Law&Crime Sidebar - Fears of Texas Serial Killer Grip Austin as 13th Body Washes Up from Lady Bird Lake

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Fears of a serial killer dubbed the “Rainey Street Ripper” have disturbed people in the Austin area as bodies continue to wash up from a stretch of water. Texas authorities said 13 dead bodies, 11 men and two women, have been recovered from the Colorado River and Lady Bird Lake in the past two years. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the rumors of rampant serial killings that have Texas residents on high alert.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lcsidebar and access information on almost anyone!HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. The Rainy Street Ripper, a name that's been coined for a possible serial killer in Texas, but is this real? Multiple deaths in Austin, Texas near a popular nighttime hotspot of Rainy Street have caused people to believe they name murderer is on the loose. But is the Ripper responsible? Does the Rainy Street Ripper even exist? Police say no. Others disagree. We're going to talk with former FBI and CIA agent Tracy Walder, who's been following this case since the first body turned up in 2022. Welcome to the Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime.

I'm Jesse Weber. So for the last two years, dead bodies have been found on a mile-long stretch of the Colorado River between the Lamar Boulevard Bridge and Ladyburg Lake out in Austin, Texas. It's about a half-hour's walk from the Rainy Street neighborhood, and that is a trendy night spot with pubs, restaurants, food trucks, the place where the Rainy Street Ripper got his name or her name. We're going to get to that in a second because the latest, body was found just a week ago, as Austin police had reported. On July 5th, at approximately 5.30 p.m., officers responded to the Waller Beach at Town Lake

Lake Metro Park, located near Rainy Street and Cumming Street, in reference to a Czech welfare urgent call for service, which is a high priority call for service that requires an immediate police response. This call for service was responded to in a timely manner. Call tax advised the complainant located a white male with apparent life-threatening injuries, to his body. The Austin Fire Department, Austin Travis County, EMS, and the Austin Police Department arrived on scene. And unfortunately, the victim was pronounced at ceased at approximately 5.45 p.m. Now, this man is still unidentified, and there were news reports that once he was removed, there were, quote, thick pools of blood between the path and the water's edge. And

what kind of injuries could have caused that much bleeding? They're just some type of blunt force trauma to the body. I don't really have any specific injuries. Now, Officer Zarling also played down the idea that this death had any connection to the Rainy Street Ripper or any other kind of killer. This is not being investigated as a homicide at this time, and all investigative steps being taken are routine measures. At this time, this is being considered an isolated incident, and there's no known threat to the general public. I spoke to homicide detectives and there's no serial killer at this time. At least we don't believe there is one. However, while police initially reported the cause of death to be blunt force trauma, two days later, they changed that to a self-inflicted gunshot wound and therefore it will not be treated as a homicide.

So what about the persistent claims that the Rainy Street Ripper stalks the area, a killer largely targeting gay men who frequent the rainy street nightlife? That has been one of the allegations. Terrified residents, they've set up Facebook groups. One has more than 90,000 followers to voice their growing fears that the dead. may, in fact, be connected. Then there was this report that in April, a bartender on the entertainment strip claimed a patron told him he was the Rainy Street Ripper and that he was attacking men in the nearby waterway, posting on Reddit that the bartender recalled that the man suddenly started

talking about killing, and there's a derogatory word that he uses for gay men, from Lady Bird Lake, that he found him from Rainy Street. He was clearly angry and was saying in a low voice, but I know what I heard. And he described the client as a white man in his 40s, about 510 tall with a muscular build, brownish light hair. That same month, a man named Jeff Jones reported he was attacked by this Ripper, but live to tell the tale. He said he'd been drugged, then plummeted 25 feet off a bridge, narrowly avoiding being drowned. He woke him in the hospital more than two weeks later after doctors had implanted metal rods to hold his back together. And Jeff said that, whoever they may be, just missed the target, and I hit the ground.

and luckily, because of that, I didn't drown. I just got lucky. Not many people can say they potentially survived a serial killer, so that's a story I can tell, I guess. Well, let's actually take a closer look at the people who weren't as lucky. The bodies of 11 men and two women have been found in the last two years, and here's what we know about their death. So it seems the first was back in July of 2022,

59-year-old Ricky Parks, and then in December of that year, 25-year-old Christopher Gutierrez, the Austin Police Department found no foul play in, either death. The investigations have been closed. In December of 2022, also, 45-year-old Josu Moreno's body was found. He was the first victim whose death was actually ruled a homicide. Moreno was shot in his car while driving. His vehicle was plunged into the Lady Bird Lake. There was an arrest for his murder, though, Joel Santiago Gonzalez-Bron.

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sex offenders that may live in that area, which honestly is just kind of wild to see. So whether it's researching new dates or friends or reconnecting with people, TruthFinder is a great tool to use. And right now, you can get 50% off of your first month of confidential background reports at truthfinder.com slash LC sidebar. Now later that month, 56-year-old Kyle Thornton was found dead. The Austin PD determined there was no foul play. Investigation was closed there. were pulled out of the lake, starting with 30-year-old Jason John in February. His death was ruled in accidental drowning, and so was the death of 33-year-old Jonathan Honey. Two months later.

Both men were last seen separately on Rainy Street before their disappearances. Jason was walking home. His family seems to believe there's more to the story of his death, though, because Elsie John, Jason's mom said, Jason was 30, Jonathan Honey was 33, 2 in the morning, Rainy Street. So there were some similarities in the case. and she fears that more men may end up dead. We don't know how many Jasons and how many Jonathan's are going to be losing their lives again, and this is not acceptable.

Elsie John said that her family is going through such unimaginable sorrow and despair over the past few weeks that they do not want another family to face the heartbreaking pain that they've experienced when they were searching for their son, and she asked police to make all the necessary actions to protect the life of the people of Austin near and at Lady Bird Lake. Then we have 40-year-old Clifton Axtel was found in Lady Bird Lake around the same time as Jason and Jonathan after he went missing near a downtown bar. He was a married father of two. His cause of death was ruled undetermined. Two weeks later, 30-year-old Christopher Hayes Clark's death was said to have had no foul play or suspicious circumstances.

His death and those of three additional people, including two women, were not investigated as homicides. There was an unidentified woman, age unknown. Then we have Maga dogal discovered in June 2023, age also unknown. And then the unidentified man found most recently on July 5th. The autopsies on the people who died this year were not available, but police say their bodies showed no signs of trauma. The latest, as we said, appeared to have been from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Now, I should tell you that police investigations here, they have consistently found that most of the deaths are accidental and that they share a combination of alcohol and easy access points to Lady Bird Lake.

Austin Parks and Rec have installed better lighting along with fences and warning signs near the lake. So so far there's no surveillance cameras. I should point that out. But now to sum it up, Austin Police Department Assistant Chief Jeff Greenwald said, there are a lot of allegations that there's a serial killer, but there's no proof or evidence in any of our investigations to sustain that. And police say that while each incident occurred at the lake, The circumstances, exact locations, and demographics surrounding these cases vary. Some of the cases remain under investigation.

Well, now I want to turn to Tracy Walder, former FBI agent, CIA officer, national security contributor at News Nation, author of The Unexpected Spy. Tracy, so good to have you. And I will tell you, I didn't know that you have been following this for years. Yes, well, thank you so much for having you, Jesse. I, in a way, I feel like I'm kind of banging my head against a wall with this. I have been making TikToks and Instagrams and going on News Nation to talk about this for about two years now. It's something I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I tend to sometimes be overly logical, but it's more than just Austin.

I mean, we have the same situation going on in Chicago and the Chicago River. 16 bodies have been found since 22 and Austin 13 have been found since 2022. And the consistency, I think, with which we're seeing this, in my opinion, doesn't seem accidental and doesn't seem random. And that's why I wish that we were looking into this more and maybe there was more interagency communication. Let's explore that a little bit. And yes, I will couple that and say, I have been on with Tracy so many times. You are one of the most logical, rational, reasonable people. You do not jump to conclusion. So for you to say something seems off here when we have 13 bodies.

Now, someone could look at this and say, wait a minute. These could all be accidents. These could all be people getting drawn. and it's a, you know, nightlife area. Do you suspect that there is a serial killer here or do you suspect that their deaths might just be more than what they're initially determined to be? That's a great question. And I'm going to give somewhat of a confusing answer, if that's okay.

I think it's a combination of both. I do think that some of these are truly accidental. This is an area that's right near University of Texas at Austin. It is an area right where people are overconsuming alcohol and it wasn't heavily fenced prior to all of this. And there were, as you mentioned before, very easy access points. However, I think some of these deaths, particularly the ones that had been labeled undetermined, and then the fact the police went from blunt force trauma to oops, you know, gunshot wound to the head so quickly within a matter of hours,

that lends itself, in my opinion, to the idea that there may be someone out there doing this purposely. And I want to take it one step further and say that this may be going on in other states as well. And I think that is the concern that I have. When we see an uptick of bodies being found in Austin, we see a downtick of bodies in Chicago. And then when we see an uptick of bodies in Chicago, there's a downtick of bodies in Austin. It's very strange. What do you mean by that? Because, again, somebody could say, look, you know, this is an area, like there's a lot of areas across the country where it might be an area where people, they commit a crime.

This is where they dump evidence. This is where they dump bodies. This could be an area where it's frequent in. But what do you mean by the connection between Chicago and Austin and when that death rate? Walk us through exactly what you're talking about. Right. So as I mentioned, I've been following this for a couple years. And so I just started basically doing my own research, to be honest with you.

And it really started out with something called the smiley face killer up in New York. And the problem with that is that they were saying, oh, the person had to leave a smiley face in graffiti. And I think that just happened to be random graffiti at the side of a crime. I think a lot of these got kind of dismissed is that they weren't all connected because they didn't have a smiley face. And I think that was misidentified at the beginning. But what I'm seeing is you'll see a cluster of two to three bodies being pulled out in pretty quick succession within the span of, I'd say a week or two of the Chicago River and

then nothing for a few months in Austin. And then in Austin, you will see the reverse happening. So this cluster of bodies kind of showing up two, three, and then nothing in Chicago for a while. And so it makes me wonder, is this the same person going back and forth? Is this some kind of a trucker route? Right? That's where I start to wonder, are these the same person? Are these different people? But what, how difficult would it be for one person to keep on doing this? I mean, in my opinion, not very. We have seen serial killers crossing state lines multiple times, particularly ones that have jobs that are transient in nature, right?

You know, we have seen that. That has been documented. One of my FBI colleagues just wrote a book, actually, on that as well. And so I don't want to say it's easy. Of course, that's not easy, any stretch. But part of me does wonder if maybe we're seeing something even more unusual in that it's a group, right, who's doing this in different cities. That's highly unusual. We've never seen something like that before. But in this day and age of social media and secure channels, it wouldn't surprise me if someone did something like that. looking at the victimology, you're looking at similarities between the victims. What do you make of that?

Yeah, so the similarities, in my opinion, just from the research I've done, there seems to be a bigger age span in Austin than there is in Chicago in terms of just age, right? We're looking at some in some cases, it's like a 20-year age gap. But the reality is most of them are, I'd say, you know, kind of upper middle class, middle class males. Yes, we have some females that are mixed into there. I don't think sexuality plays a role because they have been all different sexualities that I have seen. There are some that have been straight, some that have been gay, all, you know, kind of all across the board.

So I'm not sure that that plays a role in the victimology, but all of them also seem to be educated as well. And, you know, probably had money to spend, quite frankly, at these bars. And what about the Austin PD's response? They're basically denying that there's a serial killer, insisting that there were other causes for the deaths that closed a lot of these investigations on several these cases. Could it be that's just what it is, you know, there's nothing more to report here, or is it the counter in your experience, they do not want to frighten the public because they may have more information at this point and don't want to alarm everybody that someone could be out there. I understand the idea behind not informing the public immediately, right? If you don't

want to scare them, I've done that myself and holding on to information of the FBI, not releasing it. However, in my opinion, there's a fine line between not scaring the public, but also ensuring public safety, which is their job as well. And so I think if they're holding on to that information, which I'm not too sure that they are. Part of me just wonders that this is because they haven't been talking to other police departments. Also, the fact that the autopsy reports are not readily available. A lot of times you can get your hands on those peaks my interest is interesting to me. And some of these have been ruled as undetermined. And I think that's interesting as well because most of these bodies were not in the water for that long week.

I think we know that, unfortunately, when bodies are in water for a very long period of time, obviously that can degrade evidence and then lead to not knowing a cause of death. But most of these bodies were not in the water for, you know, weeks and months. Why would they be determined to be undetermined? You know, if, again, water from a forensic perspective is the worst in terms of evidence preservation. you know, it's really difficult to preserve forensic evidence. And so if it was a case of strangulation and a body decomposed and a hyoid bone wasn't broken, I'm not sure that you would know that that was their cause of death.

Also, maybe they couldn't get a true toxicology panel, right, on someone to decide whether or not maybe they had alcohol poisoning. And so I think those could be some of those things that sort of lead to undetermined that they're not going to cause, you know, they're not going to call it a natural death, but they're not going to call it a homicide yet. You mentioned that law enforcement should be looking at outside agencies for assistance here. What would happen if they got the FBI involved? What assistance, what tools would that serve here?

So the FBI has to be invited. That's just typically how it works. In any kind of state or local case, they have to be invited. Austin PD is a large and robust police department. So they definitely have a lot of resources, right? This is not a city that is small by any stretch. However, I believe that the FBI from a digital forensic perspective might be quicker in terms of the help that they can give them because I think all of us, including these victims, probably left a very heavy digital trail in terms of what their last movements were before their bodies went into the water. Not to mention any of these bars. I know that there's no surveillance cameras yet in these particular areas, but a lot of these bars have cameras. There's, you know, traffic cameras, those kinds of things. And the FBI has more manpower to. just go through that more quickly. I guess here's an interesting point. If you're talking about a

general location, right, and you are a serial killer, wouldn't you're almost kind of, and look, I could also say this about the Gilgo Beach to suspect it. So Gilgo Beach serial killer, and I don't mean to be crass about this, but wouldn't you want to diversify where you commit your crimes or where you dispose of your bodies? I mean, I would imagine now that they know this area, Wouldn't there be more patrols? Wouldn't there be more surveillance? Wouldn't there would be a way to see, well, if there really is somebody doing this, we know where they're going. I think that that's, I don't think that that's a cross question.

I think that that makes a lot of sense. But like you mentioned, in the alleged Gilgo Beach Killer, he was dumping them for the most part in the same area around the beach. And sometimes it does boil down to where serial killers are comfortable and where they have this. hunting ground, I guess, if you will. And the reality is, is yes, they have installed fencing, but they have not installed surveillance cameras thoroughly along that route yet. And this person may know that. And that's why they may feel comfortable in that they're not going to be caught there. And again, you have to remember, this is a highly trafficked bar area. And so I think there might be a sense of ego and that they know they're not going to get going to get caught

because there's so many people around. What are the next steps you're looking for in terms of detecting patterns? Maybe not just in that area, but across the country. Yeah, that's kind of my, I guess my point and my research into all of this is there have been these clusters that have occurred. And my hope is that these law enforcement agencies are talking to each other. But my concern is that when you have APD, I guess dismissing it so quickly, and maybe they aren't in private.

Maybe they are in public, but maybe they aren't in private, but dismissing it so quickly as not being a serial killer, then I worry that they're not reaching out to Chicago PD to say, hey, what are some trends that you're seeing? Let's see if they match up to some of ours and doing that work. But again, I don't know what's going on behind closed doors, right? And so I don't know if APD is doing that. Do you think it's complicated by the fact that it has been amplified by certain online content creators? I mean, we didn't come out today and say, there's a serial killer on the loose. We're trying to understand what is exactly happening.

But certain people have already come up with theories and speculation. I imagine that's something that complicates not only law enforcement's investigation, but their response to it as well. I think it absolutely complicates things in general. I think social media, I mean, we saw this in the Idaho case, right? Really complicates things, right? It falsely accuses people. I mean, it puts people down the wrong path in terms of evidence. I have to be honest, even I get flak sometimes for talking about this case on social media because people, you know, are like, oh, you've been reading the commentaries for too long.

I have to be honest with you, I don't read any of them. This is just based on my own research that I have done myself. And so I think it then stigmatizes other people like myself from looking into things like this and recognizing these patterns. And so I do think sometimes these, this online, I guess, chatter, it really complicates things for law enforcement. And that's my next point. So Austin Police, they're asking anybody with information about these cases to contact the homicide tip line at 512-4-77-3588 or Austin Police Department crime stoppers at 512-472-8-4-77. How do they sort through legitimate tips and how do they sort through what could be, you know, it could be anything from false information to pranks to just, you know, people that call for whatever reason? I mean, how do they sort through legit? How do they find legitimate information? Because obviously, a lot of people are talking about this. I totally agree with you. And that's when it can actually become cumbersome and you are not finding perpetrators

in an expeditious manner, right? Because you have to run down all of these leads. You have to vet all of these tips. You do. Someone has to do that. So that means you're running a background check on the phone number. You're running a background check on the person, right? To assess their validity in their claims.

That takes time and that takes people away from being in the field and maybe solving this case. But again, some great information in terms of case solving comes in through these. So it does take a lot of manpower. And that's why sometimes the FBI is brought in to help manage some of these tips and free up those people to be able to go out in the field. Well, look, I'll tell you this much. It's very eerie. It's weird. I'll tell you that much.

Our hearts go out to the victim's family members. It's really tragic. and the fact that we just have another body in that area. That is why the conversation is going to continue one way or another. Tracy Walder, thank you so much for coming on. And everybody out there, stop giving Tracy a hard time. Stop writing bad comments about Tracy. But Tracy, you did the right thing.

Don't read the comments. You never can read. Never should read the comments. Thanks, Jesse. You got it. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your

podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this Law and Crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.