Going West: True Crime - Trisha Autry // 218

Episode Date: July 16, 2022

On June 24th, 2000, a 15-year-old aspiring writer vanished from her home in Utah, and her mom turned to her daughter’s own stories for clues. Having been a victim of bullying, police initially believed that she ran away. But as witnesses came forward, she appeared to have a stalker who had lured her from her home on the very computer where she sat every night to write. This is the murder of Trisha Autry. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES 1. Unsolved Mysteries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2U47EKRSUg 2. Roy's Obituary: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/143775087/aubrey-leroy-autry 3. The Daily Spectrum: https://www.newspapers.com/image/286716168/?terms=trisha%20autry&match=1 4. Trisha's Obituary: https://www.hjnews.com/obituaries/trisha-anne-autry/article_aada7f12-4ef2-5fd1-9d6c-97cd816cbcd8.html 5. Medium: https://crimeatorium.medium.com/a-promising-life-cut-short-the-trisha-ann-anne-autry-story-64a58206744 6. Bob Lonsberry: http://www.lonsberry.com/writings.cfm?story=475&go=4 7. State of Utah vs. Nielsen: https://www.morelaw.com/verdicts/case.asp?n=2014%20UT%2010&s=UT&d=70021 8. HJ News: https://www.hjnews.com/who-is-cody-nielsen-valley-residents-wonder-about-one-of-their-own/article_e27397a9-54ea-5f88-a1aa-aff4803230f4.html 9. Deseret News: https://www.deseret.com/2004/1/14/19806473/you-can-t-sugarcoat-evil-prosecutor-says 10. HJ News: https://www.hjnews.com/news/local-volunteer-autry-dead-at-67/article_d4558d10-492d-5b13-bff9-c79339d3f20c.html 11. Salt Lake Tribune: https://www.newspapers.com/image/613627710/?terms=trisha%20autry&match=1 12. The Times-News: https://www.newspapers.com/image/566277265/?terms=trisha%20autry&match=1 13. The Salt Lake Tribune: https://www.newspapers.com/image/613615730/?terms=trisha%20autry&match=1 14. The Salt Lake Tribune: https://www.newspapers.com/image/613432674/?terms=trisha%20autry&match=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host Teeve and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to going west. Howdy folks! How's everybody doing? Not that I can hear you. Wait for a response. Come on guys, what the hell? Thank you guys so much for joining us today for yet another episode of Going West. I hope you're having a great week. I just wanted to give a special shout out to Tiffany for recommending us this case today. She sent it into us a little while ago and it's been on our list and we are finally covering it. So for anybody else who has any case recommendations, the best place to send that in, as we always say, is email. It is going west podcast at gmail.com. That is the best place for us to see it. And we really appreciate all your guys' recommendations.

Today we're going back to the year 2000 in Utah. So let's not waste any more time. All right, guys, this is episode 218 of going west. So let's get into it In June of 2000, a 15-year-old aspiring writer vanished from her home in Utah. Her mom turned to her daughter's own stories for clues, but having been a victim of bullying, police initially believed that she was a runaway. But as witnesses came forward, she appeared to have a stalker who had lured her from her home on the very computer where she sat every night to write.

This is the story of Trisha Autry. Patricia Ann Autry, who went by Trisha, was born on December 12, 1984, to Joanne and Roy Autry in Millville, Utah. She was the youngest of five children, so when she was born, she joined older brothers Brock and Aram, and sisters Heather and Brienne. Trisha's dad, Roy, was born in Texas, and he grew up in California, where he met the love of his life, Joanne. Now dad Roy was born in Texas and he grew up in California where he met the love of his life, Joanne. Now Roy was raised religious but after graduating high school he converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and when Joanne was 21 and Roy was 23 they were married

and moved to the state of Utah to be closer to the headquarters of their church which was in Salt Lake City. Trisha's dad Roy was very active in his local congregation, he taught Sunday school, and he even served as a counselor to the bishop. He was a builder by trade, but stopped working after his cancer diagnosis in 1996 when Trisha would have been just around 12 years old. And again, Trisha and her siblings were born in Milville, Utah, which is about 80 miles or just 120 kilometers north

of Salt Lake City and near the border of Utah and Idaho. But eventually, the Autry family relocated to Hiram, Utah, just eight minutes down the road from Milville and still situated in Cache County, so not far at all. Trisha was a bright, creative and free-spirited teenager known for her bright red hair. She loved playing in the rain and singing, and she dreamed of attending the Juilliard School of Music one day. She performed in the Cash County Children's Choir, she played guitar, and belonged to the

arts program at her high school, which was South Cash School, where in the year 2000 she had just finished up her freshman year. So far she had only traveled to Arizona, California, and Montana, but she dreamed of moving out of Utah and just kind of traveling the world. Joanne said of her daughter, quote, she was a confident, opinionated, and powerful young woman. She didn't take guff off of anyone. She spoke up passionately on crimes against women, and she didn't frighten easily. Trisha said that she wanted to change the world.

So just 15 years old, Trisha seemed like such a bright and mature person. Yeah, it seemed like she really understood the world better than most 15-year-olds. Right. Above all, so more than guitar, singing, and all of her other artistic interests, Trisha loved to write. Throughout her youth, she wrote short stories,

songs, and poetry, and would spend hours typing furiously on the family computer. That sounds a lot like Daphne. Thanks. So as a freshman in high school, she had even already begun working on her first novel. Yeah, I love that about her so much because I felt like I, I don't know, I- You connected with that. Yeah, and she just seemed so awesome and I think that's so cool that as a freshman

she's already like so mature and knows what she wants to do and is working towards that goal. You know, I just admire that a lot. Absolutely. But with as much as she had to offer, she still had trouble making connections with people her own age, and she really struggled to make friends. She had a few friends, but her mom explained that Trisha felt that she lacked a true best friend like her peers had, and that this made her feel like she was missing out on something.

A typical teenager she was eager to be liked, often seeking external validation and not getting it. Joanne explained later that adolescence had been really hard for her daughter. She was frequently ostracized and teased at school, and all she wanted was to be liked by her peers, and to have that was to be liked by her peers, and to have that one friend who would have her back no matter what. This makes me so sad because she seems like she had so much to offer as a friend and really had a lot going for her, and she had this huge genuine smile and she looked so cool, so I don't understand why people were so cruel to her like fuck bullies.

Yeah, absolutely. And this happens, I feel like to a lot of teens, and then they kind of grow into themselves after high school. Like, I know a lot of people who, you know, didn't have a lot of friends in high school, who went on to become, you know, very great people, great friends, and have great careers. So. It's just sad because at that age, obviously,

you're coming into your own and your self-conscious, of course, because you're around all these new people and you're going through puberty and you're growing and figuring out who you are and to not have anybody to kind of share that with. It's really rough because not only did she not have any close friends, she did have some friends, but not a best friend like you're saying, but she was bullied. And for what? Yeah, and it seems that she spent a lot of her time doing the creative things that she

liked to do, which was eventually probably going to put her ahead. Right, exactly. So on the morning of Saturday, June 24, 2000, around 6am, Trisha's mom went into her room to check on her. Now, 15-year-old Trisha was usually a late sleeper, especially during summer break when she was able to, because she was prone to staying up all hours of the night on the computer, just typing away at her stories. But on this particular morning, her bed was made, and nothing in her room was out of place, except Trisha was nowhere to be found.

Her sister, Brienne, had been the last to see her and said that when she had gone to bed at 2 a.m. when Brienne had gone to bed, to four hours before her mom went into Trisha's room, Trisha was still up and on the family computer. Completely unsure of where her daughter could have gone, Joanne frantically called around to some friends of Trisha's in case she had gone over to one of their houses early that morning, but no one had seen her. And that's a pretty, I mean, 6am on a summer, Saturday is like not the time you would

expect somebody to go visit their friend. Yeah, it doesn't seem normal at all. But obviously her mom is really trying to figure out where she could go and this was one thing that came to her mind. For all I know, she went there early, why I don't know, but I hope she's with a friend. But none of them had seen her, so that is very alarming. Now with that, Joanne and Brienne quickly swept the neighborhood. But when this still turned up no sign of Trisha, her mother Joanne called the police and reported

her missing at around 6.30am. So it seems like they did a quick sweep of the local places in their neighborhood because they weren't gone for very long. Yeah, it's about a half hour. Yeah, exactly. So from the very beginning, even 30 minutes into looking for her, something seemed very wrong here. When police came and assessed the situation,

they didn't seem to be taking it seriously yet and told Joanne and Roy that they suspected that 15-year-old Trisha had left voluntarily. They kind of zeroed in on her troubles with bullies at school, painting Trisha as your typical troubled teenage runaway. But Joanne protested that she hadn't brought anything with her but the clothes on her back, including cash that was left in her bedroom, so she had

nothing with her. Joanne also noticed that Trisha had worn the clothes that she had been wearing all day the day before, which included a bra that she only wore while sleeping or just hanging out at the house, and a pair of old tennis shoes that she didn't like. So it didn't seem like she would have left in those pieces of clothing. Right. That's not like going out attired. Right.

And also, Joanne said that running away was completely unlike her daughter. Like if she was seeing a friend or someone she knew, she would have probably changed to look more presentable and her mom would have known that she was going out. Based on this, Joanne thought perhaps her daughter had taken like a late night walk by herself, and potentially gotten snatched somewhere along her route. She said she knew her daughter and that it was not in her character to run off like this. But police, still believing there was a simple explanation for this, half-heartedly interviewed her friends and family, just poking for leads, but also

reportedly told the family that 95% of runaways contact their family within the first three months of leaving and that the atries should just wait patiently. So it seems like they're just like, you know, she's gonna come back, you know. And I understand that police get these kind of calls often and that the high majority end of not being dangerous situations, but to tell the parents of a 15 year old girl that they just need to be patient

when they know their daughter wouldn't just run off, I think that's so rude. Yeah, it's very disrespectful, in my opinion. So Trisha had been telling her family recently that she'd started working on a new story. So when police were little help, Joanne turned to this for answers. Joanne recalls that sometimes her daughter's stories contained liaisons with much older men. So she scoured Trisha's most recent piece for clues that could have led to her whereabouts.

But when she did, she found that it wasn't a story at all, just scattered thoughts typed out on a page. So what did Trisha been doing on the computer for all those hours? Investigators finally brought in an expert, John W. Georgie, who did some digging on the family's computer's hard drive. An unbeknownst to her family, Trisha had three separate email accounts and spent an excessive amount of time in chat rooms.

More than she spent writing stories or poetry. And it seemed as if this was like her refuge from the students and peers who teased her at school. And especially for this time, this does seem very normal. Did you ever go into chat rooms in high school? Um, no, because I didn't get a computer until I was out of high school. Oh, I, yeah, sorry, I forgot.

Which is so weird. I actually did do this when I was, and maybe in middle school or something, probably in like 2005 or 2006 or something like that. I did do this sometimes, just kind of for fun. I don't know, like you're a teenager, you're just like, yeah, who can I talk to, like talk to a stranger?

Right, especially in it's like a new thing. Like, yes. You know what I mean? Like chat rooms were fairly new at that time. Yeah, and with like my space coming onto the scene, I know this is years after Tricia, but you just start talking to people online because it's kind of exciting.

You're, you have this way to connect with people that you don't know and you kind of want to explore that. So, especially considering she didn't have this core group of friends, it makes sense that she's trying to kind of just chat with people. But her family didn't know she was doing this and they thought that she was just writing all the time when in reality she was writing but she was also chatting with strangers online. Yeah. So something was very different about that particular night in June. So at 3am on the morning of Trisha's disappearance, the internet history caches and any stored

data on the Autry's home computer for the last few hours had been deleted. So it's like is she trying to cover up what she was doing or what, why did, why did that happen? It appears so. So John claimed that this was not something that Trisha, given her level of experience with technology, would have known to do herself. He guessed that someone had taught her how to do this in order to cover their tracks. So with that information, the atries were now convinced that this was a case of abduction,

that Trisha had met up with someone from a chat room and they didn't have good intentions like she may have believed. Trisha's mom said in an interview that she thought Trisha could easily be seduced into thinking that someone wanted and needed her and that she was an easy target for a predator. When questioned, a few locals claimed to have eyewitness accounts of Trisha's last public sightings.

So this is really important into the beginning of the investigation because a few neighbors had reported some suspicious activity even in the weeks leading up to Trisha's disappearance. One neighbor saw Trisha get out of a red car on a weekday afternoon and then sneak into her family's house as if she didn't want to be seen. According to another neighbor, a similar red compact economy car actually pulled up to the Aatri's house on the very morning that Trisha disappeared. At around 4 a.m. on the morning of June 24th, this neighbor claims that he heard a car

drive up on their quiet street, and that when he looked out to observe what was going on, he saw a young man get out, pacing and looking nervous. Before long, this man was joined by a young woman, and it got into the car and drove off. But he assumed that it was your typical teenager sneaking out and he didn't think much of it. The next account, however, was more alarming. Two hours later, around 6am, the same time Joanne began looking for her daughter, a local convenience store employee named Glenda Trip reported another sighting of Trisha in the store in which she worked. She said Trisha seemed apprehensive and nervous that she was wandering around

the store anxiously for 20 minutes, but that she ultimately left without buying anything. Glenda recalls that Trisha was intermittently bobbing her head and standing on her tippy toes, just looking over the store shelves toward the outside. She asked Trisha if she needed help, but Trisha responded that she did not. Glenda said that she had seen Trisha around the neighborhood before and that there was no doubt in her mind that it was Trisha in her store that morning. So concern that police seemed to lack the understanding of the gravity of the situation, the Autres hired a private investigator to work alongside law enforcement.

Struggling under the weight of Roy's chemotherapy and health care, the Autres decided to sell their home to pay for this detective. Which no family should have to do, and this is so sad considering the only reason they were hiring a PI in the first place, is because the police didn't have their hearts in the case as they should have. And just a quick shout out to private investigations for the missing, which is an amazing nonprofit founded by Bruce Mateland, Brianna Mateland's dad, that provides PI services for free, for families who are in this very position.

So they really could have, the arteries really could have benefited from something like this. Yeah, I really don't understand why the police were not helping more, but PI for the missing is seriously such an amazing organization. So we really love those guys. So family and friends from their church came over to prep the house to be ready to sell. And they also circulated missing posters boasting a $7,000 reward offered by the Carol's son Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation. Based in California, this nonprofit was established to provide families and law enforcement with

answers through reward grants. Which is also amazing. Yeah. So two months after Trisha's disappearance, a tip came in from someone who had seen this missing poster. A man in Bountiful Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City about an hour's drive south from Millville, thought that he had seen Trisha with her potential abductors. A man named Jerry Startup, that's actually his last name, was shopping in his local

grocery store and saw what he described as a young lady accompanied by another lady and a man. Now he said that the young lady's eyes were partially closed and that her face seemed puffy as if she had been crying. The man with them matched the description of the man that Trisha's neighbor had seen entering the red car with her on the morning that she disappeared. And Jerry also said that he was disturbed by how they were treating her, that she was never able to leave their sight, that it seemed as if she was being drugged, beaten, and

held against her will. Jerry also said that he was 100% confident that it was Trisha that he saw in the store that day. As the private investigator attempted to check details that the police had missed, Heather, Trisha's sister, told this investigator that before her disappearance, Trisha had told her that she was afraid of a man who called himself Sam. Trisha had been calling her mom almost every day after school for a ride home so that she did not have to run into this Sam guy.

While the PI began to chase down Leeds with this in mind, the Autry family underwent their second tragedy in one year. On Saturday, April 7, 2001, Roy Autry finally succumbed to cancer without ever getting to see his daughter's kidnapper brought to justice. Because her family really did believe that that is what happened unlike the police, and with police still set on the theory that Trisha ran away, they were convinced that she would return for her father's funeral, and so they posted up outside the church waiting for her. But when there was no sign of Trisha, they finally believed what the Audrey family had

known all along that Trisha had been taken. But less than a month later on May 14th, 2001, Trisha's jawbone was found. Before that quick break, we discussed how police finally started to believe after months that Trisha was not a runaway. After she didn't show up for her father's funeral 10 months after her disappearance. And then just a few weeks later, her job on was found. I get that hindsight's 2020, but like, this is your job and there's no time to waste in situations like this and it feels like that's what they did. Yeah, it definitely feels like there was more that could have been done and it wasn't. And obviously the family did have a PI that was working towards something,

but he hadn't found anything either. So I understand that it doesn't mean that they would have found her alive, but you can at least try, you know. So here's exactly what happened. A tip came in that at the time of Trisha's disappearance, an employee at the USDA of Trisha's disappearance, an employee at the USDA Predator Research Facility had been seen digging holes on the property.

This Wildlife Research Center focused on behaviors of wildlife predators such as coyotes, bears, and wolves, and it's located on 165 acres of open space and hiking trails right in between Milville and Hiram, Utah, just 8 miles from Trisha's house. Now this man had actually been on the Cash County Police's radar for over 6 months and on the PI's for even longer. Trisha's sister Heather said that the private investigator the actress hired actually had him pinned as Trisha's killer within two and a half months of starting his own investigation. So the suspect had been using the facility's backhoe, which if you guys don't know, it's basically like a tractor that can dig very large holes. This employee had reportedly been using the equipment which was company property, to dig on a company property without permission.

In a large field on the campus of the facility, he was repeatedly digging up and then filling seemingly useless holes. So obviously this looks very weird to the company. They're like, okay, why is this guy? What are you doing out there using our equipment to just dig holes? So on a hunch from the private investigator and the police, seven cadaver dogs were brought

in to search the field, and all seven dogs indicated to the same area. It was a large area with a lot of dirt and growth to displace, so investigators were skeptical that they would find anything, but began to unearth anywhere that they suspected the original holes had been dug. At 10 feet, they stumbled upon what looked like a piece of bone. Upon further inspection of this area, they found hundreds more fragments of bones, including the rest of that jawbone. They also found a pair of tennis shoes, a bra,

and the ripped elastic waistband of the underwear that Trisha had been wearing that night. Her clothing and some of the bones appeared as if they had been burned. And after sending the samples off to a forensic anthropologist and a medical examiner for testing, it was confirmed that the bone was human and that it was trishas. So who had been digging the trenches on company property?

This guy's name was Cody Lynn Nielsen, a 28-year-old man who had been working as a janitor at the Predator Research Facility at the time of Trisha's disappearance. So this guy doesn't even like do anything else on the property. He's just a janitor. Great, so imagine how weird it is that a janitor is digging holes on the property. With company equipment. Yeah, and that's not even his job at all. So they're like, dude, what? Now Cody no longer worked there when he was questioned about Trisha's disappearance because he was serving jail time for multiple other offenses. Yeah, because he is a piece of shit. Yes.

And it's safe to say that Cody has been troubled from the get-go. So he was married from 1992 to 1995. So when he was about 20 to 25 years old, and he had two children with his first wife. After getting a divorce, he married again in 1997, so two years later, and had two more children. His second wife filed for divorce in November of 2000, just five months after Tricia disappeared, after Cody had threatened her with a gun. So they were still married when Trisha disappeared? Yes, and this is, please remember that because we're also going to mention another incident

that happened during the time he was married that is really disgusting and yeah, but we'll talk about that soon. So when Cody's wife called the police on him for domestic violence, Cody went into this tailspin and he yelled at police, quote, I'm not fucking going to jail. You'll have to take me in dead. Too bad, you did go to jail, you fucking idiot. Well, he said this while he was holding a knife to his own throat.

And after talking him down, police successfully arrested Cody and charged him with possession of a deadly weapon within tent to assault before landing in the behavioral unit of the Logan Regional Hospital. So they did put him in a mental facility for that. I'm trying to hold himself hostage. Yeah, or like, I don't know if it was a potential suicide attempt or whatever, but he you know

the police were there because he threatened his wife with a gun. So this guy's like kind of off off his rocker here Now this father of four children under eight years old had actually been tied to more than 40 cases in his 28 short years including but not limited to Racing theft driving with a suspended license, perjury, and assault. Yeah, and we're also going to talk about more assaults. Yes, we will.

So shortly after Trisha's remains were discovered, a friend of Trisha's came forward and claimed to have been raped by Cody just one month before Trisha disappeared. So he's basically stalking these young women and trying to rape them. Yeah, I mean, then their girls, they're like 15 years old. And again, he is married to like a woman and he's 28 years old, praying on teenagers. Yeah, he's gross.

So this friend claimed that Cody introducing himself as Sam. Sam. Drove by the girls on their walk home friend claimed that Cody introducing himself as Sam. Sam. Drove by the girls on their walk home from school one day in a green pickup truck and stop to chat with them. So gross, carry on. Yeah, he's just trying to pick him up.

These are children. So he asked them what they like to do for fun and if they ever liked to go out and drink or party. Like, they can't drink. They're 15 years, you moron. Yeah. Oh, God, I can't drink. They're 15 years. Yeah. You moron. Yeah. Oh, God, I hate this guy so much. So, let me do. He also offered to give them rides home should they ever need them. Now, according to this friend, Sam had given Trisha his pager number, which she had written down in a binder. One afternoon, Trisha's friend had taken

him up on his offer to give her a ride home from school, probably thinking that he was just being a nice guy, trying to make their lives easier with a quick ride home. Yeah, because they're 15, like, they don't, you know, probably really understand that an older guy is creepy. It's not cool to have an older guy drive you home. It's actually very predatory.

Yes, but instead, he took her to the Predator Research Facility, wow, you know, on brand. Yeah, on brand ironic. So where he worked and where Trisha's body was found, and then he raped this friend at the facility. Which is so sad because here she is just thinking he's going to take her home and she should have been able to just go home. He's a true predator. Truly. So at the end of their freshman year, so very shortly before her disappearance, this

friend had written in Trisha's yearbook, stay out of trouble and stay away from Sam. So regarding whoever Trisha was talking to in the chat room like we talked about earlier This was likely, you know, just her having fun chatting with people and not her trying to meet up with someone Because Cody did not come from a chat room So although that lead seemed promising initially it didn't go anywhere And it seemed like this guy is just a creeper who is driving by the school and kind of caught their attention Yeah, and then he you know abducted Trisha because he clearly had his eyes on her. Yeah, it happened to be his pager number and not the chat rooms.

Right. Now, between late May and early June of 2000, and remember Trisha disappeared on June 24, 2000, a coworker of Cody Nielsen's named William Pitt noticed Cody digging a massive hole with the backhoe. So this was kind of like the first sighting of him starting to dig at his work. Yeah, the eyewitness, the first eyewitness. And this is before Trisha went missing. So when William questioned Cody about it, again, a janitor, Cody had said that he wanted to see how deep of a pit he could dig with the equipment.

So no real reason just I want to dig a big asshole for no reason. Yeah, like I'm just digging around for yeah no reason. So William directed him to fill it in because it posed a hazard for locals and employees. Now nobody's supposed to be doing please cover it up and carry on with the day. Yeah, please go grab your mop and go clean the fucking holes. Okay. So, for the next few weeks, co-workers observed him continuing to fuss over this area, where he would like pile debris nearby, covering and uncovering the hole, and at one point,

even setting a pile of what looked like trash ablaze before bearing it. So all these co-workers are seeing this happen and it's looking really weird to them. When questioned by police, Cody admitted to knowing Trisha and also to occasionally going by the nickname Sam. And I just want to point this out for anybody who has forgotten. Trisha was allegedly afraid of a guy named Sam and had told her sister this before she disappeared. And Cody is Sam. Yes.

Now he wouldn't admit to killing Trisha, but he didn't deny it either. In May of 2001, Cody was formally charged with capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, and the desecration of a human body on behalf of 15-year-old Trisha Autry as well as the rape of her teenage friend. When it was time to enter a plea, he actually pled guilty hoping to avoid the death penalty. And when he learned capital punishment could still be on the table, he actually withdrew his plea. He admitted to killing Trisha, but swore that her death was an accident. At his trial, four women testified that he had raped them, including the teenage friend

of Trisha's. Two of them were teenagers, just 16 and 17 years old at this time, and the other had been a local college student at the time of the attack or sorry of the attack uh... who had reported it to campus police but was told that there was not enough evidence to pursue a conviction so when he when this came about that he killed at trisha these other women were able to finally say that man raped me and and i want him to be charged for it but that's

so sucky of campus police to say it like hey like yeah you. Like, hey, like, yeah, you may know who this guy is. Like, too bad, there's not enough. Like, we can't do anything for you. Yeah, it's so horrible. So prosecutors alleged that he used 10 or more instruments on Trisha's lifeless body, including an axe, a knife, and a tool to scrape the tissue from her bones. Oh, I know.

He then buried her, dug her back up, burned her and her belongings, and buried her again. So this was all these times that these co-workers are seeing him digging and then put in a back and digging like it was him hiding Trisha's body. Prosecution opened their statement by saying, you can't sugarcoat evil. True that. So other witnesses testified that he had stalked Trisha prior to her disappearance.

While with his son at trial, Cody's father suffered a cardiac event and was rushed to the hospital. Cody was so emotional that he had to leave the courtroom. Yeah, and what about Trisha, your victim who wasn't there with her family for her father's funeral, but you get to cry in court because your dad had a cardiac event? Yeah, it's just so messed up. So for most of the trial, he kept his head down, sometimes resting it on the table and crying silently. The sentencing dragged on with the judge and jury alike,

anguishing about whether or not to issue the death penalty. Now Trisha's brother, Aram, took the stand and explained how deeply Cody's actions had affected his family. His ten-year-old daughter, Trisha's niece, now thought that it was normal for children to be abducted and killed and that she had started praying during family prayer circles to quote not be afraid anymore. That's how much that this asshole affected their entire family. Well, because by the time this is happening, or I'm sorry, when Trisha went missing,

she was about, I don't know, six or seven years old, so she knew Trisha. Yeah. She knew her aunt. So, Aram also pointed to Cody and said, quote, that man over there, that's why I'm afraid. That's why you're afraid. In 2003, still in the midst of the trial, Joanne Autry was diagnosed with colon cancer,

but continued to delay radiation and chemotherapy treatments to be present for the trial of her daughter's killer. God, this poor family. I know. I'd so sad. So Prosecutor said that she wanted to maintain her composure and alertness for the trial. Finally, in January of 2004, Cody was convicted of Trisha's murder and given a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

He was tried again in 2013, but his conviction was upheld. I just wonder how her abduction even happened because he never explained what he did. Because we have to think about the witness sightings. If before her disappearance, a neighbor had seen her get into a red car with a young man that looked like Cody, does that mean that maybe she had hung out with him before and didn't think he was a bad guy after all? You know what I mean? Well, it seems that he was taking the opportunity to get closer to teenage girls in any way that he could.

So, it's possible that he fed on, you know, the fact that Trisha didn't have very many friends and just basically tried to coax her into some sort of relationship with him, whether it be a friendship or otherwise. Yeah, I mean, that would make sense. I just wonder because she had told her sister she was afraid of this guy named Sam

and because of what had happened to her own friend. I wonder if he did abduct her from her house that morning or if she willingly had gone with him, not knowing how bad of a guy he really was and then when she realized it was too late. Yeah. Because this was never really answered so everybody kind of has their theories but at one point she was in her bedroom and she was on the family computer to that night and then she was gone within hours I think I kind of forgot about that detail where she had told her sister like, hey, I'm afraid of this guy named Sam and It's but did she say that maybe she said that and then she changed her mind because she is still a teenager, you know So so he might have been able to like you said kind of

Coaxer and manipulate her absolutely. Yeah on January 12th 2010 Joanne also succumbed to her cancer about nine years after her husband Roy had and Trisha would have been just 25 years old at this time Like her daughter and her husband before her. She was severely mourned by her community She's remembered as an asset, a mother and friend to everyone who knew her. After Trisha's death, she volunteered with law enforcement agencies and at her local child and family support center. She and her kids also started volunteering together to counsel other victims with missing and exploited children. A co-worker

at the nonprofit said of Joanne, quote, �She�s nothing short of amazing. She�s just absolutely a miracle worker. So sadly, the Audrey family really seemed to have been dealt a shorthand, but Joanne never let it damp in their spirits. Before her passing, she had said quote, �It�s not like I don�t have my times, but we�re not destroyed by our grief because we have that eternal hope. And as devastating as it was to lose Trisha, Joanne added, we know where she is now.

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 Tuesday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dab in too. I feel so sad knowing that her dad never knew what happened to her and that even her siblings at this point and even her mom don't really know what happened to her and don't know how this even came to be. So this story is so devastating. She was only 15 years old

and this guy's a total piece of shit. Yeah, it's so awful like when things like this happen and then the fact that like both of her parents, like I feel bad for her siblings as well. I mean, I was gonna say her poor siblings too. Like they had to lose three people in just this 10 year span. Yeah, it's just so awful.

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Well, yeah, thank you guys so much for listening. As always, and for joining us every week here at Going West, hope to see you next time. All right, guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you