know, Jody's mom Cindy was feeling and she was really concerned and she couldn't get her mind off it no matter what her husband said. She was like something is wrong. So Cindy left work and ran home to find that Jody's car wasn't there and it didn't look like she had been home at all. Like Heath said, she always grabbed the mail and put it on the counter, but there was no mail either, which is something that her mom noticed.

That's when she started calling her daughter's friends to see if she was maybe with some of them, but none of them knew where she was. Some of her dance team friends told Cindy that they last saw her on that day when she was leaving practice just before noon. One friend said that Jody mentioned stopping at Subway to get a sandwich, and another mentioned that she was possibly going to hang out with her friend who lived just east of Arkansas City. And one of her other friends even saw her driving towards this friend's house just around noon. And all this information made it a little less worrisome.

Jody had plans to stay out after school that afternoon, so she hadn't planned on being home. But she was very close with her mom and they talked on the phone every day after school, so Cindy found it odd that she didn't at least mention that she wouldn't be home. But then, Jody had a meeting around 3pm that day. It was a meeting that she wouldn't have missed because it had to do with her helping her old high school's dance team, but she didn't end up showing up for this. And Brian, Jody's father actually came home from work early that day so that he could comfort Cindy and help her call around.

But when 6 p.m. rolled in, they'd had enough waiting. They knew something was wrong and they called police. At this point, Jody's 19, so she's a legal adult. And usually in cases like these, when you're dealing with an adult that's missing, police don't always jump on the case. Especially in this case, because she had only been MIA for about six hours, and the circumstances weren't very suspicious. Again, I mean, there could have been a million reasons why she hadn't called her mom back.

But the Arcanza City Police Chief happened to know the family, and he had children of his own who grew up with the Sanderhome kids. So he himself was concerned as to why Jody hadn't called her come home, and he wanted to help right away. So he had an officer head over to their home and get more information from them about Jody's plans for the day. Jody had a boyfriend named David and the officer originally thought that maybe they were together in a lost track of time while they were hanging out, or since it was Friday, maybe they went out and did something fun and or possibly went away for the weekend. But the officer quickly discovered that David was visiting his brother in Texas, so he

wasn't even in the state. They wanted to confirm this, so the officer called David himself to see if Jody was with him. But David said he was in Texas without her, and that he hadn't heard from her all day. When the officer explained that he believed she may be missing, he told him that he was coming back to Arkham's city to help find her. Because now, he told him that he was coming back to Arkansas City to help find her. Because now he was incredibly worried. They really jumped right on this and took it seriously, which is really nice and sadly,

sometimes rare. And all of the officers within the Arkansas City Police Department were more than willing and ready to do everything they could to bring Jody home. And they put this on blast because officers from other police departments in different cities came out that night to help look for her. It was like truly incredible. So while a team of police men were out there in the rain looking for Jody and driving all around the general area, others hung back at the station to bring Jody's

friends in for official questioning to see if they had seen anything that might help with the investigation. And this is when they actually got their first big clue. Some of the girls on the dance team began expressing concern regarding a certain 23-year-old who would watch their practices. He creeped a lot of them out because he would just be standing there watching them dance or he'd fall them to the parking lot while they got into their cars. I mean, this guy's presence was just really unsettling. He never

really said anything, he just watched them. And a lot of the girls got a stalker vibe from him. His name is Justin Thurber and he even had a criminal history so local police actually knew this guy's name. And he wasn't some like big time criminal, he had just committed numerous petty theft crimes, so he was basically like a pest to police. But he had never shown any streaks of violence in these crimes. Justin worked at the subway sandwich shop in Arkansas City, and we know that Jody had plans to pick up a sandwich from there the day she disappeared.

But just a couple weeks before Jody's disappearance, Justin was fired from his job at Subway because he made the other employees uncomfortable. And let's stop real quick there. If you get fired for making your co-workers feel uncomfortable, that says a lot because it's not like you got fired for stealing money from the till or for any other reason. I mean you made your co-workers feel uncomfortable so they let you go. Well, he worked with a lot of girls and a lot of them felt like he was stalking them too. So now there's these two separate accounts of girls thinking that Justin is stalking

them. So yeah, big deal. It's known that Jody went into that subway on occasion to pick up a sandwich for lunch and she was on the dance team. So it's more than likely that Justin had seen her a lot, you know, which made him a really good suspect. And strangely enough, on that January 5th, Justin was pulled over at 11am near Calley College, which again is where Jody went to school and had her dance practice that day, because he ran a stop sign. And that

was just one hour before Jody got out of dance practice, so we know he was in the area. At this point, police immediately went over to Justin's parents' house, where he lived, to question him about his whereabouts. He said that on that afternoon, he and three other friends were on their way out to Cowley State Fishing Lake, which is about 20 minutes from the center of Arkansas City and from Cowley College, but he said that they didn't make it because they were having car troubles when the wheels of the car got stuck in the mud, and Justin had to call his dad to come pick them up.

Police then decided to check out his story and see if his car actually did get stuck in the mud, and if it was still out there. Police searched the whole general area that Justin described, and they didn't find the car. Nor did they find any evidence of tire tracks tracks or a car being stuck in the mud. The day after Jody's disappearance on January 6th, 2007, police conducted a ground and aerial search for Jody in the Arcanza City, Kansas area, looking for her and her 2003 Black Dodge Stratis. At this point, the community also really banded together to help look for her,

and missing flyers were posted all around the town. They were looking for a 19-year-old girl with brown hair and brown eyes standing at 5 feet, 3 inches tall, or 160 cm, and weighing 105 pounds pounds or about 47 kilos. Meanwhile, Jody's parents Cindy and Brian were calling all the local news stations, as well as the Wichita news stations, which is the closest major city in proximity, so they could get Jody's face all over the news and help spread awareness. Investigators now needed to check out Justin Thurber's friends, Jason, Paul, and Stewart and see if they had the same story Justin did.

And some of these three friends were also known to commit small crimes in the area, but nothing too serious again. So they were questioned one by one, but each of the guys denied being in Justin's car with him that day, and denied getting stuck in any kind of mud. Jason had actually brought up a physical therapy appointment that he had that afternoon to prove that he hadn't been with Justin, and this alibi checked out. The two others had solid alibi's too.

One was out of state, and the other was at work, and their alibis were completely confirmed. All three denied knowing Jody Sanderholm and her whereabouts. In fact, they all seemed to be very confused why Justin brought up their names at all. So it became very apparent to police that Justin had to have lied to them about where he was the day that Jody disappeared. On Saturday, January 6th, 2007, so again, the day after Jody disappeared, police continued to search ground and aerial for Jody, but they didn't come up with anything. The current people that they were looking into were Justin Thurber and Jody's boyfriend, David.

Although David had said that he was in Texas, investigators felt that it was a little too convenient and they at least wanted to be able to fully rule him out before letting him off the hook. So when he supposedly returned from Texas, they brought him in for questioning. By all accounts, David seemed to be incredibly upset and worried about his girlfriend, Jody. But to be sure, investigators tracked his cell phone records and credit card statements and confirmed that he was indeed in Texas that whole day. Now police were back to focusing on Justin Thurber. They had a feeling that he had been lying about his alibi, but before going back to him, they wanted to see what other people had to say about him. They were able to find the information for Justin's recent ex-girlfriend named Alexa and picked her up. She told them

that she wanted to drive around to the areas she knew Justin enjoyed frequently, specifically the Ka Wildlife Area, while she gave them more information about Justin. She stated that in the weeks leading to their breakup, Justin had become significantly more violent and aggressive with her during sex, especially regarding choking. She had only broken things off with him about five days before Jody disappeared after they had dated for about three years. While Alexa and the investigator were entering the call-wild life area, she pointed out a little dock on the lake that Justin loved going to. And one time when they were down

there together, Justin had apparently made a comment about how easily he could get rid of a body down there. And this was obviously pretty groundbreaking to police because he was really the only guy that they were looking at and they're suddenly discovering all these incriminating details about him. He was known to watch the dancers and was thought of as a stalker to many young women. They were confident that he had lied about his alibi. He was sexually violent with his recent ex-girlfriend, and now they discovered that he had previously mentioned something about dumping a body in a lake. And I think that last one is such a big one

because regular people just don't say that. Like you would never catch me hanging out at a lake, talking about how I could dump a body there. You know, that kind of thing only crosses certain types of people's minds. Usually people who want to kill. But police still didn't have a body. So as sure as they felt that Justin was involved in whatever

happened to Jody, they still needed to piece the whole puzzle together. So they went to her college since that was the last place that she had been seen leaving her dance class. And thankfully there were security cameras outside of the building, which police requested video from immediately. In the video, they saw Jody's car pulling into the school in the morning before her class. But, get this. A blue Cadillac was driving right behind her into school. And guess who drove a blue Cadillac? Justin Thurber. After seeing all this footage, they went back and viewed the day's prior and noticed that he had been there as well. Which told police that he was likely following and stalking Jody for a while. But still, they couldn't arrest him because they didn't have a body, and they didn't

even know if a crime took place and if it did what that crime was. But at this time, Justin was out on bond for a petty theft crime, and the Bond's men had decided to revoke Justin's Bond, which would make him eligible for arrest once again. So an officer had pulled over Justin's mother's car while they were driving home from a bingo game with his sister as well, and he arrested Justin. And at this same time, police had gotten a search warrant for Justin's home, and that's when they were able to talk to Justin's father, Kevin, about the alibi. Remember, Justin said that he was stranded and he called his dad to come pick him up,

and his dad confirmed this story. Justin's dad, Kevin, said that he had gone out there with some friends, but that he had only taken Justin home and hadn't seen the friends at all. Investigators then started thinking that Justin had lied to his dad about getting his car stuck out there and lied about being with his friends. Kevin told investigators that when they got home that day, Justin immediately started doing laundry and washing the clothes that he had been wearing that day, and then he took a shower.

His shoes had mud on them, so Kevin even helped just to get the mud off of his shoes and clean them. Even though they had been cleaned, investigators took the shoes, his cell phone, and impounded his car so that they could search it. Meanwhile, they were also searching the area in which Justin had been picked up, as well as the car wildlife area, where he had previously stated that he could hide a body. Investigators continued to question Justin down at the county jail, but he was not cracking. He kept denying knowing Jody and having anything to do with her disappearance and possible

death, and they really weren't having luck with any aspect of the investigation, because even after searching through Justin's home and his car, and trying to get any trace evidence from the shoes, they had nothing. There was no physical evidence tying Justin to Jody, but they kept working and searching for clues. And that's when they went over to Jody's house to see if they could find any evidence of him there. And lo and behold, they noticed a footprint in the mud across from Jody's house. And they kind of went out on a limb here and tested it against Justin Sneaker, because I mean, this could have been from anyone who was like walking their

dog or strolling the neighborhood, but it was a match. Wow, that is actually really, really crazy because that could have been like one in a million, honestly. I know the fact that they saw that and we're like, we should probably test this is I don't know if I would have said that. Yeah, whoever decided to test that, that muddy footprint in the mud, good job. I think because it had been raining like a few

days earlier and so it was muddy and they knew that he had said his car was stuck in mud so maybe they were really on the whole like footprint in the mud thing. And by the way when I say match it wasn't an official match yet. They just had compared the two and it looked to be the same but later they'll have an expert look at it and we'll get there. Also, by the way, when they were searching the call wildlife area, they found more footprints, and those also appeared to be a match. The crazy thing about these footprints in the call wildlife area is that there was a trail of them. So the tracking specialist had a photo copy of the shoes

Justin had been wearing that day, and the photo was to size so they could compare it in real time to the footprints in front of them. They were very confident that it was the same shoe, so they followed the tracks hoping it would lead them to something groundbreaking. And as they continued on, they eventually came upon a smaller shoe print that appeared to be a flip flop, which was what Jody was wearing the day she disappeared. But suddenly, the flipflop prints stopped, and the sneaker prints continued, which led them to believe that he picked up Jody and carried her from that point forward.

It's almost like an old mystery book where they're literally following these footprints, and this is something I've never really read about in a case, was that they had a trail of footprints that were basically leading them to where they were hoping they would find something. Right, and the other thing to me is I wonder how, I wonder what those shoes were, and I wonder how common they were, because if they were not very common tennis shoes

that he was wearing, I could see how, I mean, if they were common shoes, let's say they were like, I wear vans all the time. Let's say that the tread on the bottom were very common. You would think that, oh, I mean, that could be anybody really, but I'm just curious about those shoes. So I couldn't find the exact type of shoe that it was, but they were very like, dad, shoe-y.

Yeah, like a new balance shoe kind of thing. Yeah, they were running shoes and they were white. And so I think that matched with his shoe size is kind of like a not really one in a million, but they know that he was in this certain area. They know he was wearing these shoes. So it's kind of like, what are the chances that somebody else in that area was wearing the same shoe and the same size, you know?

Right, right. And just to be clear, there are actually some really cool-looking new balances out there. But you guys know the new new balances we're talking about, you know? The white ones. I did see a picture of them, and I can't remember what the picture looked like, and I tried to look for it again, and I couldn't find it. They were very, you know, middle-aged dad. And if anyone out there has those shoes, no hard feelings at all. It is me who has the ugliest running shoes in the game.

They are like black and green dinosaurs from 2008. So, who am I to judge? So, the tracking specialist spent a lot of time out there that day trying to follow this trail. But eventually, it did start to get dark outside and they couldn't see the trail anymore. So, they marked everything with flags on their way and decided to just come back the next morning and pick up where they left off. But on their way out, they were coming up on the spot

where Justin's dad, Kevin, had picked Justin up the day that Jody disappeared. So they decided to take a quick look and see if they could find anything right over there before going home for the day. And there was still enough light in the sky where they could see it was just getting dark. So they decided to jump out of the car and walk around.

And right next to where they were, there were some public restrooms. And just outside the woman's restroom was a partial muddy footprint. And I think again in their minds, they just keep thinking of these muddy footprints. So to them, this could be a clue. As they walked inside the woman's restroom with flashlights they looked into each stall and in one of the

toilets they saw some male. As they got a closer look they saw that the male was addressed to Jody Sandar Holmes' parents. Holy shit, that would be so fucking creepy. It's almost like, I can't believe that they just, let's just stop here and let's just see and then they find the jackpot pretty much. Yeah, seriously, and honestly, you could see this being in like any sort of like drama horror TV show, like cops walking in with a flashlight

and they're like opening each creepy dark stall and they finally find some male in this toilet and it's jodys. It seems fake like it seems like this how did this really happen but this is true and remember the guys who found it were these two professional trackers who were trying to remember track the footprints. So they were not the police, but they of course knew that this would be very relevant to the case, and they were really emotional themselves because they couldn't believe that they stumbled upon that. Yeah, and this is obviously very significant to the story because we know that every day when Jody gets home from school,

she grabs the male. The trackers called law enforcement immediately to report this, and the chief and lieutenant showed up right away to search the toilets deeper and see if there was anything else hidden in there. That's when they found Flip Flops, a Tiger Rets dance team jacket, dance shoes, Jody's wallet, and floor mats from a Dodge, which is the kind of car that Jody had. At this point, they knew Jody was no longer alive, and remember at this point, they also still hadn't found Jody's car. But here are her floor mats in the toilet, so they believed that the car could have been disposed of nearby. And I just wonder why the floor mats and jacket were put inside the toilets, because these

are the kind of public restrooms where you don't flush. But still, I mean, these are large items. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And obviously, if you guys have been camping before, the toilets that you're referring to are vault toilets, so basically, they get pumped out every so often, but it's basically just like a big vat. Yeah, I wanted to ask you because I thought that you would know about these kind of toilets because you're such a camber and an outdoors guy. So with these, if you were to put a jacket and floor mats in there, would they have eventually

just like drained out or would they have gotten stuck? Do you think? They would have gotten stuck because basically they take a hose that's not super big, but they're gonna basically suck the human waste out of that vault. Well, yeah, because you're not supposed to have human waste as big as floor mats and jackets. Exactly, exactly. So, he probably just, you know, either rolled up these items and tossed them down in there.

But, yeah, those are the type of toilets that, you know, those are the hovering toilets. You don't ever want to put your butt on those toilets when you go camping. It's kind of nasty. It's just crazy to me that the perpetrator thought that it was a good idea to put these items in these toilets if they're too big or most of them are too big to even go through.

I just feel like you probably should have put them somewhere else. Well, I mean, I just feel like you probably should have put them somewhere else. Well, I mean, I think in this case, the killer is thinking that they're gonna get stuck down in this vaulted toilet and nobody's gonna go looking down in there, but these trackers happen to do just that and the investigators found this stuff, so obviously didn't do a very good job. Well, and the mail was just sitting on top. Like, it didn't look like anyone had used the toilet since the male was put into that toilet.

And so they were just sitting right on top, like just chilling there. And I just feel like, I mean, I'm glad that the perpetrator did a better job of hiding them. I'm just trying to think of their thought process is all. Yeah, it's very strange, but I'm glad that they found that stuff.

Oh, me too. And so obviously, then the investigators came in and they're the ones who found everything else. And they really went in there with firemen, like they went all the way down in there. And after all the evidence was sent to the lab, they were able to lift a single fingerprint off of one of the pieces of mail. And it was Jody's. Which confirmed then that Jody had to have gotten home that day and was likely abducted after grabbing the mail and while walking up to her front door.

A forensic footwear examiner took molds of some of these footprints that were found of both the sneaker and the flip flop since they were now able to compare both to the real thing now that they had both shoes in their possession. Although they already believed that the prints would be a match, it was officially confirmed in the lab that the footprints belonged to Jody Sanderholm and Justin Thurber, putting them there together, but they still didn't have the body or the car. So this was obviously very refreshing. They're like, we don't know what happened, but we know that this guy has something to do with it, and now they just have to find her.

Yeah, and now we know that they were both together. So, you know, it's one of those things. It's like, no body, no crime type of deal, which is really frustrating. But on January 9th, 2007, so just four days after Jody disappeared, they decided to take a deeper look into the Cowley State Fishing Lake, and by the way, both the Cowley State Fishing Lake and the Caw Wildlife Area are extremely vast, so finding her was definitely going to be a pretty hard thing to do. And these two places were about 18 miles or 28 kilometers away from each other. But there was a storm approaching in Arkana City that week, so they had to act as fast

as possible. It was all hands on deck. And they were even getting help from EquaSurch, which is this really amazing organization that's dedicated to help finding missing persons. And it was actually founded by a man named Tim Miller whose daughter Laura was murdered. They're based in Texas, but as soon as they found out about Jody, they sent their experts to Kansas to help find her. And they actually had a lot of resources that would help with this investigation,

including sonar equipment, so they could search the Cali State Fishing Lake, which they worked on that day, which again was January 9, 2007. In the call wildlife area, the trackers continued to help search the area for any sign of Jodi, and suddenly one of the trackers looked ahead and saw a human hand. As he got closer, he noticed a large pile of wooden sticks with that hand sticking out of them, indicating that Jody's body was hidden beneath all the branches. As they took apart the scene, they found Jody's nude and badly beaten body, which they took into examine immediately to ensure they didn't lose any more DNA evidence. All I got to say are these trackers are really good at what they do.

They're really good and I know we've talked about a lot of cases where law enforcement or anyone helping in the case is not really doing their job or they're just not being very helpful. But in this case seriously, they worked so hard in these four days to find her. And they, they got resources from out of state. They had a huge team of people helping like it's amazing. So it was definitely really emotional for everyone when they found her body. It was confirmed that the body was jodys after matching it with her dental records.

She had been strangled to death, and not just that, but it was determined that she was strangled until she either passed out or almost passed out and then was revived, and that process was repeated as a form of torture. She also had blunt force injuries to her head, which contributed to her death. This blunt force trauma to her head was so severe that when it happened, it caused her neck to move in a rapid and extreme motion that tore an artery in her neck, which caused hemorrhaging. She also had been sexually assaulted and sodomized with tree branches. After scraping underneath Jody's fingernails, they found DNA evidence that matched just in

thurbers. The Equiserts team took to the Cowley State Fishing Lake on boat and very early in their search, like seriously right when they set off. They found what appeared to be a car in the lake on their sonar equipment. So as they pulled the car out of the lake, it was confirmed to be Jody's after matching the car's description and the license plate.

The car was full of water, so they weren't sure if they were going to be able to get any DNA evidence from it at all, but they still sifted through the entire car and lifted everything that they could. And crazy enough, they were able to find a sliver of arm hair on one of the seats, and this was a confirmed match to Justin Thurber. Oh my god, that's seriously insane. An arm hair. It's like they had nothing and they were kind of just like,

we know it's this guy, but we don't have anything. And then suddenly, this day, they just get everything. Yeah, everything just comes flooding in. And I'm sure they were probably pretty, like, overwhelmed. Yeah, it was a lot. But could you imagine searching that car for evidence and then finding an arm hair and you match that small little hair to the killer? Well, it was really hard too because they had to use tape to basically to put the tape on the seat and lift it off. You know what I mean? Right, right?

And obviously there's all this fiber from the car seats and all these other fibers. So they had to sift through like literally thousands of fibers and they found this one arm hair. And we also have to consider that this car was full of water. So they had to drain this car of all the water and then start looking for evidence. Right. And you can imagine any other hairs or anything that would have left the car with the water, and then this little piece of DNA was still in the car. It's crazy. So now they have all of this evidence pointing to Justin.

They had his confirmed story about being in that area the day Jody went missing, the shoot prints, they had the DNA that was found on Jody's body under her fingernails, and they had his arm hair that was found in her car. They also had cell phone records proving that Justin was in both the Cowley State Fishing Lake and the Call Wildlife Area on that day. Justin Thurber was arrested for capital murder, attempted rape, aggravated criminal sodomy, and aggravated kidnapping. The trial began in March of 2009, and the defense provided all the DNA evidence that we just discussed. Even as ex-girlfriend Alexa testified in court about the sexual violence towards her,

and what he said about dumping a body in the lake where Jody's car was later found. The defense tried to prove that Justin had bipolar disorder and low mental functioning and had an IQ in the 70s, which is considered low intelligence. But prosecutors argued that he had enough intelligence to attend college and even received 64 credits worth of courses, meaning his IQ would have been at least average. They also pointed out that he was a B and C average student with a 2.5 GPA in high school and that he had previously successfully passed his driver's test and that he also held a job at two different places. And on top of that, he was able to hide and scatter evidence.

The trial lasted a total of seven days and after the jury deliberated for three hours, he was found guilty on all accounts and was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Justin Thurber never admitted what he did to Jody nor did he admit his guilt at all. The investigators theorized that on January 5, 2007, Jody had left school and gotten home but was being followed by Justin Thurber. She got out of her car to grab the mail before heading inside when Justin grabbed her, shoved her into her own car, and then he drove the 20 minutes to the car wildlife area. It was there that he beat and sexually assaulted her before murdering her and burying her

body under tree branches. He then likely drove Jody's car to the Cowley State Fishing Lake, where he disposed of her things in the public restroom and pushed her car into the lake before calling his dad to come pick him up. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everybody and next week we'll have an all-new case for you guys to dive into. And, this is the time for some shoutouts. Let's do it.

Thank you so much to Kelly and San Diego, California, Adrian and Ohio, and Ashley and Longview, Texas. Big thanks to Mandy, who lives in Oregon. Hello, fellow Oregonian. Thank you so much to Cassie and Pennsylvania, and thank you to Steph in Lexington, South Carolina. In a big thanks to Allison and Richmond, Texas, Lexie in New York, and Lauren in Greta, Nebraska. Thank you so much, last but not least, to Jean in the UK,

Sheldon in Toronto, Canada, and thank you, Leneke and the Netherlands. I hope I said that right. Thank you so much. And thank you so much to our latest patrons who joined us on Patreon this week. So thank you so much to Hillary, Courtney, Adrienne, Anna, James, and Connor. Thank you so much also to Kate, thank you Isabella, Kristen, Bri, and Jill. Big thanks to Gabby, Donna, Evan, Eric, Sylvia, and Raya. And thank you so much to Brittany, Erin, Guadalupe, Bougie 88, and Carrie. And we have a big thanks going to Teresa, Catherine, Kimberly, Sabrina, Zara, and Katie.

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and like we mentioned in the beginning of this episode, we just put out one on the Appalachian Trail murders. So go check it out. Thank you so much and we love you guys. So, for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you