Going West: True Crime - Tiffany Sessions // 181

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

In 1989, a 20-year-old woman headed out for a late afternoon power walk in Florida and didn’t come home. After conducting the largest search in Alachua County history, investigators concluded that she was likely the victim of a serial killer. This is the story of Tiffany Sessions. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://www.newspapers.com/image/633383965/?terms=Tiffany%20sessions&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/634354431/?terms=Tiffany%20sessions&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/634345620/?terms=Tiffany%20sessions&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/237915316/?terms=Tiffany%20sessions&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/337758008/?terms=Tiffany%20sessions&match=1 https://www.slideshare.net/PatSessions/tiffany-sessions-missingpersontimelineupdated2-30813699 https://www.newspapers.com/image/337758008/?terms=Tiffany%20sessions&match=1 https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article1963500.html https://www.newspapers.com/image/625312526/?terms=linda%20fida&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/301437365/?terms=linda%20fida&match=1 https://www.news4jax.com/news/2014/02/17/sessions-brother-talks-about-latest-findings/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is that? What's going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Tee. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. I don't know why we both just laughed, hitting me a little bit. I was waiting know why we both just laughed, hitting me like with each other and something clicked. I was waiting for the drop, for the beat drop. They're a drop. So, before we get into today's case, thank you so much, huge shout out to Christina. Yes, thank you, Christina.

You recommended this case to us recently, and we really appreciate that. If anybody else is a case they want to recommend, we've gone in a lot lately. And I think I said that last time, but every time I mention where to recommend cases to us, we just get a ton more. So thank you so much to Christina.

If you are interested, anybody out there in recommending a case to Heath and I, head on over to your email and email us at goingwestpodcastatgmail.com. That's definitely the best way to get it to us. Yes, and also before we get into this one today, I want to highlight the fact that Tiffany's mom Hillary actually wrote a book called Where's My Tiffany. And that was published back in 2011. So if you're looking for a true crime book, I definitely suggest that you go support a woman who has suffered a very real and great loss of her daughter.

It's extremely detailed as well, so thank you in advance if you check it out, and also thank you for listening to this episode. Yes, we appreciate all of you guys so much. Thanks for tuning in. Alright guys, this is episode 181 of Going West, so let's get into it. In February of 1989, a 20-year-old woman headed out for a late afternoon power walk in Florida and didn't come home. After conducting the largest search in a Lachua County history, investigators concluded that she was likely the victim of a serial killer. This is the story of Tiffany Sessions. Tiffany Louise Sessions, whose family called her TIFF and TIFFI, was born on October 29, 1968, to parents' Hillary and Patrick Sessions in Tampa, Florida.

When Tiffany was just a year old, her parents divorced, but by all accounts, she had a wonderful childhood with both parents separately. She traveled all around the country with her mother, Hillary, who was previously in the U.S. Air Force and then became a life insurance agent. And Tiffany even went to school in California, Texas, and Massachusetts, where Hillary's parents' farm was located. But ultimately, Tiffany settled into an exclusive boarding school called Lawrence Academy, located in Groton, Massachusetts. And with Tiffany's father Patrick working as a real estate developer in South

Florida, her family was known to be wealthy and very well known in the community. And this allowed Tiffany to take part in sports like skiing and horseback riding throughout her upbringing, and she even was a competitive horseback rider and won numerous awards. And because of this, she was an avid athlete and played field hockey in school. But her favorite pastime and her exercise of choice was power walking. Since she suffered from shin splints, which are like painful tears and the muscle and bone tissues due to overuse, obviously in your shins, she didn't typically jog or run, which is why she loved power walking so much.

But going back for a moment, when Tiffany was around four years old, her father Patrick and his new wife Kitty had a son named Jason, giving Tiffany a younger sibling. Tiffany's mother remarried as well to a man named Doug, and Tiffany's seemingly had a very happy unfortunate life in Massachusetts with them. But when it was time to head off to college, she headed back down to Florida to attend the University of Florida in the city of Gainesville. Gainesville is a city in northern Florida that's pretty centrally located. It's just about an hour's drive to the coast, whether you go east or west. Back in 1989, there was a population of nearly 100,000 people, and it was known to be a pretty safe city.

And since we're talking about Gainesville, you might be thinking about the Gainesville Ripper right now, who was a man named Danny Rolling, who in August of 1990, just about a year and a half after the case of Tiffany Sessions begins murdered five students over the course of four summer days. And for anybody who would recommend that we cover that, we did cover the Gainesville Ripper case in the very first episode of our Patreon show, which is called Real Crime. If anybody wants to check that out. And I know that that

case was the inspiration for the movie scream and not to take away from the horrible tragedy of it, but kind of interesting. Yeah, definitely interesting, but this case itself, you know, as you just said, is incredibly tragic. And it resulted in the untimely deaths of 18-year-old Sonia Larson, 17-year-old Christina Powell, 18-year-old Christa Hoyt, 23-year-old Manuel Tabota, and 23-year-old Tracy Pauls. But before this happened, Tiffany attended the same university where those horrible murders would take place. She had originally wanted to attend Vanderbilt, which is a private university in Nashville, but due to financial reasons, she attended the University of Florida, also known as UF,

where her father wanted her to go. At this time, she was much closer with her mother, the person who really cared for Tiffany both financially and emotionally, and they were both a bit disappointed that he wouldn't help pay for Vanderbilt. But Tiffany was accepted to UF for the fall of 1986 and was excited to get started on a career and life for herself. And despite the school not being her first choice, she was super happy to be near family. Because at this time, her mom was living outside of Tampa, so both her parents are living in Florida at this point while she is. Tiffany majored in finance and she opted out of

pledging to any sorority because she thought it would distract her from her studies. But she did let loose during her freshman year a little bit and enjoy various parties and make a lot of friends. Because according to her brother Jason, Tiffany was quote, the life of the party, a lot of fun, very outgoing, very social, and her grandmother, Ellen, referred to her as both a physically and emotionally strong woman, while other friends and relatives called her cheerful, energetic, bright, and somewhat headstrong, someone who was not afraid to express her opinions.

After her freshman year, Tiffany moved from her dorm to an off-campus apartment with her friend Kathleen, who was a pharmacy student, and this was also in an effort to maximize her academic career and focus less on partying and friends. She was very serious about wanting to go into business and potentially even get a real estate broker's license. And during the summer before her junior year, she was working as a receptionist in her father's office at Arvita's Weston Division,

where her father Patrick was the president. And this was to help her gain experience in this particular business. She knew she wanted to be a COO, Chief Operating Officer of some company, but according to her mom, she did not want to be a CEO, a chief executive officer, because she didn't want to have to fire anyone.

So that kind of shows her personality a little bit more as well. Yeah, it definitely does. So, in February of 1989, 20-year-old University of Florida, Jr. Tiffany Sessions, was looking forward to her upcoming annual ski trip in Aspen, Colorado, with her father Patrick and her grandmother, Jr. Tiffany Sessions was looking forward to her upcoming annual ski trip in Aspen, Colorado, with her father Patrick and her grandmother, Ellen. She was still living in an apartment with her friend, Kathleen, called the Casa Blanca East condominiums in the 2600 block of Southwest 35th place. Although we can't see what exactly this area looked like 30 years ago, but today there's

a lot of apartment buildings and homes in this area with palm tree lined streets and lots of greenery so it's a very beautiful place to live. Southwest 35th place looks like somewhat of a main road that leads directly to a highway. And the reason we're trying to give you guys a bit of a visual of the roads is because something very tragic would occur right in this area to Tiffany. On Thursday, February 9, 1989, between around 4 and 5 pm, Tiffany told her roommate and friend Kathleen that she was going to go on her usual power walk on nearby Williston Road.

Now, Williston Road looks very much like a rural highway with one lane on each side, and then beyond them, lots of trees and some grassy land, and we did post photos of this area on our social medias for everybody to see. So Tiffany was doing these exact walks pretty much every day, and they were part of her new exercise regimen that she had started doing in the new year just about a month prior. This power walk was typically about an hour, and she always took the same route, turning around at the same spot and then walking back home. Typically, and on the evening of February 9, 1989, Tiffany did not bring her wallet or keys with her on the power walk, just her Walkman. She knew that her roommate Kathleen would be there when she returned, and she mentioned that she would be back within an hour.

On this particular evening, Tiffany was wearing a white pullover sweatshirt with gray horizontal stripes on it, and the word Aspen on the front, red sweatpants, and tennis shoes. And like I just mentioned, she had her black Sony Walkman with her, and then she was also wearing a silver and gold Rolex wristwatch. When 7pm rolled around and Tiffany still wasn't home, Kathleen was confused, but she waited a bit longer just hoping that she went for a longer walk than expected, until 9pm arrived. By that time, Tiffany had been gone for over four hours, which she had never done with her walks before. So Kathleen called around to different friends, but no one knew where Tiffany was. With this, Kathleen was so worried that she called the police, who took the information

and gave Kathleen a case number in return. Then, Kathleen made the call to Tiffany's mother Hillary to explain what was going on. And Hillary was actually waiting for a call from Tiffany that evening, so when she received a call from Kathleen instead regarding Tiffany's whereabouts, she was horrified. And Tiffany had planned to be back between 5 and 6 pm before the sunset for the evening, which was just after 6 pm. So not only had it been many hours passed her original plans by the time Kathleen called police, but it also had been dark for many hours at this point. Yeah, and usually Kathleen would go on these power walks with Tiffany, but that evening

she had to study for a pharmacology exam so she was unable to join. Kathleen continued to look around for Tiffany between driving the route that she would have walked and noticing Tiffany's car was still in the parking lot. So this tells us that, you know, Tiffany did not get in her car and go somewhere after this and she didn't have her keys anyway, they were inside the house. Right, but that's kind of the first thing you would think of is, you know, maybe since it's been so long she would have, you know, taken her car and driven somewhere, but, you know, the fact that the car is still there and Tiffany's not back, that leads them to

believe that something has gone wrong. Absolutely. So Hillary and her husband Doug spent the evening making various calls, but they couldn't find any additional information on where Tiffany was. So the following morning, they headed to Gainesville themselves around 6am to help in the search for her. Something very eerie that we wanted to mention from Hillary's book, Where's My Tiffany, is that just over four months before Tiffany went missing, in September of 1988, Hillary

woke up around 4am screaming Tiffany's name. She had an extremely vivid dream that Tiffany was dead in the backseat of a car on the side of a road. Hillary tried to contact Tiffany the entire day day just wanting to hear her voice and know that everything was okay. But she didn't pick up the phone. It wasn't until many hours later that she learned that Tiffany had been at her dad's house in Miami after seeing Elton John in concert and they finally spoke on the phone with

Tiffany laughing that her mom was worrying too much. So you know, this is definitely a devastating and pretty uncanny foreshadowing. Oh, absolutely. It just blows my mind when I read that. I, you know, because I did read some of her mom's book, Where's My Tiffany? I haven't finished yet, but it's really amazing so far in super detailed. And that's why we want to shout it out to you guys, because I know a lot of you guys like true crime books, of course, but wow, like what a weird, what a weird thing to happen just months earlier. So now her

mom's kind of having this same fear again, like did something happen or is just one of those things where we can't reach her. But this is a little different because she went out for a walk, she didn't bring really any of her things, and she's been gone for hours. So this leads to a more worrisome situation. Yeah, absolutely. So the day after Tiffany was last seen, her entire family was out looking for her. Sadly with there being no indication of a crime scene and no evidence of anything happening at all, police didn't jump into action on Tiffany's case.

And although her family was confident that Tiffany would not have run away, they didn't want to leave any stone unturned. Two days after she went missing, which was Saturday, February 11, 1989, the police were involved in the search for her and checked her apartment and bedroom for any clues, but since she went missing during a walk, her apartment itself was not a crime scene anyway and nothing was found. Three days after she went missing on Sunday, February 12, her father Patrick told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that they were in the process of flooding Miami.

He added, quote, if she truly ran away, there really aren't any other places. So Patrick himself lived in Coconut Grove, which is like a gorgeous, incredibly safe neighborhood in Miami. And Tiffany visited him there often whenever she had a school break or during the summertime. And for reference, Gainesville and Miami is about, they're about a five hour drive apart or an hour and 20 minute flight. So she loved going down there. But even so, her family didn't understand why she would run away there when she was very focused on school and she could always visit Miami whenever she wanted to.

Yeah, there's no point in her running away to Miami. Her father lives there. Yeah, like she, she visited him often so why wouldn't she just go to his house if she was going to go there? Also, why would she go away on a walk at night and then just go to Miami with another thing? It just didn't make any sense. Right. So kind of a bunk theory. And by this time, like Daphne had briefly mentioned, her mother Hillary had relocated with her husband Doug to the Tampa area, which is just about a two-hour drive from Gainesville, so she did have family nearby, and she was very close with her mother speaking on the phone almost daily.

And she didn't show any signs that she wanted to run away, especially since she had told her roommate that she would be gone for just about an hour. While Tiffany's family passed out hundreds of flyers throughout Miami-Dade County, and the FBI conducted their own search of the area, around 40 people, including local police, a helicopter and bloodhounds, searched Gainesville for Tiffany.

And although these big searches were happening, nothing was being uncovered, making Tiffany's disappearance seem like a potential abduction. Earlier we had mentioned that Tiffany's brother Jason remembers Tiffany being extremely outgoing, which is why he told News 4 Jacks, quote, it wouldn't surprise me if somebody stopped at the side of the road if she was walking by for her to approach the vehicle and speak with them. Her father Patrick stated, quote, she's very smart, she's tough and very opinionated.

She would try to talk her way out of any ordeal. As the days passed on, over 250 volunteers came together to search the wooded area and swamps near where Tiffany had gone on her walk, just looking for anything that would lead them to her, and particularly her walkman or her watch. But the search was called off by February 19, so 10 days after she disappeared, when nothing was found. On top of this search, another was done, which included 400 military personnel who banded together on the very foggy Saturday, February 18th, searching a 5-square-mile section near

her apartment complex. At this time, and possibly to date, this was the largest search ever in Alachua County. And although bloodhounds had tracked her scent near her apartment the week earlier, they failed to track it again and lead to any concrete areas. Even 500 students got together to search as well, looking for this beautiful, 5'2", blonde 125 pound 20 year old. Police continue to follow up on leads, but unfortunately still, nothing was uncovered. Yeah, it's basically like she just vanished into thin air.

Yes, this is absolutely one of those cases. And we don't come across them too too often, but this is exactly that. Like she's just nowhere, there's no trace of her. Yeah, and this being 1989, it makes it a lot harder as well because there's track or phone. Yeah, can't track her phone less opportunity for CCTV. And like you said, nothing was left behind at whatever scene she was potentially taken from. Yeah, absolutely. So with this, the month's kind of just rolled on, and there was just no sign of Tiffany,

or what happened to her. In April, her father told the South Florida Sun Sentinel quote, �It�s hard to imagine with the amount of publicity that this case has gotten, and the amount of work that's gone into it from law enforcement agencies that we haven't turned something. I'm convinced we've done everything that anyone can do. The private investigator who helped with this case, a man named Wayne Black, explained that he had interviewed, quote, literally, thousands of people, yet they seemingly weren't any

closer to knowing what happened to Tiffany. In August of that same year, six months after Tiffany disappeared, law enforcement remained dumbfounded. Detective Eckert stated, quote, I kept thinking, maybe she's upset about something. Maybe she's upset about her grades. Then we find out her grades are okay. She's not having any drug problems. Is she pregnant?

Did her doctor tell her that she's dying of cancer? No. Did this that or the other thing happen? No. Did she meet a new boy? No. As you start eliminating these things, these lists that you go down, your anxiety levels start taking off. I've lane awake nights worrying about it. Trying to figure out where do we go from here? What do we do next? about it, trying to figure out where do we go from here, what do we do next?" Tips continued to roll in with people saying they thought they spotted her from anywhere between Maine and Mexico, and on the same day only proving that these sightings were more than likely false.

Detective Eckert continued quote, I really don't think she's on a beach in Aruba or she's in Hawaii. I don't believe that's what happened to Tiffany's sessions. I don't believe she's voluntarily gone. But by the same token, I hope she is. About a year later, in August of 1990, when the Gainesville Ripper murdered five students in Tiffany's very city, investigators pondered if the same man was behind her disappearance. Which makes sense. I mean, these are two tragedies that happen in the very same city that isn't all that big that's supposed to be pretty safe.

Right. A hundred thousand people. That's not a lot of people. Yeah, not at all. So, of course, they're thinking about this, but they don't know originally who is behind those murders either. But the following year, when Danny Rowling was arrested for the Gainesville Ripper murders, investigators determined that he couldn't have been behind Tiffany's murder, too, because

he had been in Shreveport, Louisiana at the time, where he committed three other murders that same year. And for anyone wondering, Shreveport to Gainesville is like a 12-hour drive and a 5-hour flight, due to requiring a connecting flight, so Danny Rowling was out, but then another potential suspect emerged, a man named Michael Nickerbacher. Although Michael Nickerbacher was out of prison when Tiffany disappeared, he later was imprisoned for five brutal rapes in the Gainesville area. And then 15 years later, Michael was found guilty of murdering 12-year-old Megan Renaud.

Megan had been kidnapped in the middle of the night from her family's home on March 23rd, 1989, so a month and a half after Tiffany vanished, and her body was found just four days later and a shallow grave near her family home. She had been shot in the head, and after re-examining DNA in 2004, Michael was charged for her murder. At the time of her murder and Tiffany's disappearance, Michael Nickerbacher was just 24 years old, so the murder of Megan as well as the other rapes all happened around early 1989 in the Gainesville area, making him a potentially good suspect for Tiffany's abduction. While on top of this looking like a good possibility, he actually told fellow inmates that he murdered

Tiffany, and that he chained her to a tree before putting her body and the Kallusonacci river near Fort Myers. So when this information made its way to law enforcement, they tried to see if they could prove that he was behind Tiffany's murder, but ultimately, they didn't believe that he actually really did it. And we know that people try to take credit for murdering people that they never murdered. Yeah, we see that all the time. Yeah, which it's beyond me.

But, you know, so because of that fact, law enforcement figured that this was probably one of those situations. Now, regarding what actually happened to Tiffany, it was still unclear. But police were thinking that while she was on her power walk, she probably had, you know, her headphones in and couldn't hear anything around her, so maybe when a car pulled up, she didn't see them and someone snatched her and murdered her. Or someone pulled over and tried to get her attention, she spoke with them and they abducted her.

One of the theories even included one of her father Patrick's business associates down in Miami, abducting her to get revenge on her father, though this seemed a bit unlikely. As crazy as it seemed, there wasn't another real potential suspect in Tiffany's case until 2013, so nearly 25 years after she disappeared. By that time, Tiffany would have been 45 years old. And the sessions, of course, had held out hope that someday they would find out what happened to their beloved Tiffany, and days before the 25 year anniversary of her disappearance on February 6, 2014, police announced that although they presumed Tiffany was dead, they felt confident that a man named Paul Eugene Rolls was her killer.

So let's talk about Paul Rolls here for a second. So let's do it. Paul Eugene Rolls Jr. was born on April 28, 1948, in Pennsylvania to parents Laura and Paul Eugene Rolls Sr. alongside his brother David. And he had a bit of a tough upbringing on account of his mother, who was a nurse sadly having a nervous breakdown, which resulted in her going in and out of mental hospitals for the rest of her life, while his father, who worked in the steel mills, had a problem with alcohol and could often get physical. His father once tried to hang himself but the rope allegedly broke.

Paul had issues from childhood, and at the age of 8 years old, he tried to strangle a cat. At 12 years old, he was watching women through their windows and sometimes stealing their bras and undergarments and occasionally cutting or burning these undergarments. Such a weird thing to do. I mean, that just, I don't know, to me kind of shows his aggression and don't even get me started on the whole cat thing, like just so, so fucked up. Yeah. So by this age, he also fantasized about raping and torturing women.

So this is from a very early age. Yeah, I mean, this is 12 years old, he is thinking about torturing women. Yeah, and he also explained later on to a court-appointed psychiatrist that he was having these thoughts. And although he later had no problems discussing the horrible things he did to women,

which we're gonna discuss, he allegedly shed some tears discussing the cat incident. So, you know, this is kind of weird because you would think it would be the opposite that you would have more sympathy for a human being. I mean, you would. But I mean, of course, still the cat thing is so sad, but he was eight when he did that. So maybe he didn't touch an animal again. And for some reason reason didn't have any

problems with what he did or wanted to do to women. I'm not a psychiatrist, I don't understand this at all. Right, so yeah, I mean, I totally get that. But years later in 1970, at the age of 22, he married a woman named Linda Schaefer, but just two years later, he raped and murdered a woman named Linda Fyda, who lived in his apartment complex. So Linda Fyda was born in 1951, and in the early 1970s, she was living in the Robinhood apartment in North Miami with her husband Joseph.

She was beautiful. I mean, she had previously won a beauty contest as Miss North Miami. And in 1972, she was working as a bookkeeper for a firm in Northwest Dade County, while her husband Joseph worked as a real estate salesman. And sadly, he was at work while his wife was murdered. So on March 29, 1972, Linda was found brutally murdered in her bathtub. She had suffered multiple stab wounds and had been strangled. When it was discovered within weeks of the attack that Paul Rolls was behind her murder,

the truth came out. So he had seen Linda washing her clothes in their apartment building's laundry room, and after she went into her apartment, he entered through the unlocked door, attacked her from behind, stripped her, and blind folded her. And though he had apparently gone there to rape her, the blind fold came off during the attack, and he realized that she would be able to identify him if he lived in the building. So he strangled her before stabbing her with several kitchen knives,

and then he put her body in the bathtub. So fucking gruesome. And it's so gruesome. And that's why it's kind of weird to me that he's like, oh, I didn't want to kill her. But she saw my face. But then it's like, but then you do it so brutally. I don't know if you didn't want to do that so much, you know?

Sounds like you maybe did want to do that. Right. And by the way, it was later determined that the original strangulation had killed her, meaning she was not alive during the stabbing, which, you know, not that any of this is good, but at least that. Right. Yeah.

So during this investigation, and Linda's apartment were two band-aids that were in a circular shape that had seemingly come off of the killer's feet since they were about the size of toes and not fingers. And as investigators questioned people in the building, they noticed that Paul, who was wearing sandals, had two band-aids on his toes.

Such an idiot like, fucking moron. Obviously you know that those came off at some point if you had to replace them. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it was pretty obvious that, you know, just from that, Paul was involved. And once police matched the band-aids to the ones at the scene, they quickly arrested him. But his wife Linda was very adamant that he didn't do it.

That it just wasn't like him. So it seems that she may not have known her husband very well. Yeah, I would say. Because, you know, he is a... I mean, just from what you were saying about his childhood, he's obviously a very sexually violent person, so maybe he didn't show her that side of him, but it definitely existed and he said it existed. Right, and we can even talk about people like, like BTK, same thing, family man. Nobody knew what was going on behind the scenes.

Yeah, I think I always think it's interesting when somebody will say, oh no, that's not like them. And you gotta realize that some people just haven't a whole other side to them. Yeah, sometimes you just don't really know people fully. Yeah, totally. So anyway, so Paul told police that it all started when he was a kid, as we mentioned. He told the investigators that he only intended to rape Linda, as we also mentioned, and that he had seen her while watching her through his apartment's people. He would.

Yeah, so sadly police determined that if Linda had locked her apartment door, she would have never been attacked, which obviously hindsight is 2020. Yeah, I mean, she probably felt safe enough to keep it unlocked sometimes. And I don't know if this happened during the day or in the evening, but either way, she had no idea that something like this horrible would have happened to her. Exactly, yeah. I mean, you know, Like you're saying, Heinz-Hinez's 2020 for sure. She probably felt very safe in her own space.

Yeah, totally. So the following year, Paul's wife divorced him while he sat in jail. And in March of 1976, he was sentenced to life in prison for Linda fight as murder. But get this, this is so frustrating. So in 1985, just nine years later, all was paroled.

Why? That's all I have to say is fucking wild. I don't know. Like nine years, I mean, come on, like some a little bit more than that at the very least. Well, we're talking about how brutal this murder was. Yeah, and I didn't want to, I don't know, some people say that our show is like 2PG or PG-13

or whatever I completely disagree. But I don't like to get too too graphic on this show because I just think a lot of us find it very disturbing. So I will say though that during the attack on Linda, the first knife that he used actually broke off in her body, which is why he went to grab more knives. That's how brutal this was. Yeah.

So, this guy gets out nine years later, what the f? So then three years later in April of 1988, so less than one year before Tiffany went missing, he moved to her city of Gainesville, Florida. Now at the time of Tiffany's disappearance, 40-year-old Paul was working for a construction company putting up scaffolding, and he was also a pizza delivery man for Pizza Hut. And interestingly enough, when he was interviewing for the construction company job and he was asked if he was on parole, Paul said that he was, but he lied, and he said that he had gone to prison for stabbing his father to death after his father beat him.

So it was almost like he's trying to downplay it. Like, oh yeah, I stabbed my father to death, but it's because he attacked me. And he probably felt like he was not going to get the job if he had told the actual truth. Or I mean, I do. Yeah, dude. Like you murdered an innocent woman. So obviously this did not happen. He did not murder his father,

but the owner believed him and was actually impressed by his honesty, so he hired him. Little did this guy know he was not being honest. No, but on the day Tiffany disappeared, Paul didn't show up for work. On top of this, when investigators put the pieces together years later, they interviewed Paul in January of 2013 while he was in prison for yet another crime which we will discuss in a moment.

During this interview, they learned that he kept an old address book with information on people he had killed. He'd take it away. Here we go. So, when investigators checked out this book, they saw the name Linda Fita in it. Who we know he actually did murder. And then a reference to another murder victim, Elizabeth Foster. But we're gonna go into in a second. But also, in the book, Paul wrote, number two, two, nine, 89.

Like two slash nine 89 as in. February 9th, 1989, the day that Tiffany Sessions disappeared. And number two would likely indicate that this is his second victim. And since we know that he murdered one person prior to 1989, this would make sense. But when police went to question him again within weeks of the first questioning, Paul died in a Florida prison at the age of 64 on February 13, 2013 from lung cancer. So when they announced that they were interested in Paul as a suspect, you know, for Tiffany's case, they announced that like a year after he died.

So they had spent all this time trying to put the pieces together, but the fact that they were just thinking like a month before he died that he could be connected. And while they're investigating this he dies Yeah, it's like the dodeak with um Arthur Lee Allen. Yeah, it's just so frustrating because now You may never get the answers right right exactly So they were never able to determine if he actually did kill Tiffany and if so what happened to her? One of the tips that came in back in 1989 was that someone had seen a young woman

who looked like Tiffany get into a red car on the night that she disappeared and Paul rolls drove a red Bronco. And because of this and all the other information we've discussed, her family feels very positive that Paul killed Tiffany. And let's briefly discuss the likely third murder that Paul committed, the murder of 21-year-old Elizabeth Foster.

So Elizabeth Foster, who went by Beth, was born in New Jersey to parents Helen and Richard, and she went missing on the evening of Thursday, March 15, 1992, so three years after Tiffany's disappearance. She had been attending Santa Fe Community College right there in Gainesville, Florida as a sociology major who wanted to become a photojournalist. And on that evening, she left her Gainesville apartment in her car with just her purse,

telling her roommate that she was going to bivins, I think it's bivins nature park, to read a book. But she never returned. And I also read that this was common for her. She frequented parks to study or read. That's kind of what she did. I mean, that's a normal thing for a person to do. Absolutely. Three days later, her blue 1986 Honda CRX was found in a parking lot behind a restaurant just south of Williston Road, where Tiffany disappeared from. And then about a week after that, her nude body was discovered in a shallow grave just a half mile from where her car was found. And an autopsy showed that she died from a beating.

So when they found her body, she had been severely beaten. And I just wanna remind everybody that Megan Renaud, the 12-year-old who was murdered, that was by Michael Nickerbacher. So for anybody who's like, oh yeah, and that's similar with Megan's case, because she was in a shallow grave as well. Remember that is a different man. Two different people.

Different a horrible person. Yeah, and we've, you know, throughout this episode, we've talked about three pieces of shit We've talked about Danny Rowling, Michael Nickerbacher, and now Paul. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So just to remember these are different people And just so nobody gets confused. Right. So interestingly enough, an old newspaper article is discussing Elizabeth's disappearance and murder, Patrick Sessions spoke and compared the case to his own daughter Tiffany's disappearance. So it's kind of strange that there was these two cases and that they were more than likely connected.

And they didn't know this until 2013. Yeah, I agree, because I went through a lot of these newspapers, and I'm like, wow, in almost every single newspaper that I find on Elizabeth Foster, they mentioned Tiffany Sessions, and they didn't know until 2013 that the cases are more than likely connected. But of course, at the time, they didn't know who had murdered Elizabeth Foster either, which you're about to get into, so carry on. Yeah, so back in 1992, so just three months after Elizabeth's murder, Paul left his then-wife Catherine and moved to Jacksonville, where in 1994, he kidnapped a local girl and sexually assaulted her. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison for this crime, but in 2012,

before he could be released, DNA evidence proved that he was behind Elizabeth Foster's murder. This DNA testing also pinned Paul Roles to a 2008 sexual assault in Gainesville. With this discovery, that's when police began interviewing Paul for Tiffany's case and then he died. So the timing on this is all very frustrating because maybe Paul would have confessed how he not died, but now her family may never know what really occurred that February night in 1989, and her likely murder would have been avoided completely, Had a rapist and murderer not been paroled after 9 years in prison. Yeah, the fact that Paul went on to kill two, if not more people after getting out, along with attacking and sexually assaulting who knows how many other people, when he should

have been in prison for the rest of his life, it's just so messed up. And I do want to apologize if that timeline was a bit confusing. I know we went back in fourth a little bit, but yeah, I mean, just this guy is horrible. He should have never gotten out of prison. Yeah, but the one thing that brings me a lot of joy is like the fact that in 2012, like he was probably going to be released. Like, so he had done all of this time and he's like, Oh, I'm like, oh, he was going to be released the next year, like months later. Right. He's like, I'm almost out of here. And then they're like, well, wait a second.

See, we tied you to another murder, say, you ain't getting out. But then he had to die. Yeah, unfortunately, he did die before he could serve time for that crime. Or before he could confess because, you know, we know he confessed to Linda's murder back in the day. And maybe if he had realized that he was backed into a corner with Elizabeth's case, he would have confessed and then maybe would have confessed to murdering Tiffany if he really did do it.

Which in my opinion, just based on that very bizarre note in his phone book about number two to nine nineteen eighty nine was there the chances you know yeah yeah and um i don't know it just it makes sense to me it it all adds up yeah hopefully someday they will be able to actually find Tiffany and they can be able to do like a DNA sequencing and figure out or at least be able to tie him to her case. Yeah, absolutely. I really hope so. And regarding that. So on February 9, 2019, the Alachua County Sheriff's Office posted about Tiffany on Twitter

writing, Tiffany, it's been 30 years. You went for a run and vanished. We haven't forgotten and neither has the community. We will continue to search for you until we have answers. And in recent years, the search for Tiffany Sessions, her body, continues as authorities search and excavate various areas in hopes of finding some kind of closure for Tiffany's family as well as her case. If you have any information about Paul Rolls or anything that could help Tiffany's case, please call Detective Kevin Allen of the Alachua County Sheriff's Office at 352-384-3323.

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 on Friday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. Again, if you guys are interested in an even more detailed account of this case, Tiffany's mother Hillary wrote a book called Where's My Tiffany. Back in 2011, so please check it out and support her if you'd like to learn more. I got the ebook, you can get the ebook, I was just trying to get something quick or you can buy a hard copy or a paperback, I think. Whichever you prefer.

I think I want to say I think I don't even know what is available, what prints are available. I'm sure there is a printed copy. Anyways, thank you guys so much this case. Just the fact that there's so little information about what happened to her, there's no evidence, but the fact that even without evidence, they were able to figure out that Paul Roles likely abducted and murdered her. Or, you know, if she really was seen getting into a red car, was he kind of just talking to her?

I mean, he was 40, she was 20, and so I don't know if she would have gotten into his car. It just makes you think. Yeah, it definitely makes you think. But regardless, Paul Rolls is a douchebag. So yeah, horrible. So good riddance. 100%. But, you know, Tiffany's family is still out there looking for answers.

So please, please share this case. Yes, please share this case, everybody. And also, we plug this, we're going to be plugging this a lot in the months of March and also April We're gonna be at crime con in Las Vegas So if you want to come meet Daphne and I hang out give us a high five whatever take some pictures We're gonna be there from April. What is it April 28 29 April? Sorry April 29th through May 1st We're gonna be there. So if, uh, make sure you get your tickets, you can go over to CrimeCon.com and use our code going west to get 10% off of your standard badge, which I always say helps you helps us.

Yes, it's gonna be a ton of fun. It can't wait. It'll be our first crime con. So thank you guys so much for tuning in. Thanks for sharing the show. We love you guys. Alright guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. you you