Park Predators - The River

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

A rafting trip for the Rothgeb family in the summer of 1984 ends with a mother and teenage daughter dead and the father, David, under investigation for their double murder. His hidden lifestyle seals his fate in court, but just like the rivers in the Ozarks, many people are split as to whether the father was framed or a predator remains lurking on the riverways.Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://parkpredators.com/the-river/ Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. The case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in the Ozark National Scenic Riverways on the Jacks Fork River in Missouri. Jacks Fork is heralded as one of the best floating rivers in the United States, and according to Life magazine, it's one of the world's 10 most scenic streams. it's one of the world's 10 most scenic streams. Its cold, clear waters are fed by natural springs and make it an ideal spot for swimming, canoeing, and fishing. While afloat, you pass over more than 100 species of fish and drift past roughly 1,000 species of plants. For decades, millions of people have visited the Ozarks to camp along the shores of the Jacks Fort. In the summer of 1984, the Rothgeb family settled in for a weekend camping trip of fun and Father's Day celebration, but it would end with two family members dead and a mountain of lies, secrets, and suspicion for authorities in Missouri to climb. This is Park Predators. Late at night on Saturday, June 16, 1984, Jack Clark was winding down after a long day.

He'd spent from dawn until dusk registering and checking in campers at the Bunker Hill Ranch, a camping facility he managed that was owned by a teacher's union in Shannon County, Missouri. As it got closer to midnight, Jack took a breath and leaned back in his chair and stared up at the night sky. Then suddenly, a man ran out of the woods in a panic. The stranger breathlessly explained to Jack that his wife and teenage daughter were missing from their campsite on the Jacks Fork River, and he needed his help immediately. Jack tried to calm the man down and hollered for a nearby park ranger to come over.

The panicked man from the woods told Jack that his name was David Rothgeb and his 15-year-old daughter Wendy and 34-year-old wife April, who'd been camping with him less than a mile away, had disappeared. David said he'd been searching all night for them and hadn't found a single trace. Jack noticed that David was so overcome with fear that he appeared to be having a heart attack, and so Jack had to call an ambulance. He just kept trying to keep David calm and told him that they'd get some help and start searching for April and Wendy as soon as possible. Thirty minutes later, around one o'clock in the morning, David had recovered from his cardiac distress, and deputies from Shannon County and more Park Service rangers responded to the scene.

They asked David to take them to his family's campsite and explain exactly what April, Wendy, and his movements were earlier that evening. Once he calmed down, David explained that he and his family had left their home in the nearby town of Columbia around 9 30 in the morning on Saturday. They parked their car upstream in the town of Mountain View, Missouri, then spent most of the day Saturday rafting on the Jacks Fork River. Around three o'clock in the afternoon, he said the family stopped their canoe to make a camp less than a mile downstream from Bunker Hill Ranch. According to David, the family set up their tent at a spot called Dark Hollow Hole. When they got the canvas up, though, and opened it, they noticed there was a

strong smell of cat urine inside of it. So while they waited for the smell to air out, they went swimming, popped popcorn, and ate dinner. As the sun was setting, David said the air got chillier and April and Wendy decided to change out of their bathing suits and back into some warmer clothes. David said because the tent still kind of smelled like cat urine, the women decided to change outside. David told police that Wendy was very modest and she didn't like to change clothes in front of him, so in order to give his wife and daughter some privacy, he went for a walk to gather firewood. While he was gone, it had gotten dark outside. When he returned from his walk about a half hour to an hour later, Wendy and April were not at the campsite. He said he waited alone for a

little while, thinking they would come back, but they never did. David said after that, he started searching both banks of the river near the spot where the family's campsite was. He checked the waterline for half a mile in each direction, yelling out for them, but he got no answer. After a few hours of doing this, he said he started to get really worried, and around midnight, he began walking to the Bunker Hill Ranch to find someone who could help him. With this information in hand, Shannon County deputies and park service rangers quickly began searching the woods and the riverbank near the family's campsite. They were looking for any sign of the missing mother and daughter. The authorities' first assumption was that the pair had fallen or become injured in some way. Historically, the Jacks Fork River wasn't

that rough, and according to reports, only one accidental drowning had occurred in the last 12 years. But still, authorities knew there were some areas where the terrain could slope sharply, and where calm waters were hiding large slippery boulders beneath the surface. After about three hours of searching, rescue crews found April and Wendy's bodies floating in the river downstream from their campsite. Both women were dead. According to multiple news reports, April's body had floated nearly a mile down the river from the family's campsite and had become lodged in driftwood near the shoreline. had become lodged in driftwood near the shoreline. Wendy was found much closer to the campsite, about 300 yards away, and she was face down in less than three feet of water.

Investigators thought that the distance between the women's bodies in the river was kind of odd. Wendy's body being so far apart from her mother's confirmed for police that the two women did not enter the river at the same time, but they figured that maybe April had slipped first and Wendy had gone in after her and then been overtaken by the water herself. Investigators also considered a scenario where Wendy and her mother had both decided to go swimming again, then gotten caught in a bad current, and April was swept away first, then Wendy second. But according to news reports, both of the women were wearing long-sleeved shirts and jeans when their bodies were found. They'd clearly changed out of their bathing suits, so authorities pretty quickly ruled out the theory that they'd gone swimming a second time. When deputies questioned

David about where the women's swimsuits were and just what exactly he'd heard or seen that night, he told the police that he didn't know anything. He'd walked away from the family's campsite to look for firewood, and when he returned, his wife and daughter were gone. He said he had no idea what happened to their swimsuits. He said when he returned to the campsite after his walk, the only thing that he saw was the family's canoe, and he figured April and Wendy had just decided to go swimming again or get in the water without the canoe. When deputies asked David why none of the family's belongings or sleeping bags were inside of the tent at the campsite, David again told them

the story that their family cat had urinated on the tent while it was stored at home and it needed to air out. Shannon County deputies weren't immediately suspicious of David and there was no fiscal proof that he'd hurt Wendy or April, but one park ranger did notice a gash on one of David's knuckles. When authorities asked him where the cut had come from, David said he guessed it had happened while he was scouring the rocks along the river's edge, searching for his wife and daughter in the dark. When the medical examiner conducted autopsies on both of the victim's bodies, he found that April had a two-inch cut on her forehead and a visible cut on her lip.

that April had a two-inch cut on her forehead and a visible cut on her lip. At first, detectives weren't sure what to make of those injuries, but they surmised that the wounds could have come from April's body being carried downstream and hitting rocks or branches on the way. But they also entertained the suspicion that perhaps she'd been attacked before going into the river. At the time, though, the investigators just didn't have enough information to know one way or the other. Interestingly, a National Park Service ranger working the case told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he believed, based on the location of the victims and April's cuts and scrapes, that the deaths may not have been accidental. and April's cuts and scrapes that the deaths may not have been accidental.

He told the newspaper that authorities had learned both women were decent swimmers, so the fact that they'd been overtaken by the river seemed strange to him. Because the National Scenic Riverways is technically federally owned land, the FBI was brought in to lead up the investigation. They were assisted by Shannon County, Missouri State Police, the National Park Service, and some local water safety patrol specialists. According to the Springfield Leader and Press, on Monday, June 18th, the Shannon County Sheriff's Office publicly released that the mother and daughter's official cause of death was drowning.

And then, on Thursday, June 21st, April and Wendy were laid to rest in a joint funeral service. According to the Columbia, Missouri newspaper, it took two more months, but in late August 1984, FBI agents and the U.S. Attorney's Office in St. Louis, Missouri made a huge announcement. They held a press conference officially announcing they were giving their case to a federal grand jury, and they wanted the jury to bring back an indictment against David Rothgeb for the murders of his wife and daughter. Now, this announcement completely blindsided David, who told newspaper reporters that no one involved in the investigation had contacted him at all since his wife and daughter drowned. Since June, David had been living his life working his 9-to-5 job at UPS in the family's hometown of Columbia, having no idea he was even suspected of being involved.

he was even suspected of being involved. And really having no idea that this whole time, authorities were even considering foul play in his wife and daughter's case. Bryce and Dorothy Fogle, April's parents, were also shocked to learn that the government suspected David of murdering April and Wendy. They'd known him for almost two decades and never thought he could be capable

of something like this. According to the Columbia Missourian, in the early 1960s, David first met the Fogles when they bought $2 worth of gas from a shell station that his stepfather owned. At the time, the Fogles' three daughters were in the back seat of the family's car, and David started flirting with them. Later, David came to the family's farm and asked to date April's sister, Jackie, but Jackie wasn't old enough to date yet, so David decided to go out with April instead. Throughout high school, the couple grew close, and in February of 1968, when April was a senior, they got married. Shortly after that,

David and April settled down and lived in a trailer behind the gas station that David's stepfather owned. Eight months later, Wendy was born. Bryce and Dorothy told reporters that David spent a lot of time visiting with April's family and hardly ever saw his own. He became like one of their own and spent a lot of time with Bryce hunting and fishing in the Ozarks. Despite Bryce and Dorothy and a lot of other people's disbelief, the grand jury weighed the government's case, and according to Larry Archer's reporting, documents presented in those proceedings detailed that David was not a suspect early on, but a few weeks after the drowning, was not a suspect early on, but a few weeks after the drowning, authorities had discovered he made an all-too-common move. He'd attempted to collect on a $100,000 life insurance policy he'd taken out

on himself and April seven weeks before her death. Now, we all know that is a huge red flag, but according to their interviews with the Columbia Missourian, April's family knew about the life insurance policy and never thought it was suspicious. On November 28th, five months after the drownings, the grand jury officially indicted David for the first-degree murder of his wife and second-degree murder of his daughter. The reason those two charges are different is because the government believed April's murder was premeditated, meaning David had planned in advance to kill April on the rafting trip.

But they theorized that while committing the crime, Wendy had seen him and then he killed her as well in order to not leave a witness. Larry Archer reported that after the indictment was filed, prosecutors in St. Louis announced they expected David to turn himself in to face the charges. According to the Associated Press, David agreed to that, and at 9.15 a.m. on Friday, November 30th, he surrendered himself to the court. He maintained his innocence, hired a lawyer, and was released to await trial.

For a brief period of time, he moved to North Carolina to stay with friends, claiming he needed to get away from the memories of his loss in Missouri. From the get-go, David's defense attorneys told reporters that the government's entire case lacked any hard evidence that a crime had even been committed let alone that David was the person responsible. The defense argued April and Wendy had died from a terrible accident and that was all.

At the time the penalty David was facing for both Wendy and April's death was life in prison. The federal trial was expected to get underway in February of 1985, but delays in the court kept pushing it further and further down the docket. But on March 5th, 1985, things got underway and more than 70 witnesses were expected to testify for the prosecution. expected to testify for the prosecution. Local newspapers reported that in total, the trial would cost the government anywhere from $250,000 to half a million dollars.

During opening arguments, the lead prosecutor explained that David's motive to kill his wife and daughter was crystal clear. He dropped a bombshell, saying that David had planned to murder April not only to claim $100,000 in life insurance money, but to start a new life with another woman. That's right, David Rothgev had a mistress. A mistress who was going to testify for the prosecution. for the prosecution. After April and Wendy Rothgebb drowned, the FBI began investigating and scrutinizing every aspect of David's life. They'd uncovered he'd been carrying on a secret affair for almost a year with a 39-year-old woman in Charlotte, North Carolina

named Kitty Eldridge. David had moved to Charlotte not long after being indicted for April and Wendy's murders. He claimed he'd made the move to get away from the sad memories in Missouri and to be with good friends, but in reality, he'd moved there to be with his mistress. According to multiple news reports, David and Kitty started their heated affair about eight months before April and Wendy died. In one of her initial interviews with the FBI, Kitty told investigators that the last time she'd seen David, before June 1984, he told her that he was planning to get divorced from April and that the canoeing trip on the river was, quote,

going to be the last trip together as a family before the divorce, end quote. David himself had told the grand jury back in the fall of 1984 that he and April had at one point discussed getting a divorce during their 16 years of marriage, but had never set a date. The prosecution argued, though, that David had felt mounting pressure from Kitty to end his marriage, and by June 1984, he'd made the choice to eliminate his wife April and start anew. The government claimed that April would never have given David custody of 15-year-old Wendy in a divorce, so in order to get Wendy and be free to marry Kitty, David had to kill April. His plan had unraveled though when Wendy likely witnessed her mother's murder on the river. The state backed

that up and said they had evidence that David's secret affair with Kitty was in full bloom in June 1984. According to the Columbia Missourian, during trial, the prosecutors showed jurors that 150 long-distance phone calls had been placed between David and Kitty dating as far back as December of 1983 and continued after Wendy and April died. They showed David made four calls to Kitty on the Saturday morning the Rothgabs left for their camping trip. Even more callous, the state could prove that David had called Kitty twice on the day of April and Wendy's funeral. Obviously, the affair with Kitty was something the defense couldn't hide from and had to address. In his opening statement, David's lawyer admitted to jurors that David was an unfaithful husband, but that didn't mean he was a murderer. The defense wanted jurors to focus more on the fact that police incompetence at the initial campsite on the river left a lot of room for reasonable

doubt. Reporter Stacey Wells wrote that David was optimistic about his chances at trial, Porter Stacey Wells wrote that David was optimistic about his chances at trial because in his eyes, deputies with Shannon County had completely botched the investigation. David claimed that several months after his wife and daughter drowned, he tried multiple times to work with the FBI to get answers, but agents did not fill him in on anything. He referred to himself as, quote, a dissatisfied customer, end quote, and complained that the initial investigators with Shannon County had lost evidence and mishandled the case before the FBI even showed up. Therefore, the Fed's investigation

was flawed from the start. His defense attorneys argued that serious mistakes with forensic evidence occurred just days into the investigation. They claimed that after April and Wendy's bodies were found, samples of their blood that had been sent to the Missouri State Crime Lab weren't tested until 22 hours after being collected. The defense claimed the samples sat in the trunk of a police car for nearly an entire day because when the vials had first arrived to the lab, it was closed. When the prosecutors addressed these concerns about April and Wendy's blood samples, they admitted that the park rangers who transported the blood had not realized that the vials needed to be kept on ice while being stored. But the state told jurors the blood sample evidence wasn't even that relevant. Everyone knew who the victims were in this case, and what was in their blood wasn't important.

For what it's worth, though, I can see the defense's point here. For example, if April and Wendy had something in their systems that could have caused them to be inebriated and fall. That would be significant to the defense's argument. In fact, in court, David's lawyer said because the samples had been mishandled, it made it impossible to test for signs of alcohol or drugs. In his defense, David also claimed that he'd offered his clothing to police twice back in June of 1984, but they wouldn't accept it. The Shannon County Sheriff's Office response to these allegations didn't really help things. The sheriff told reporters that he thought his deputies took David's clothing in June of 1984, but when prosecutors went back and checked, they only found a pair of sunglasses for the case, nothing else. David's

defense team also successfully proved that police had never collected April and Wendy's clothing from the funeral home after their deaths. Deputies had left the articles of clothing there, and the items were later destroyed. That hurt the prosecution big time, and obviously only fed more into the defense's sloppy police work narrative. Still, the government felt what was more compelling was that David had two strong motives to kill his wife and daughter, and those two things were money and a mistress. When prosecutors called David's girlfriend Kitty to testify, the court was on pins and needles. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,

Kitty said that she and David had met at a hypnosis conference in Chicago in October of 1983. After leaving the conference, they began talking a lot on the phone. They were both very into learning how to be hypnotists and how to use hypnotherapy on other people. She said she knew he was married and their relationship was mostly through letters and phone calls. She said that David had visited her in person in January and May of 1984. And during one of those visits, she said he lied to his family and co-workers about where he was.

She said he told his wife and her parents that he was attending another hypnosis conference, but instead stayed with her for a week. Kitty also said that David had rented a private post office box in Missouri specifically to receive and send their love letters. She said they grew closer and closer as the months passed and even discussed marriage at one point. She testified that she would have felt more comfortable, though, with their relationship if they were married. When prosecutors asked Kitty how she felt about being, quote, the other woman, she responded by saying that she never considered herself the other woman in David's life. She was the only woman. She claimed they shared a bond

and friendship that David did not have with his wife April, and that was what made them special. The Columbia Missourian reported that Kitty was a mother of two daughters herself, and after first meeting David in October 1983, she immediately separated from her husband and carried on the affair. At first, she said she was unaware that David and April were having marriage problems at all, but later she learned that David was unhappy in his marriage. Kitty said he never fully explained the specifics of what was going on between him and April or why he and his wife had grown apart. She claimed to have no knowledge of what happened to April or Wendy. Another pivotal moment during trial was when a forensic pathologist who reviewed the case testified and provided more details about the cuts and bruises on April's body.

He said that April had a cut on her lip and a tear in her scalp more than an inch long. She also had several bruises on her forehead, abdomen, stomach, right calf, and left knee. The prosecution claimed that those injuries were a result of April being held beneath the river water between rocks and gravel and purposely drowned. They didn't come from her slipping and falling and floating down the river. The pathologist testified that it was possible the cut on April's lip came from being punched in the mouth, and that it was also possible the cuts Detective had noticed on one of David's hands after the drownings matched a typical wound that someone would get if they punched another person in the teeth or jaw. The pathologist said that Wendy's injuries weren't as severe as her mother's.

The only things he noted as unusual were a few scrapes on her skin and a small bruise on her left eyelid. When the defense cross-examined him, the pathologist could not be 100% certain about the circumstances that led up to either of the victim's deaths. He wasn't willing to go as far as saying they were murdered and emphasized that there were no outright marks or indications that someone had held them against their will. Another win for the defense was that at the time the pathologist initially examined the bodies before the victim's clothing was destroyed, he noted that neither April nor Wendy's clothing was torn or stained with any blood. The prosecution's next tactic was trying to prove that David had lied when he told authorities there had been cat urine in the family's tent. To do that, the government

put a Missouri State Crime Lab tech on the stand, and they testified that after conducting tests on the tent, they found no signs of cat urine on it or in it. But David's defense lawyers countered that point and questioned the tech's methods. His attorneys were able to prove that the tent had not even been tested until four months after the drownings, and the chemicals the lab used weren't really the best. They were also able to establish that one of David's friends had used the tent in between April and Wendy drowning and when authorities got possession of it, so it was potentially inadmissible evidence anyways. Exhausted and unable to combat their lack of physical evidence tying David to the murders, the government called

a parade of witnesses to support a circumstantial case against him. And that's when something happened that everyone in the courtroom was looking forward to. David took the stand in his own defense. Among the first witnesses prosecutors called to testify at trial were April's father and mother, Bryce and Dorothy Fogle. When they took the stand, they talked about how leading up to the camping trip, both Wendy and April had said they didn't want to go. Bryce told the court, quote, They said it all along. Every chance they got, they said they didn't want to go. Bryce told the court, quote, they said it all along. Every chance they got, they said they didn't want to go, end quote. Dorothy told jurors that no one in April's

family knew David was having an affair. She said that before the murders, she'd asked David why he'd go to North Carolina and stay with another woman. He told her that he'd stay with Kitty because they were just good friends. Dorothy also testified that after the drownings, David was adamant with her that he and April never had plans to get divorced. Dorothy said David told her, quote, no way. Two years ago, it could have happened. We were having problems, but the last six months After Bryce and Dorothy spoke, the prosecutors called several campers to testify who'd been staying near the family's campsite on June 16, 1984. All of these people told detectives that during the time that David said he'd been walking the banks of the river, searching and calling out for April and Wendy, They had not seen him or heard him, but they also admitted that they had not seen or heard

police yelling during their later search either, so their testimony wasn't all that effective. Another hiker who was staying at the Bunker Hill teacher's camp also testified, and he said he did hear someone yelling for help around midnight. He said he heard a man's voice close to the retreat screaming, I've got to find my baby, and someone help me. Jack Clark, the man who'd first seen David and called for help, said he and a park ranger thought it was strange that despite trying to calm David down and convince him otherwise, David kept saying that his wife and daughter were dead. Jack stated that David thought they were dead even before search and rescue crews began looking for the women.

After the government got its turn, the defense called its own forensic expert with 31 years of experience, who said the drownings were definitely accidents. He said the fact that there were no signs of scratches, severe bruising, or clawing marks on either the victims or David meant that he did not attack them. This expert claimed that April and Wendy died of what's called dry drownings, which is where a person gets so worked up in the water

that their muscles spasm and cause their airway to essentially become paralyzed and they asphyxiate themselves. In those cases, this expert said that victims have small amounts of water in their lungs and usually float on the surface of the water versus sink to the bottom of it. He claimed that's why April and Wendy's bodies were both found on top of the river's surface. He said he was certain that April had gone into the river first and then become overwhelmed by the current and began to drown. When Wendy saw what was happening to her mother, she tried to save her and was overcome too. To support this theory, the defense also had a search and rescue expert testify who'd done experiments in the Jack's Fork River. He claimed

that the river's four to six mile per hour current is hard to swim against and could overtake a smaller person. And to further make their point, the defense called a group of campers who'd been on the river the same day as the Rothgebs. These campers said that they tipped over their canoe on that Saturday and were sucked under the river's surface almost immediately. They said they'd only managed to survive by grabbing onto some roots sticking up on the riverbed. No matter what the government did, for most of the trial, the defense seemed to keep getting win after win. On top of that, every day, nearly 20 people showed up in court supporting David's innocence. Most of these people were David's co-workers from UPS, who rallied around

him after his indictment. They even raised money to pay for his defense. Every day, those friends would attend the trial alongside David's mother, Lee, and his sister Rachel and brother Joe. The Rothkab family was able to wrangle dozens of other friends and family to fill up a lot of the courtroom. During the last days of trial, David took the stand and testified in his own defense, a rarity when it comes to murder trials. On the stand, he explained that seven weeks before his wife and daughter had drowned, an insurance salesman came to the family's home and persuaded him to purchase life insurance. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, during their entire 16-year marriage,

David and April had never had life insurance policies on each other. For a majority of the trial, it had been difficult for the defense to explain why, after not having life insurance their entire marriage, David randomly purchased a policy, then coincidentally, April died. Calmly, David explained that when the salesman came to his house, he signed up for a prize drawing sponsored by the insurance company. He claimed the salesman was persistent and eventually won him over. He claimed that after starting his affair with Kitty, he couldn't remember the last time he and April had had sex. Now, this threw everyone at trial off,

because at that point, it had been revealed that during April's autopsy, the medical examiner had found semen in her body. At the time, they couldn't confirm who it belonged to. My question is, if it was David's semen, why didn't he just say he'd been intimate with his wife that weekend? Admitting to that would have helped him look like more of a loving husband to jurors. But because he didn't admit to having sex with April that weekend, it left the door open for everyone to wonder if the semen perhaps belonged

to another unknown perpetrator. Now, that idea also worked in the defense's favor. It suggested that perhaps a random attacker had gone after April or that April herself was unfaithful to David. All that mattered to the defense was that that detail pointed the finger away from David and toward reasonable doubt. There just aren't enough reports out there to know why the semen information wasn't explored more. While answering his defense attorney's questions, David was collected and coherent on the stand

and denied any involvement in his wife and daughter's deaths. He told the court that he had no regrets of how he searched for them, but the only thing he said he did regret was being on that river with them in the first place. He said that while the family set up their tent and went swimming that Saturday, April told him Wendy was excited to be on the trip and make a Father's Day breakfast for him the following day. David vehemently denied that his affair with Kitty or the insurance money had anything to do with his wife and daughter's deaths. He told the court that despite being infatuated with Kitty, he never

really had any plans to marry her. He loved his wife and daughter too much. Under cross-examination, though, David's confidence fell apart. His demeanor became cold as prosecutors questioned him about the night April and Wendy died. Most of his responses about what he remembered from that evening were, I don't recall. about what he remembered from that evening were, I don't recall. According to the Columbia Missourian, David responded more than 250 times with the words, I don't recall. The prosecution saw that as a win because jurors who'd been waiting the entire trial to hear from the defendant about specific details of where he was, what he was doing, and so forth were left disappointed. On March 19, 1985, the case went to the jury, and five and a half hours later, the verdict came in.

Jurors found David guilty on all counts and sentenced him to life in prison plus 210 years. and sentenced him to life in prison plus 210 years. The news came as such a shock to the defense and David's family that his mother, Lee, fainted in the courtroom. Dorothy and Bryce Fogle, April's parents, were glad to see justice served. By that point, they learned that David had lied about a lot of things regarding his relationship with April and what he did the night his wife and daughter disappeared. Bryce told reporters that David had told him back when April and Wendy first

vanished that it had taken him three hours to hike from the family's campsite to the Bunker Hill Ranch. But when Bryce walked that same distance, it only took him 28 minutes. Bryce also grew suspicious of David when he learned at the funeral that David had purchased a three-space family burial plot before the drownings, but paid for Wendy and April's spaces up front. According to Stacey Wells' reporting, Kitty Eldridge did not attend David's sentencing in April of 1985, but did continue to carry on a phone and letter relationship with him in prison. She told the newspaper that she would always be convinced David was innocent.

Throughout 1985 and 1986, David and his lawyers fought to get his conviction overturned and claimed several errors during trial resulted in an unfair process. But in April of 1986, a federal judge denied the appeal. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, today David Lee Rothgeb is 71 years old and still serving his life sentence at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. In an interview with the Columbia Missourian, April's mother and father told the reporter that on the day the family left for their camping trip, they wish they would have stopped them. Dorothy and Bryce say they will forever be haunted by the fact that April and Wendy both said

they did not want to go canoeing, but David insisted the family spend time together. but David insisted the family spend time together. After the trial was over and the appeals exhausted, Dorothy quoted a poem to the newspaper that she said makes her think of her daughter. It reads, Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on the snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry. Park Predators is an AudioChuck original podcast.

Research and writing by Delia D'Ambra, with writing assistance from executive producer Ashley Flowers. Sound design by David Flowers. You can find all of the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?