Going West: True Crime - The Killings of Two Portland Nurses // 458

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

In a strange and eerie coincidence, in autumn of this year, two young nurses working at the same hospital in Portland, Oregon were murdered by different men in separate parts of the world. A 32-year-old woman was murdered in her Beaverton apartment in an act that has been described as “deliberately cruel.” Then, just two months later, her 31-year-old colleague was murdered while on vacation in Hungary. When police discovered her body, they also came upon disturbing Google searches from her suspected killer, including, “How reliable are the police in Budapest?” and “What does a corpse smell like after it decomposes?” These are the murders of nurses Melissa Jubane and Mackenzie Michalski in this episode we’re calling, The Killings of Two Portland Nurses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host T and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to going West. Hello everybody. I hope you guys had a great holiday week last week if you're here in the U.S. And again, thank you for allowing us to take Friday off so we can spend time with our family. Now we are back at it today and we have two cases that occurred to women who worked in the same workplace and they were killed just a month apart. And this is, it's a very devastating conjoined case, but I will say right now that they are not connected. But it is just so shocking that this happened to them and that they were in the same general circle,

you know what I mean? Because we got recommendations for both cases separately. And then when we realized that they worked at the same place, we knew that we had to put them together, because it's too weird. Yeah, I mean, what are the odds of something like this happening to two people who worked at the same place in the same city?

Seriously, so big thank you to Taylor, Mary Kate, Marissa, Jaden, and Paul, who sent these cases over on our email. Thank you to anybody who sent it over on our socials. But yeah, without further ado, let's dive into this one today, Heath. All right, guys. This is episode 458 of Going West.

So let's get into it. It In a strange and eerie coincidence, in autumn of 2024, two young nurses working at the same hospital in Portland, Oregon were murdered by different men in separate parts of the world. A 32-year-old woman was murdered in her Beaverton apartment in an act that has been described as deliberately cruel. Then, just two months later, her 31-year-old colleague was murdered while on vacation in Hungary. When police discovered her body, they also came upon disturbing Google searches from

her suspected killer, including, How reliable are the police in Budapest? and What does a corpse smell like after it decomposes? These are the stories of Melissa Jubane and Mackenzie Machalski. In this episode, we're calling The Killings of Two Portland nurses. Melissa Dubane was born on April 6, 1992 to parents Susanna and Valentin and grew up alongside a brother named Maverick. Melissa was born in beautiful Monterey, California, but because they were an army family, they moved around pretty frequently during her childhood, eventually settling in Bremerton,

Washington, which is a suburb of Seattle when she was 11 years old. Her family had a proud history of military service with her grandfather, dad, brother, and eventually even her husband all having served. After graduating from high school in Bremerton, Melissa attended the University of Washington, Seattle and later enrolled in nursing school in Portland, Oregon. But, while spending some time in Hawaii, focused on her education, Melissa happened to meet Brian Yontero right there in Hawaii.

Now Brian, who was from Kalihi, which is a neighborhood of Honolulu, met Melissa on Mokalea Beach when she was in her early twenties. And the two went on to date for about a decade, tying the knot this year in 2024. Right off the bat, Brian's family adored Melissa. His mom described, quote, "'She is very humble. She's very pretty.

She's smart. She's very intelligent and very respectful. She's like a daughter to me. She's very close to me." So naturally Hawaii became a deeply special place for them. They got engaged on Oahu in 2023 and were then married there on August 24th, 2024 in an intimate ceremony. And then the following day they celebrated in Waimea Valley with all their friends and family.

But for a while, their relationship was actually long distance because Brian, who was in the Navy like I mentioned, was stationed near Melissa's hometown in Washington and lived with Melissa's parents. But Melissa, who was working at the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, lived in Beaverton, Oregon, which is just outside of Portland, and only about a 10-minute commute from the hospital, but about a three-hour drive from Bryan. And remember, he was in the Seattle area.

Seattle and Portland are actually pretty close. So, you know, close enough to be able to see each other fairly frequently, not obviously on a daily basis, but not terribly long distance. No, not that far. Yeah, it's just a really easy drive up or down the I-5 freeway for those who don't know. So anyway, Melissa has been described by friends as the sweetest and most gentle soul and known by her family as pure goodness. Written in her obituary is quote,

"'To have known Melissa was to love her. She was proud of her Filipino culture, but loved exploring and experiencing other cultures as well.' Now at work, she was known for her professionalism, her compassion, and had a particular knack for making her patients feel comfortable, like she's the perfect person to be a nurse. Her family wrote of her later, quote,

she adored her work family and cherished the privilege she had to care for members of her community. Her former coworker, Olivia, remembered, quote, she was the kind of nurse that you'd get to the unit to start your shift and you'd see she's on the schedule and you just exhale and you'd be like, we're gonna be okay. Now despite how much she loved her coworkers and the hospital she worked at, Melissa was looking to move closer to her family in Washington, of course in order to be near Brian's job

and start their married life together. But for the time being, she and her dog Rocky, who was her baby boy, and her husband were going back and forth between her parents in Bremerton and her apartment in Beaverton until she could make that move to Washington work. Now after the wedding festivities, the couple flew back to Washington from Hawaii on August 31, 2024, landing on the mainland early on the morning of September 1st. They enjoyed their Labor Day together and then on Tuesday, September 2nd, they both returned to work, Brian in Washington and Melissa in Oregon.

On the morning of Wednesday, September 4th, 2024, Melissa chatted with her husband around 6am and then got ready for work. At 6.30am, she left her apartment, locking the door behind her with either an app on her phone, or possibly her key fob, heading to her shift, which started at 7 a.m. But strangely, she never even made it down to her car. And by the way, this was only her second day back at work since her wedding, but being the responsible person that Melissa was, she was readily back into the swing of things with her job.

So when Melissa didn't make it to work, her co-workers knowing that this was wholly abnormal for her were concerned immediately. I mean, this was so abnormal that they even had a welfare check performed on her that morning at 10 18 a.m. when a few of her co-workers contacted the police to head to her unit at the baseline 158 apartment complex in Beaverton and we will post photos in case you guys want to see it I mean, it's a nice new apartment her unit was an 800 square foot one bed one bath with a balcony and the building has a lot of great amenities like an outdoor pool spa and barbecue area a Collective like indoor hangout game room area with a billiards table and big tables and couches like it looks like a fun building to live in and

I also imagine a ton of young people live here because it's right across the street from the Nike headquarters, which is a major employer in Oregon. As you guys can imagine, that is where Nike was founded. And also to talk size, the building has five stories with a private parking garage and 209 units total. So yeah, just keep this in mind visually. Yeah. And I imagine if you, if you had to use a key fob or an app on your phone to lock your front door, probably a nice apartment complex.

Yeah, it's updated for sure. Yeah, and also that's a really good thing to point out so that everybody knows this was a nice building with a lot of people in it. So when police arrived that morning to check on Melissa, the inside of her apartment was undisturbed, as was her car which was in the parking garage, but there was still no sign of Melissa. Her phone was either dead or turned off at that point, and there had been no activity on her credit or debit cards. Police even did a cursory search of the building, guided by the property management, but to no avail. Which is all just so strange on its face.

Like, we know she locked her apartment door at about 6.30am to head to work. But not only is she not in her apartment with no suspicious signs, like you're saying, but she didn't take her car. So it truly seemed at this point like she vanished into thin air. Which is why, with still no sign of her throughout the day, 32 year old Melissa was officially filed as a missing person at 312 p.m. Nine hours after she locked her apartment door. Immediately her friends, family, and co-workers began to congregate at her

apartment scouring the halls and walking the perimeter of the property. Investigators went door to door, knocking at each apartment to ask for information, and even brought in tracking dogs to search the surrounding areas. The Beaverton community was very active in this search as well, and hundreds of volunteers turned up to assist in the search efforts. And then over the course of the next two days, hundreds of volunteers searched the area surrounding Melissa's apartment. In shock, former co-worker Samantha said, quote, you hear about it and you see about

it all around different areas all around the world, about missing people, and when it's someone that you really care about and you're really close to, it just doesn't feel real. It's like you don't want it to be real. Allegedly, though it has not yet been confirmed by police, Melissa's bag and keys were missing, though this did not seem to be a disappearance motivated by robbery, and police seemed to suspect foul play immediately. Then, three days later on Saturday, September 7th, around 3am, those searching for Melissa

received the news that they had feared. The Beaverton Police Department announced that they had discovered Melissa's body, and had arrested 27-year-old Bryce Schubert, who was her neighbor, for this crime. So this news totally rocked the usually safe community of Beaverton, which by the way, hosts around 95,000 people, and it's known for its urban-suburban mix.

Again, it is just outside of Portland. And more on that actually, a friend of Melissa's who assisted in the search efforts, his name is Oscar, said quote, she was so happy and just so like, I don't know, just glowing. And it's just really heartbreaking to kind of see it happen, especially here. I feel like this area of town is so quiet and so calm and so safe. So it's just shocking that something like this would happen here. Law enforcement have not yet announced how they connected Bryce to the murder nor how or where they found Melissa's body, but the details that have come out have been troublesome. Now before

I get into that, I just want to note that according to a lot of conversation online, the building does not have security footage inside or surveillance cameras inside, and they do not allow residents to have personal security cameras like a ring doorbell or anything like that. So unfortunately, that is not of help here. Yeah, we don't have any security footage. Yeah, because obviously if somebody had a ring doorbell camera on her floor or something like that, that would be of huge help. But that did not aid in the search here. 27 year old Bryce Schuber, so he is five years younger

than Melissa, was arrested and charged with second degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, and second-degree abuse of a corpse. So this was alarming in and of itself. But then, the charges were upgraded from second-degree murder to first-degree murder just days later. In a horrifying update, the court announced to the community that this was a particularly gruesome and heinous crime, though they chose not to offer details just yet. Court documents express that Melissa's murder was, quote, deliberately cruel to the victim, that a weapon was used in the crime,

and that future efforts to rehabilitate the defendant would not be successful, which is terrifying to hear because that just means that whatever he did to Melissa was monstrous. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty bold of them to say that, you know, because of this horrendous crime, this person has no ability to be rehabilitated. Yeah, seriously. And since that is how they felt, Bryce seemed to pose an imminent threat of violence to the community and those around him and was held without bail.

Two days after the arrest, on September 9th, 2024, Bryce appeared in court for the first time via video conference. The following day, he appeared again, this time in person, seated next to his attorney in an orange jumpsuit. His attorney threw a kind of protective arm around him while they spoke in hushed tones, and he blocked Bryce from the camera's view during this conversation. And both police and prosecutors have remained very tight-lipped about the case and the details therein. The same day as Bryce's first court appearance, the Washington County prosecutor sealed the probable cause affidavit and would not reveal why.

But that same day, which again was September 9th, a memorial was held in Melissa's honor that drew hundreds of mourners. Now aside from being Melissa's neighbor, Bryce Schubert, who was a white blonde man, was surprisingly also a nurse, though they did not work together, and there's no indication that they knew each other aside from having been neighbors. There are some rumors kind of flying around that they used to work together, but it seems as if Bryce actually worked at the Providence Medical Center, not the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, so that's kind of an easy mess up here. He was employed there from September of 2022 to October of 2023, and it's not clear yet to the public why he left.

So yeah, there's no evidence yet that their paths ever crossed professionally. According to online chatter, his live-in girlfriend and mother are also nurses who work at one of the hospitals in the area, but this has not been confirmed by family either. Speculation has run rampant that Bryce was obsessed with Melissa, and that he was stalking her or following her around the apartment building, or that perhaps this was a workplace conflict gone too far, but as far as the public knows, they did not know each other or at least not very well.

Which just brings up so many questions like, did he grab her or lure her into his apartment when she was walking by? Obviously the crime occurring in his apartment makes sense because there was not a crime scene in her apartment. So was this random or did he know Melissa? Was he expecting her to walk by? Like did he know her general schedule? And I won't say the unit numbers that they lived in, but they were only seven units off. So they did live on the same floor.

And you know how apartments usually are like one side is odd, one side is even, or at least you're going every other, right? So if they were only seven units off, they were probably just a couple doors away from each other or so. Yeah, exactly. Pretty close. And, you know, that brings up the question of was Bryce getting up to go to work at the same exact time as her and saw an opportunity to kind of strike? It's pretty early in the morning, right? Yeah, 6.30. Right. So the sun was about to rise. Was there that opportunity of like, well, it's still dark out.

Nobody can really see what's going on. I can just snag her right now. Like, we don't know. Yeah, so many questions. Well, on September 16th, Bryce Schubert pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. But court documents related to the case

reveal that prosecutors are eager to pursue a jury trial. In mid-September, a grand jury heard from over a dozen witnesses to rule whether or not there was sufficient evidence to indict Bryce for the murder of Melissa Jubane. And in the immediate aftermath, Bryce and the woman who he lived with, who has not been publicly identified but is believed to be his girlfriend, were officially evicted from their apartment building. The lawsuit against Bryce and the woman that he lived with was filed by the property management fund Sentinel Real Estate and lists the couple's grievances as quote, personal injury, substantial property damage, and an extremely outrageous act. That eviction lawsuit was filed on October 15th and Bryce, who was in police custody and his 24-year-old companion,

were ordered to vacate the apartment within 24 hours. When Bryce failed to appear to defend himself in Washington County Circuit Court. Obviously, he is in jail at this time. The judge sided with the landlord and the eviction motion was approved. Now, the reactions on social media to Bryce's arrest were pretty mixed. Some claimed to know him or have worked with Bryce and said that they were shocked, claiming that he was always kind and a generous person and a good nurse. But many others were not so favorable. Multiple women came forward to attest that he had a history of degrading and even abusing women

and making women feel uncomfortable in the workplace. But either way, the shocking loss of such a beloved young nurse prompted an emotional and angry response among those in her community and of course, especially fellow Filipinos in her area. The local Filipino advocacy group, Gabriela Portland, that is what it's called, has gathered outside the courthouse to demand justice for Melissa multiple times. Christiane May Correo, who is a member of Gabriela Portland, told reporters, quote, "'We're trying to show that we're watching this case "'because we don't want to let another case

"'of violence against women "'to be swept under the rug by the justice system.'" As it stands, investigative documents in Melissa's case will remain sealed. And his trial will not take place until September 9th, 2025. So once the trial is underway and this information is finally released, we will definitely do an update episode, so watch out for that next fall. Now both the state of Oregon and Bryce's defense team have agreed to keep the documents sealed

until then in order to maintain the document sealed until then in order to maintain the utmost integrity for the investigation. And Bryce is due back in court this month, December, for a status hearing. Melissa's bereft family issued a statement that read, quote, we are extremely grateful for the detectives and other staff working diligently on this case, for the love and support we are receiving from the entire nation, especially from the city of Beaverton, the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, her work family at Providence St. Vincent, and the Yontaro family, and for all the prayers. In an unsettling coincidence, exactly two months after 32-year-old Melissa Jubane was

murdered, another Portland nurse employed by Providence St. Vincent would fall victim to a heinous act of violence at the hands of a man that she did not know. Mackenzie or Kenzie Michalski was born on January 18, 1993 to Jill and Bill Michalski. Kenzie grew up alongside a brother named Nicholas in Fredonia, New York, which is southwest of Buffalo near the shores of Lake Erie. Friends and family have nothing but glowing remembrances of Kenzie. She's described as joyful and kind, a lover of nature, animals and the outdoors.

She's a free spirit. She was a seasoned traveler who's known for her bravery and sense of adventure. Kenzie was a sensitive soul who cared deeply about others, which naturally led her to set her sights on becoming a nurse. Her family wrote after her passing, quote, To understand Kenzie's spirit is to wholeheartedly embrace the vast joy and wonder of life. Her wish for the world, fully embrace the present moment, be your authentic self, practice kindness and always walk in the light. After graduating from high school, she attended Damon University for Nursing School, graduating

in 2016. Then she moved about an hour northeast to Buffalo and began working as an ICU medical practitioner at Buffalo General Medical Center. About three years ago, she set her sights on the West Coast, though, and settled into beautiful Portland, Oregon. She was hired as a neurosurgery nurse practitioner at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, which is the very same hospital where Melissa worked. And though her job was a demanding one, her natural inclination towards empathy lent itself

well to nursing, and her kindness was undeterred. Her family also said of Kenzie, quote, as a nurse practitioner, Kenzie used her humor, positivity and limitless empathy to help heal her patients and encourage her family and friends alike. Kenzie also refused to allow the long hours in her very demanding position to take away her ability to explore the world, and she continued to travel as much as she could. So in October and November of this year, 2024, she headed out on a European jaunt with friends set to conclude in Budapest, Hungary, which is a city that she had visited multiple times before and which she called her happy place.

She and a friend named Gretchen Tower headed there from Austria and would spend a few days exploring the city celebrating Gretchen's birthday before Gretchen would head out on November 4th. Gretchen's birthday before Gretchen would head out on November 4th. So after Gretchen left, 31-year-old Kenzie's departing flight from Budapest was the next day. So that meant that she had one night to head out on the town by herself. And I'm assuming the reason for this is because they were going home to different places. You know, obviously Kenzie would be going back to Oregon, but Gretchen lives in New York, so they were not going to be on the same flight anyway. Although we did also read that Gretchen was going to Italy after this. Now, when asked about Kenzie,

Gretchen described her good friend and travel partner as, Outgoing, incredibly, incredibly bright, oh God, an old soul. I mean, she was 31 going on 50. I'm old enough to be her mother and we were travel companions. She was kind, loving, bright, articulate, responsible. On the evening of Monday, November 4th, 2024, Kenzie headed out to enjoy her final night in Budapest and wound up in a nightclub.

She was spotted in Budapest's Jewish Quarter on the Pesht side of the city, known for its lively nightlife and tourism. She was seen at a beautiful and slightly upscale Hungarian restaurant. And shortly after this, texted photos to some friends from inside the nightclub Simpla Kert, which is described as, quote, a huge pub with old mismatched items, music, food, market, and a garden. And obviously this is in the middle of the city. So the garden is like a, it's like a patio, you know, it looks like a fun place to be.

It looks like a kind of an eccentric place. So the next morning she was set to check out of her Airbnb and fly home to the United States, but she missed her flight. Now this was very unlike Kenzie, who was an experienced solo traveler. And although Gretchen had left the day before, she continued to attempt to reach Kenzie and was growing anxious that Kenzie had stopped answering her phone. When their Airbnb host reached out to tell Gretchen that Kenzie had not checked out, fear really set in, especially because Kenzie had been silent since the text updates to her friends from the club late the evening prior.

As hours passed and Kenzie failed to get in touch with anyone nor return to her rental for her belongings. Her family and friends began to panic. Gretchen, who is actually also a nurse, then called the American Embassy in Budapest to report missing 31-year-old Mackenzie Machalski on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. And this really began a grassroots effort to find Kenzie, even from across the ocean.

Locals reported on social media that they were volunteering to get the word out and just circulating missing posters in both English and Hungarian. A Facebook group was established. There was also a GoFundMe established to help with potential costs incurred by impending travel expenses and search efforts.

As her family and friends panicked back home, her parents planned a frantic pursuit of their missing daughter and raced to Budapest from upstate New York. And tragically, on their way there, they received the news that their daughter had been murdered. there. They received the news that their daughter had been murdered. As Kenzie's death was confirmed by Hungarian authorities and the news made its way around the world, her family and friends issued a joint statement thanking both the US and the Hungarian authorities for their consideration and their diligent investigation of Kenzie's disappearance. They also thanked the locals for taking Kenzie's case under their wing when so many of her loved ones were across an ocean, saying quote,

We are deeply appreciative of our Hungarian friends and locals for raising awareness on social media, distributing flyers, offering translation services, and mobilizing a boots-on-the-ground mission to find Kenzie. Though Hungarian officials have remained pretty quiet on the details of their investigation, they announced on November 7th, 2024, so two days after she was supposed to fly home, that they had arrested an Irish citizen who was either living in Budapest at the time or like Kenzie was a tourist. And that's another weird thing about both of these cases is they both had an arrest

within days. Yeah, it just happened so quickly. Though they have not chosen to release much information, they did share that the Irish man, whom they address simply as LTM, was apprehended after closed-caption television caught him leaving the club with Kenzie in the early morning hours of November 5th. The two were then seen in the elevator of his apartment building holding hands just before 4am, which kind of tells us that they likely hit it off at the club and were continuing their evening back at his place.

Thankfully, the investigation was fairly quick and clean, with security camera footage leading them to the man's apartment to question him directly. Now when they did question him, his cagey avoidance reeked of guilt, and more eerily, his search history gave him away. The searches allegedly included quote, and this is insane, So he was searching up, do pigs really eat dead bodies? Texas woman killed by wild bore, appearance of wild bore in the settlements along Lake Balleton. What does a dead body smell like after it decomposes? Removing rotting meat smell, Budapest webcams.

What happens after reporting a missing person? how do the police handle missing person cases, and how reliable is the police in Budapest? I mean, that's a journey. You know, that's a lot of different disturbing thoughts. It's just so fucking incriminating. Like, are you kidding me? As if they're not gonna see that, you know? Well, the perpetrator remains unidentified, or sorry, identified only by the initials that Heath gave us, which again are LTM, and his face is blurred in the pictures and videos released by the authorities. We will post the available footage on our socials anyway though, so you guys can see

what is to be seen. I mean really all you can tell is that he is a tall slender white brunette man and then of course we know that he is 37 years old and from Ireland. Hungarian police apparently adhere to very strict protocol not to mess up the investigation by publicly identifying their suspects you you know, before a proper investigation has been conducted. So that's why he has not been named and his face has not been shown just yet. So then obviously with that, you know, anybody that knows him hasn't come forward and said, oh yeah, this is typical or this is really strange, kind of like what happened with Bryce.

Right. Because we don't know who he is. And actually by Hungarian law perpetrators are not even required to be named publicly at all even after they have been convicted of a crime. But the details that authorities have shared are horrifying. Now according to LTM, her killer, he brought Kenzie back to his apartment after they had hit it off at the club, like Heath, you know, had discussed and theorized. And as they were becoming intimate,

he claims that Kenzie asked him to tie her up and cause her pain, according to one publication. Now, this is what he is saying or allegedly saying, so we can't confirm whether or not that's true, but the Hungarian press is describing it as an act of initially consensual BDSM that went wrong when she was strangled to death by accident. Obviously this could very much be a fake story that he gave police in an attempt not to be charged as harshly, so it's really hard to know what we can trust. But I will say that her parents have stated that they do not believe that this was the case, calling it a deliberate and violent murder.

However, until more information is revealed, her family is forced to wait pending court proceedings, and this happened just under a month of when this episode is coming out, so it's still very early. But what we do know is that after realizing what he had done, LTM panicked, stashed Kenzie's body in his wardrobe or his closet, and meticulously cleaned his apartment.

He then went out shopping for a suitcase, returned to his apartment, and folded her body into the suitcase that he had purchased, along with her purse. Renting a car, he placed the suitcase in the trunk, and drove out to Sieglegate, which is a village situated on the shores of the popular vacation destination

Lake Balaton, which is what he looked up in his searches online. Right. Now, Seeglegate is just over two hours southwest of Budapest, so this was a bit of a drive. And LTM apparently discarded the suitcase in the dense thickets and brush alongside the water. Then upon LTM's return to the city, law enforcement was waiting to speak with him. In recently released police footage, LTM, who is handcuffed with his face blurred, can be seen leading authorities to the place where her body had been

discovered. And that is part of the video that we are gonna post on our socials so you guys can see. As Kenzie's family reached the city where their daughter died in a senseless act of violence, they claimed that they were greeted with dignity and empathy by both Hungarian police and the American embassy. And they've praised both entities for the investigation that they conducted.

On Saturday, November 8th, 2024, a candlelight vigil was held outside the American Embassy, welcoming her parents and memorializing Kenzie's life. Her dad Bill admits that he was, of course, still overcome with emotion about Kenzie's sudden and shocking murder, adding, quote, I'm still trying to wrap my arms around what happened. I don't know that I ever will. Back in her hometown, another candlelight vigil was being held in remembrance of Kenzie. And just like Melissa's case, Kenzie's murder garnered a significant amount of press and

attention and especially in Kenzie's case, on an international scale. Upon their return to the United States, Jill and Bill Machalski released the following statement. They said, quote, We are relieved to be back in the United States and have Kenzie home with us, although not in the manner that we had hoped. Thank you from the bottom of our broken hearts for the worldwide outpouring of love, support, prayers, kind words, and gestures you have all bestowed on our family at this unimaginable time. You have lifted us up. Please continue. embassy, the FBI, Anteia International Funeral Home, many translators, as well as countless people who reached out to offer services and love.

The Hungarian police have worked tirelessly to find Kenzie and arrest her murderer and still continue their diligent investigation. The head of homicide met with us several times to keep us informed. We were treated with kindness and compassion during our 8-day stay in Budapest. One important point needs to be clarified. Based on all the available evidence reviewed during consultation with the Hungarian police, our daughter's death was in no way accidental despite claims to the contrary. It was a deliberate and violent murder.

After our encouraging interactions with the Hungarian police and other authorities, we remain hopeful that Kenzie's killer will be held responsible for his crimes to the fullest extent of the law. ["Going Wild"] Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. We will keep you guys updated on the trials that are about to come up.

One of them is coming up in fall of 2025. September 9th. Yeah. Yeah. And then was there a date for this one? No, we don't know yet, but we will definitely keep you guys updated. Obviously there will be so much more information to come that at that point we will just do separate episodes. But wanted to group these together because of, you know, the lack of information with

both it kind of made a perfectly sized single episode and just the weird connection with their work. Yeah, the weird coincidence that these two young women who worked at the same place were both murdered. Obviously hospitals are very large. I could not find any concrete information, you know, regarding if they were friends or if they knew each other. At this point, it doesn't really seem like they did. I am very sure though that Kenzie would have known about what happened to Melissa since that was two months earlier. So I don't know, just the fact that this happened to both of them is so devastating.

It's incredibly tragic and we just hope that their families get the closure that they need and the justice that they deserve. Absolutely. So thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you to everybody again who recommended both of these cases to us and we will see you on Friday. Alright guys so for everybody out there in the world don't be a stranger. I'm just a little bit of a I'm just a little bit of a I'm just a little bit of a I'm just a little bit of a I'm just a little bit of a

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