Murder In America - EP. 33 TEXAS - (HELP US) The Mystery Of The Madisonville Jane Doe Murder

Episode Date: September 18, 2021

This is a TRAGIC and BIZARRE murder story... no one knows who she is... no one knows her story... maybe YOU listeners, can help. This, is the story, of the Madisonville Jane Doe. And you're listening, to MURDER IN AMERICA. - - Try MAGIC SPOON CEREAL (trust us, it's SO GOOD) at the link below!! magicspoon.com/state Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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365-day returns. Quince.com slash America. is not suitable for all audiences. We go into great detail with every case that we cover and do our best to bring viewers even deeper into the stories by utilizing disturbing audio and sound effects. Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape, murder, and offenses against children.

This podcast is not for everyone. You have been warned. Hey, everyone, we are going a little bit off schedule today. We usually release our episodes on Saturday, but we are releasing it today, Friday, September 17th. 2021 because today is the five-year anniversary of the discovery of the Madisonville, Texas, Jane Doe. We know we've already covered two stories from Texas, but because it's the five-year anniversary of this story, we want to get the word out. The story that we are about to cover is a case

that nobody really knows about, and we feel like if enough people start talking about it, we can get some answers. I spent a lot of my childhood in a small town outside of Madison To get to this town, my family and I would drive down the long stretch of Interstate 45. If you're from Texas, you're probably familiar with this road. It connects a lot of the main cities in Texas. I know that I have some really good memories driving on I-45. From my hometown to Madisonville, there is a statue of Sam Houston on the right side of the road. When my brother and I were little, we would always scream, Big Sam's on my side when we would drive past it.

I spent many hours driving this road, listening to music, going deep in thought, playing car games with my family, and of course, listening to podcast while on this road. But when I drive down I-45 now, it's not just my childhood memories that come to mine. Earlier this year, I found out about a tragic story that happened there right along I-45, A story about a farmer who five years ago today found a suitcase on his property. Inside of that suitcase was a deceased little girl. And who that girl is is still a mystery. This is the story of the Madisonville baby Jane Doe.

I'm Courtney Shannon. And I'm Colin Brownen. And you're listening to Murder in America. Madisonville, Texas. It's one of the many towns along. Interstate 45, a town with a population of around 4,800 people. The main stores in town are a Brookshire Brothers, a Dollar General, and a Walmart. And it has a very country, small town vibe. Everyone is friendly. Everyone goes to church on Sunday. And almost everyone has little country

twang in their accent. It's a southern town through and through. When you drive through Madisonville, you'll mostly see fields for as far as the eyes can see. Many people that live here have acres of land, cattle, crops. It's just a part of the lifestyle here. And that's exactly the case for Tim Waldrop and his family's property. Em and his family own a property about seven miles north of Madisonville right off of I-45. If you live in the country, some of you may know this, that keeping up with land can be a lot of work. I actually grew up. up going to my grandparents farm about 15 minutes away from Madisonville and my late grandpa who just passed away this summer put everything into his farm all of his time all of his

money and all of his love went into the care of his property you have to keep the pasture trimmed clean up the property when needed care for the livestock a lot goes in to working on a farm and sometimes the upkeep requires several hands and on this particular day September 17 2016, Tim and his son-in-law Stephen were out trimming the pasture. Tim rode the tractor along the fence, making sure to get all of the tall grass, when all of a sudden he feels the cutter of the tractor hit something. Tim steps off the tractor wanting to get a better look at the foreign object on his property. And as he steps closer, he realizes that it's a small black suitcase. But he isn't immediately alarmed. You see, their land is actually right off of I-45 adjacent to the service road,

which means thousands upon thousands of people drive by it every single day. Because it's so close to the interstate, Tim was used to finding things on his property along this fence. But usually, it was things like empty beer bottles, a raggedy old shirt, or cigarette butts. But a suitcase is pretty uncommon. Still, I'm sure Tim at the time was just the thinking that someone left their tailgate down and that their suitcase flew out the back of their truck and onto his property. But regardless, he's still curious as to what's inside of the suitcase. I mean, if I came across a mysterious piece of luggage on my property, I would definitely

want to open it, wouldn't you? So that's exactly what Tim does. He walks over to the piece of luggage, carefully unzips it, and opens it up. When he does this, he's hit with the... unmistakable smell of death. Now Tim is very familiar with this smell. When you own land, you have to deal with dead animals pretty frequently, so his first assumption is that something had crawled inside of the suitcase and died. But again, not a big deal to him. He's used to it, so he starts to look through it. At first, he sees a Shaw, so he takes

it out and sets it on the ground, and then he sees a large garbage bag. When he opens the garbage bag, the smell of decomposition was overwhelming and he sees something inside of it that he will never forget. Tim quickly takes a step backwards away from the suitcase and he thinks to himself, did I really just see what I thought I saw? And just to be sure, he takes another look. As he carefully opens the garbage bag again, he sees a tiny human skull with hair attached to the scalp. The body was badly decomposed and Tim was nearly beside himself. at the discovery he had just made on his property, and he slowly starts to back away from the suitcase. His son-in-law, Stephen, had watched this entire encounter from across the field,

and Tim quickly yells for him to come over. He still cannot believe what he had just found, and he wanted a second opinion. So he tells Stephen, I want you to go walk over to that bag. It's going to stink, but look inside and tell me what you see. So Stephen walks over to the bag and opens it up. The two stare at each other in disperse. belief before Tim says, do you think that's a skull? To which Stephen replies, oh yeah, that is definitely a skull. The two are completely shocked at what they just came across, so they slowly step away from the suitcase, run back to their house, and quickly phone the sheriff's department. But when dispatch received the call about remains being found on the property, they assume that it

has to be animal bones. I mean, dead bodies just don't show up in suitcases around Madisonville. And because of this, they end up sending out one of their rookie deputies named John Kenden. Kenden was actually still in training at this point, and he had only been in the department for a couple of days. So when he pulled on to the property off I-45, it was an experience that would be ingrained in his mind forever. We got a lot of the information for this case from a podcast, called Inside Crime with Angeline Hartman. It's a really good episode. We really recommend listening to it.

But in her episode of this case, she interviewed the Madison County Sheriff Deputy John Kendon, and this is what he had to say. Upon my arrival there, they were standing next to their tractors and was just sitting there waiting on me to arrive because they didn't want to move anything. They were a little upset with what they had located to the luggage. You could tell that it wasn't normal. It was something that you don't normally have in your pasture.

You know, it's, it was a surprise to them. Deputy Kenden walked over to the suitcase to have a look at it himself. And when he did, he knew that those were not animal bones inside of that suitcase. It was indeed a human. And this was definitely more than he can handle on his own. So Kenden makes a call to his Superior, Sheriff Travis Neely. Neely had been in the department for years at this point, and although homicide isn't common in Madisonville, it isn't unheard of. So when he drove down to the property that day, he was assuming he would find an adult's dead body that had recently been dumped there. But as crime scene investigators arrive on the property, they soon discover that these remains did not belong to an adult. It was clearly a small child. This is what Sheriff Neely had to say

in an interview with Angeline Hartman. Well, at that point, I'm thinking, you know, somebody got killed and dumped out there. I had no clue it was a child. So I'm anticipating, assuming, probably an adult. And it probably had just happened. So I get dressed, and I go over there, and I get out there,

and it's all in a little bitty container, a suitcase, and some bags. And it had been there for a while, obviously. And from observation of the suitcase, it's not no adult. This is going to be a child. You could tell right away. You could tell right away because at the size of that suitcase, somebody as big as you or I, they're not going to fit in there.

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wide plastic trash bags inside, and the first bag contain the remains of a small child. The investigators carefully go through the bones, and after examination, they conclude that it's a female, somewhere between the ages of 2 and 6, who is either either. They're white, Hispanic, or Native American. The poor little girl inside of the trash bags had long, thick, dark hair that was still visible on her remains. And as the investigators continue to look through the bag, they find a small reddish pink dress printed with butterflies and hearts, and the words, follow your dreams written across

the front. They also find a size four diaper, and to their surprise, a feeding tube. After further investigation of the child's body, it's discovered that she had a medical condition called Micronathia. This condition made it where her jaw was very undeveloped and she wasn't able to eat on her own, which is exactly why a feeding tube was found with her remains. But this just wasn't any feeding tube. It was called a PEG tube or a peg tube, which stands for percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy. According to the feeding tube away, it was called a PEG tube, or a peg tube, which stands for percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy. According to the Feeding Tube Awareness Foundation, around 20% of children under the age of 18 are tube fed at some point in their life, and there are over 350 medical conditions that require a child to have a feeding tube.

Those statistics were a lot higher than I anticipated. It turns out that a lot of kids need feeding tubes. But the peg tube that our baby Jane Doe had was unique. When investigators took a deeper look into it, they discovered that her tube had a serial number. on it and the partial name for its manufacturer. This news was very exciting for investigators because it meant that if they could track down where the feeding tube came from, then they could possibly find out the identity of the baby Jane Doe. And more importantly, they can start looking into who killed her. But unfortunately, without knowing who their victim is, it's nearly impossible to find out what happened to her. So, the investigators start their search trying to find the origins of the feeding tube, but it turns out that it's a lot harder to locate than they

originally thought it would be. The serial number on the Jane Doe's feeding tube was AA4069F02. When they tried to trace it back to the manufacturer, they found out that thousands of feeding tubes that were distributed carry that exact same number. Some were sent out of the country, some were sent around the United States. But the manufacturer had to be a lot of the country. But the manufacturer had done a very bad job at tracking where these feeding tubes had been sent out to. So it really complicated the investigation. They were able to find that there was one sent to a child in California and tubes sent to several children in Texas.

So investigators start going down the list tracking these feeding tubes and the children associated with them. Their first call was to a family in Houston. This family had a little girl that matched the description of their Jane Doe. But when they followed the lead, they discovered that the child was still alive and well. So they move on to their next one. The FBI actually helped the Madison County Sheriff's Department in identifying this next child because they lived in California.

This family too had a daughter that matched the Jane Doe's description, but she had died years earlier. The family was able to provide a birth certificate and a death and burial certificate. So they were able to roll her out as well. After chasing lead after lead, investigators soon figured out that they weren't going to be able to find their Jane Doe's identity through this feeding tube. And still to this day, they can't figure it out. About a year after her body was discovered, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children made a facial reconstruction image of what they believe our Jane Doe would look like.

They do this by taking a CT scan of her. skull, which gives a good indication of what her face would have looked like. We will definitely be posting this picture on our social medias, so please head to at Murder in America on Instagram to see if you recognize her face. We need to get this image out there so that hopefully someone will recognize her. Investigators were also able to do isotope and pollen testing on the particles that were found on the remains and on items inside of the suitcase. The pollen suggests that the Jane Doe has strong connections to the southwestern United States

and is possibly from or spent time in either southwestern New Mexico, southeastern Arizona, Southern Nevada, or southeastern California. Sheriff Travis Neely would tell Angeline Hartman this. These kind of cases are the worst kind. They're frustrating because you feel it. helpless. When you go and you've exhausted everything that you humanly know to do on these type cases and it still gets you nowhere. We are going to read through the Madisonville Jane Doe's descriptions one more time. If you know of any child that matches this description, someone that you

haven't seen in almost five years, even if you feel like you could be wrong, please, please call it in. You never know if you could be the reason this case gets solved. She was a young girl between the ages of two and six. She had long, thick, dark hair and was most likely white, Hispanic, or Native American. She had a medical condition called Micronathia, where her lower jaw was noticeably smaller than average. She most likely had difficulty swallowing or breathing or both. She had a feeding tube that was 1.2 centimeters long that would have been a very large that would have

had to have been surgically implanted by a doctor sometime within the last decade. The feeding tube serial number was AA4069F02. Based on the pollen, she was most likely from Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, or California, and she wore a pink shirt that read, Follow Your Dreams. Our Jane Doe was never able to follow her dreams because somebody took her from this world far too soon. The descriptions that we just read are detailed and specific, and somebody out there knows her. The Madisonville Jane Doe was found on September 17th, 2016. Today is September 17th, 2021, which means it's the fifth anniversary of her discovery of I-45. And still, to this day, We don't know who she is.

The little child's remains will sit in a Dallas crime lab until her case is solved. Our Jane Doe didn't have a fair life. In the short amount of years that she was given, she faced a lot of difficulty because of her medical condition. And then she was murdered. And even after death, she was stuffed into a suitcase and tossed out of a moving vehicle like trash, where her body would sit for months. Our Jane Doe deserves justice. She deserves to have a proper burial,

to have her story told, and she deserves to have a name. So please, if you're listening to this, please spread the word. Share this post, memorize her description, and talk to your friends and family about her, especially if you live in the southwestern United States.

job as fans of true crime isn't to just consume these stories, but it's to make a difference. Our baby Jane Doe had a family. She had a doctor that surgically implanted that feeding tube. Someone out there knows about her, and it's our job to keep telling her story so that she can finally get the justice she deserves. Okay, everybody, we really care about this case. We came across it because we were actually traveling through Madisonville, and we had no idea that this had even happened until I just happened to Google murders in Madisonville. And we found this story. It's incredibly disturbing. It's quite sad that there hasn't been more attention placed on the actual search for who this little girl was.

It is so heartbreaking to see the description of her with her clothing and the follow your dreams. We need to find justice for this little girl. I had literally spent my entire childhood, like I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast. I grew up in this area. And so I was so shocked that something like this had happened there. And then I was even more shocked to find out that it still hasn't been solved. And it seems like such an easy case to solve. I mean, it's a rare fading tube.

There aren't many out there. I feel like the missing piece to this puzzle is that not enough people know about it. So if you want to help us attempt to solve this case, please share our post on Instagram on all of your social media. And if you share the post, we're going to be given away $2.50 gift cards, two visa cards to two of you people who share this media. We're not doing this for us. We're doing this for her. We want to promote justice and promote the search because it seems like it's stalled. And we want to find out who this girl was, where she came from.

how she got there and who was responsible for this horrendous crime. So head over to Murder in America. We will be posting what she looked like, what the feeding tube looks like, everything that relates to the case. Go over there, share the post, and hopefully we can find who did this to Madisonville, Jane Doe. How many discounts does USA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount.

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