The Deck Investigates - 2 of 3: A Secret Confession

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

A new suspect name is dropped into our inbox, with third-hand information about him having confessed to Darlene’s murder. We work to get to the direct source, and dig up more about his past and where he was, or said he was, on August 17, 1984.If you believe you have information about Darlene Hulse’s 1984 abduction and murder in Argos, Indiana, please email [e-mail]’s family has created a petition to advocate for the suspect DNA to be compared to the partial DNA sample that was recovered from Darlene’s blouse. There are also more items that independent experts recommend testing that may yield an even better profile and we would like that to be done as well. To sign the petition, visithttps://www.change.org/p/justice-for-darlene-hulse  

Just a quick note, all emails referenced in this episode have been altered slightly to maintain anonymity and for clarity. As a general rule, small towns don't usually keep big secrets for very long. Argus, Indiana, though, A Secret Confession. During our year-long reporting on Darlene's case, we spent our fair share of time in Marshall County. We ate at local restaurants, stayed at local hotels, chatted up locals in small smoke-filled bars, and even had hushed conversations with local people in libraries, coffee shops, and on street corners.

We thought we'd heard it all. But on March 13th, 2023, four days after we dropped the Deck Investigates series, we got a tip via email from someone with a story that we'd never heard before. For reasons you'll soon come to understand, our tipster wanted to remain anonymous,

but here's what I can share. I know for certain people involved in the information wouldn't want to be spoken to or included in any investigation. I also wouldn't wish to be identified or spoken to by police or anything like that. I'm not looking for enemies or trouble of any kind, and I just don't want to be involved in any of this on the record.

It's why I've held onto his name, but I was hesitant to do anything with it. Now that you're acquainted with how Marshall County law enforcement operates, I hope you understand they weren't going to do anything with the information anyway. But for Darlene and her kids, if you think it will help, I can provide the name of someone who got drunk some years back and confessed to one of my friends that he's the one who killed Darlene. Over the next few weeks, we built a rapport with that tipster to get the

man's name who reportedly confessed to Darlene's murder. And then we received another email, also from someone who wants to remain anonymous. Hello, I'm reaching out about information I have about the Darlene Hulse case. I'm trying to keep calm typing this because I feel this could potentially lead to the killer and I really mean it. Please bear with me while I explain. I am from Indiana, and almost one year ago, this person mentioned to me one day that one of his friends was at a bar, and there was a gentleman sitting near him that started talking to him. It sounds like this man definitely had a couple drinks in him,

but after a couple conversations, he told this person that he murdered Darlene Hulse. I don't have the exact details of how this conversation went, but this person knows of the man that told his friend this. The man's name is Jason, and he is from Argus, Indiana. If you start digging, I believe you will find even more crazy connections based on the land and areas where he would have farmed and where he lives. If we start digging. Now, were these separate tips talking about the same bar confession,

or were there two confessions at two different times? Honestly, I still don't know the answer to that, but I do know that these two separate people named the exact same man. Problem was, our tipsters seemed to have each heard it like third hand. We needed to get to the source. So after promising anonymity, one of our sources put us in contact with somebody next in the chain, someone who heard it second hand. They weren't the direct witness to the confession, but they were one of the people the witness told about the confession right after it happened. Our source didn't have that person's contact information anymore, just a name, which unfortunately for us

was a super common one, so it took quite a bit of sleuthing, but we love sleuthing, and we're good at it. So we ended up calling this person, and gotta be honest, we're like half expecting them to be like, wow, that's wild, but I have no idea what you're talking about, please just leave me alone. And we were half right. They did want us to leave them alone, but not because they didn't know what we were talking about. Rather, because it was clear they were scared for their life, which is why I won't be using their name. They didn't, quote, want to say for sure that I heard something like that, end quote. This person admitted that they used to frequent the bars in Marshall County and that they would run into this man in question,

but they stopped short of admitting that they heard the guy confess to anything. Instead, they said they aren't inclined to believe anything someone says at a bar, especially if the person was drunk. But before rushing off the phone, they said that they hope we crack the case. Thanks. We were hoping that they would at least tell us when and where this alleged confession happened, but no luck. Our thread was effectively cut, but that doesn't mean we were out of options. We started researching the man who allegedly confessed. Maybe we'd look into him a little and it wouldn't make any sense

and we could walk away and focus on other things. But then again, maybe there was something here. Because what we found was pretty interesting. This man, I'm going to call him Jason, but that's not his real name. He's from Argus and would have been in his 20s in the mid-1980s. He's 6'2", slim build, and blonde. So check, check, check. The next thing we did is we did what we'd done

with every other person who'd come on our radar in our initial investigation. We found some photos of Jason from the 80s and asked Marie and Melissa to look at them. We actually got so many emails from you guys asking if Darlene's daughters recognized any of the persons of interest we've explored. And there's no easy answer, because, I mean, there have been features of all of these persons of interest that have made their eyes go wide.

And they were almost clinical in the way that they dissected them. This part, yes, this part, I don't know. But they've never been able to say, yeah, that's the guy. So this time around, we got some old mug shots and yearbook photos of Jason,

even found some old family photos and sent them off. But something different happened this time. Melissa started physically shaking when she first saw Jason's photo and Marie was overcome with emotion. So who is this guy? We got his criminal history through a records request

and printed it out, and it's extensive. Just his rap sheet in Marshall County alone is several inches thick. It includes stalking, intimidation, harassment, disorderly conduct, protection order violations, trespassing, even a death threat. So then we went back to Darlene's case file to search for his name. Because according to Dr. Robert Keppel, who became infamous as a detective from his investigations into Ted Bundy, in 95% of cold cases, the real perpetrator will be named in the case file in the first 30 days of the investigation.

So I shouldn't have been completely shocked when we found his name. But I still was. What was there, though, and why, is a bit of a mystery in and of itself. Now, full disclosure, there is nothing indicating when these documents were requested, received, or made by investigators, meaning I don't know when they made it into the case file, so I don't know in what order they even came. I can only guess. But my best guess would be that the piece of plain paper with some handwritten notes on it came first. At the top of the paper, there is someone's name with an address and then quote, was a TK driver for Young Door 1984, end quote.

I'm guessing TK driver in this instance means truck driver. So this person that is named, not Jason, by the way, this person was a truck driver for the company Ron Hulse worked for. Now, under that, someone wrote Jason's full name, an Argus address, his date of birth, social security number, a Plymouth address, and then next to it, it says, quote, T.K. Driver on contract, potentially implying that Jason was working as a contract truck driver for Young Door. Under Jason's name, it also listed another address and listed the name of his employer,

along with, quote, old PK. Now, I've gone back and forth on what old PK could mean. I even took to the Crime Junkie Instagram stories a few months ago to crowdsource what you guys thought it meant. And the consensus, which is just all of us guessing, is that PK could mean pickup truck. So maybe they were noting that that's what he drove at the time.

I mean, they were really interested in vehicles because they were constantly looking for that old rusty green car that the girls saw. But according to this, maybe he might have driven a pickup truck. Was he a contractor for Young Door though? It's very possible. Aside from this cryptic handwritten note, we also found a single page from Chase Leasing Corporation. It's a mileage and odometer log with Jason's name on it. And through talking with the Hulse family, we found out that Chase

Leasing Company was the same company Youngdore worked with to find contract employees. Anyway, if Jason was working as a truck driver on contract for Youngdore in 1984, that would mean he likely knew or knew of Ron Hulse. Now, whether or not Jason was a contract driver for Young Door is TBD. But we were able to find out what company he was employed at, kind of on a regular basis during this time. And we found out he was working

a trucking and delivery job in 1984, delivering bathroom appliances for a big bathroom manufacturing company that was based out of Plymouth. And that kind of made us wonder something else. According to property records, Ron built his family home on 20B Road in 1979 and 1980. We wondered if his bathroom finishings came from that same company. So we had Kristen call her dad Ron to ask if he could remember where he bought the tub

and shower. And sure enough, it was from the same manufacturing company. Now this is all tenuous at best. So where was Jason at 9.30 a.m. on August 17th, 1984, when a man was forcibly taking Darlene from her home. Well, according to the next thing we found his name on, he was somewhere between Indiana and New York. Super helpful, I know, but bear with me here while I explain. The report I'm looking at is just a few pages long. It's not a police report or an interview

or anything like that. It's Jason's work logs from August 16th to August 19th of 1984. We don't know why it's in the case file or when it was requested or if anything was done with it. But one could assume it's here because police went searching for his alibi. The logs are on a printed template and handwritten in the lines are the days and hours Jason presumably worked that week. The company he worked for, which I'm not naming on purpose,

was a big bathtub manufacturer in Plymouth back in those days. It's actually still around today, but it was bought by a bigger corporation years ago. As a delivery driver for them in 1984, Jason was expected to keep track of his own hours and mark his logs accordingly when he was on the road, which included when he was actually driving,

when he stopped to sleep, etc. So according to Jason's self-reported logs, he left Plymouth on August 16th and headed toward Riverhead, New York for a delivery. The mileage he entered would have had him stopping overnight probably somewhere in Ohio each way, which clearly puts him out of town on August 17th. Jason's own note says he arrived back in Plymouth at 3.30 a.m. on August 18th and was off the next two days until starting

a new route on August 19th. And that's when the notes cut off. His name appears again on another document floating among the 3,500 other pages about Darlene's case. And this single-page report is also related to his work. It's an injury report dated five days after Darlene's murder on August 22nd, 1984. That's when Jason reported some injuries to his employer. And what's typed into line six, nature and location of injury slash illness, is, quote, strained muscles and minor bruises to ribs.

According to the documentation, he said he got them two days prior at 8 a.m. on August 20th, while, quote, unloading double tier of fiberglass tub slash shower units at job site. There is a place to list the names of those who witnessed the injury, but it just says employees at the job site receiving the load of tubs, which is vague, but in all fairness, I don't expect that he would know their names. For all we know, it was this injury that made police suspicious of Jason because pretty much everyone agrees that Darlene's killer didn't leave unscathed. I mean, she fought back. But it seems he has an explanation for that. So far, everything we have, it kind of all adds up. Makes sense, right? Even though the

trail of how we got from A to B to C isn't there, you can reasonably fill in the pieces. But this next one is a complete mystery to me. The next page after that injury report is a calendar for the month of August 1984. It looks like any old wall calendar that you might have seen or had yourself back in the 80s. It's branded with the NFL and Pepsi logos in the top right-hand corner, and there are a couple random NFL trivia facts sprinkled on random dates. There is nothing handwritten on the calendar, except for three little X's right next to the date.

One on August 17th, one on August 20th, and one on the 22nd. So that's the day Darlene was murdered, the day Jason claimed to have been injured, and the day he reported the injury to his employer. Whose calendar was this? Where did it come from? God, do I wish I knew. I mean, there's a world where a detective was maybe suspicious of

the injury and marked the relevant days related to like the injury itself and Darlene's case. But if so, why? I mean, all that stuff is written on paper already. And if it wasn't, you could way more easily just like handwrite a note and throw it in the file. So why put X's on your calendar, take it off the wall, which it was on the wall, by the way, because you can see the nail or pinhole at the bottom of the August page like it'd been flipped. So why take the calendar off your wall,

flip it back to August, mark the dates, then photocopy it? It would all make a little more sense if this were a calendar somehow related to Jason. And it'd be awfully strange if he marked the day Darlene was murdered, the day he says he was injured on the job, and then the day he reported it. If police stopped investigating Jason after looking at his work logs, I could see why. He clearly says he was out of town on the day Darlene was killed. But I can't help but wonder what they did in 1984 to confirm those handwritten logs. I mean, Jason was trucking by himself.

We know that because there's a line on his work logs where you could list a co-driver, and that's blank. Now, here's where things get interesting. There is one other report attached to his work logs where it looks like they tried to confirm his locations by looking at his self-reported mileage.

The handwriting on it gets really faded, especially as you go towards the bottom. And at first, we thought it was maybe too faded to even read. But I had Emily print it out

so we could take a closer look. And what we found was pretty unbelievable. I laid Jason's driving logs next to the fated mileage and leasing sheet. The Chase Corporation lease sheet is what I assumed Jason kept because he was leasing his truck. So that mileage and odometer log would get turned into Chase Leasing Corporation. And then his odometer log would get turned into Chase Leasing Corporation. And then his daily driving logs would get turned into his supervisor at the manufacturing company.

All that to say, I don't know that he ever expected anyone to be comparing the two. So we started crunching the numbers to see if the hours and miles that he was reporting on his daily logs matched the odometer readings on his leasing sheet. By the time we were done, I was fully convinced that Jason cooked his books because things just weren't adding up. But I wasn't so convinced that it could be a smoking gun or anything. I mean, it was more like maybe his math was wrong here

or maybe he took longer route here. Like I couldn't, it just felt wrong. So I pulled in AudioChuck's COO, Bob, who is much better with numbers than me or Emily. He actually took the reports to his office, started punching everything into Google Sheets, columns for states, dates, the odometer reports, plus listed time that he was off duty,

sleeping, driving, everything. And he even got a map to fact check all the miles. Bob Cross referenced all of it. And what he found was that none of it matched up. But he noticed something even more damning. Jason's leasing log is a whole state and a whole day behind his daily driver logs, which just doesn't make sense. Like it looks as if Jason just delayed everything by 24 hours

to put himself across the country on August 17th, when in reality, he could have absolutely been back in Plymouth on August 17th, 1984. Listen, I understand lying on the daily driver logs because truckers back then will be the first to admit that they didn't stick to the eight or 11 hour max driving capacity that they were supposed to abide by to stay in compliance. Because I mean, honestly, if you're two hours from home, are you going to keep driving or are you going to stop for the night? You're going to keep driving and just say that you stopped for the night.

But what's the incentive to lie on the leasing sheet? I can't think of one. Also, the odometer on his truck would have shown the real miles, so it was a big risk to lie. So basically, Jason could have easily gotten away with fudging his logs, and he could have been back in Marshall County by August 17th. So this is something that like at first glance, it seems like a strong alibi, but if you really study it, it's shaky at best. And I won't lie to you guys, I honestly was kind of half hoping that all of this would confirm Jason's alibi

and we could call the alleged bar confession Arga's folklore. But knowing this, we had to keep digging. There were a few names of Jason's old employers written on the work logs in the case file, like the owner of the manufacturing company and his manager from back then, but we found out they're both deceased. So we tried to call around to people associated

with some of the names and the reports from back then. We even tried getting in touch with the admin staff at the company to see if they could give us Jason's employment history, but that didn't lead anywhere because like I said, the company was bought out years ago and it's a massive corporation now. So we were kind of left with so many questions

that we needed answered and no one to answer them, except Jason himself. At the tone, please record your message. When you've finished recording, you may hang up or press one for more options. I'm a reporter covering the unsolved homicide of Darlene Holson Argus, Indiana. I have some questions for you and wanted to see if you'd be willing It's pretty standard that we don't get calls back. I mean, Kenneth McCune Jr. or John Paul Clark never called us back. We only got to them by showing up at their door. But in Jason's case, we'd been advised not to. The other people that we tracked down didn't have the extensive violent history that Jason does.

I didn't want to put anyone on our team in that kind of risk, especially when there was still other people we could talk with, like people who've been known to personally associate with Jason. Someone from Jason's circle back then told us that he did in fact have a rusty old green car, but they weren't sure the make or the model, and they didn't have any photos of it. In fact, when we started asking more details about it, they realized that, you know, after the summer of 1984, they stopped seeing Jason drive that car. We had also been given a guy's name that Jason might have lived with in the 80s, but he didn't text or call us back either. We fired off more Facebook DMs to no avail. We called local bars where the alleged confession likely went down. Nothing. And just when we thought we'd hit a wall, we got an email from

someone surprising. I agreed not to share this person's name or how they're associated with Jason, but let's just say it is someone who knows him quite well. The one thing that really is eerie to me is hearing that he said something in a bar one night about it being him. I've never known to lay claim on someone else's account. He's been very adamant and braggadocious, I don't know what other word to use, about his fighting and his beating people up and his ability to threaten people and they leave him alone. And he's had countless restraining orders put on him and all kinds of stuff that you've probably seen his criminal history.

Hearing this made sense because everyone we got in touch with during our reporting who knew Jason back in the day is still scared of this guy. And they were too afraid to talk. And I don't blame them. It's not like Jason's criminal history can be chalked up to being young and stupid. This guy was charged in a bar fight as recently as 2016. And our source shared that Jason wasn't exactly known to respect women. As long as I've known, he's viewed women as possessions and for pleasure purposes mainly.

That prompted us to look up some marriage records. And sure enough, Jason had been married, but he'd gotten divorced just before Darlene's murder. This felt relevant because of the FBI profile that was done for Darlene's case. If you remember, it said, quote, The brutality of the crime scene reflects anger resulting from short or long-term stressors in the offender's life experiences.

Our research and experiences reflect that these participating stressors can be the result of conflict with a significant female in the offender's life. End quote. Something else the FBI analysis pointed out was, quote, he would probably have followed the progress of the investigation through the media and by overhearing others in the community. However, the offender would not be likely to engage in conversation about the crime. Do you remember, like, ever mentioning Darlene or this murder? Zero times. Our source was also able to fill in the blanks for us on some of Jason's whereabouts from back in the 80s. He had three addresses back then,

which we confirmed through court records, two of which were in Plymouth and another in Argus. The one in Argus was less than six miles from where Darlene lived, but the address listed on his work injury report, which would have been from August of 1984, was one of the Plymouth addresses. At that time, he would have been recently divorced,

and according to locals we talked to, he was living with either a friend or a girlfriend at the time. After we'd been chasing down leads and endlessly trying to bang down the doors for the powers that be, this call gave us renewed hope. Honestly, I was surprised our source was even willing to talk to us, considering I'm mostly used to people being defensive when you try and talk about someone they know being a person of interest in a murder. But this person

said thinking about Darlene's family is what compelled them to reach out to us. If this is true, she needs to serve time for it and that family needs justice and they need to know why and they need to be told the truth once and for all So in the spirit of justice, we figured why not pass along everything we've learned about Jason and let the guys with badges take it from here We sent everything we learned to Prosecutor Chipman and former detective Dave Yoculet back in April Nelson sent a two-word response We sent everything we learned to Prosecutor Chipman and former detective Dave Yoculet back in April.

Nelson sent a two-word response, and to our surprise, it wasn't, Fuck you. It was, Thank you. We gave Nelson a month to see if he would do anything with the info, but we heard nothing. I mean, crickets. So in May, Emily emailed ISP Sergeant Don Curl. Hi, Sergeant Curl. I'm not sure if you remember, but last summer I reached out trying to get an interview with you about the 1984 unsolved murder of Darlene Hulse.

Over the course of a year, I ended up doing several interviews with Prosecutor Chipman. The information I'm about to give you, I've also sent to him and retired Marshall County Detective David Yoculet. But I haven't heard anything from them, and since this is an investigative matter

and you're the investigator assigned to the case, I want you to be aware. I think at the very least, it warrants direct comparison of DNA testing to the partial profile ISP secured from Darlene's blouse with help from the Cold Case Foundation. Since our series about Darlene's murder, The Deck Investigates, dropped,

we've gotten hundreds of emails from people with wide-ranging information. But the tips I want to urgently bring your attention to are a few emails we got from locals who say Jason has confessed once or twice to various people to killing Darlene Hulse. Since learning about this, we've shown Darlene's older two daughters, who are eyewitnesses to the murder, Jason's photos from back then, and their reactions were notable, both emotionally and physically, Darlene's older two daughters, who were eyewitnesses to the murder, Jason's photos from back then, and their reactions were notable, both emotionally and physically, which is evidence in and of itself.

Jason has an extensive criminal record, so the state of Indiana might already have his DNA, but the partial profile extracted from Darlene's blouse isn't enough to put in CODIS. I'm sure you know, but solving this will take direct comparison testing. And FYI, Jason also has an active warrant for his arrest out of Marshall County, but I hear he's living in Indiana. I know it will take more than a rumored confession

to prove this case, so I tracked down the witness who heard Jason's alleged confession. Would you or anyone at ISP be up for a meeting? Again, we just want to get these leads in the right hands and see this case get solved. Sergeant Curl responded three days later saying, quote, please provide the names and contact information for the individuals you have interviewed related to this information, end quote. Emily responded saying it'd be a lot easier to relay the information in

person, but Sergeant Curl's response was, email is fine. So rejected again. But it was the first time that Sergeant Curl had ever responded to any of our emails, so honestly, I'll take that as a small win. A month later, we know that Sergeant Curl did call our anonymous Jason source, because that person said Sergeant Curl asked him some questions about Jason

and his whereabouts these days. Our source said he also asked Sergeant Curl about what some questions about Jason and his whereabouts these days. Our source said he also asked Sgt. Curl about what he plans to test DNA-wise, but he left the conversation feeling like Sgt. Curl wasn't super interested in DNA. He was more interested in the alleged confession and getting witnesses to talk about it, which I can appreciate. Even with DNA, if anything's going to go to trial, you need a good investigation to back it up. So I appreciate that he's doing the legwork. I'm not sure what's happened since then.

We reached out to Sergeant Curl again in July when Emily was back in Indiana asking him to meet with us. We even said he could bring a public information officer with him, but this time we didn't get a response. We had to know if Jason was worth pursuing further, so we actually met with private investigator Patrick Zerpoli again. Remember him from episode 12? We all had a mutual event in Utah last spring, so Emily and I met up with Zip one morning to chat about Darlene's case and Jason from a behavioral standpoint,

which is Zip's specialty. We told him everything we knew, the alleged bar confession or confessions, the criminal history, his work logs deep in Darlene's case file. And the thing that really stuck out to him was the emotional response Marie and Melissa had just to seeing his photo. Well, that speaks volumes. And I've said that to Don Kerr when I talked to him years ago,

that you have eyewitnesses to this whole thing. You have someone who physically saw him. Even though she was eight years old, they physically saw him. If you get that reaction from them, that's got to be your guy. This guy fits, you know what I mean? And you'll see people, they'll never go back up. You know, for him, he just doesn't need to go to that level anymore. But the level of violence that he has,

the level of crimes that he commits even afterwards, fit that level. So there was no intention going to Darlene's house that day to kill her. The intention was to rape her. And it just went sideways. Zipp thinks whoever went to Darlene's house that morning likely knew Ron wouldn't be home. So either he'd been watching their routine, or it's someone who had a way of knowing his schedule. So you know him from work or you know him from somewhere, but you know the husband's not home, she's by herself. And have absolutely zero care over those three kids.

You're going to do what you want to do. I don't give a shit about anybody else. That's his attitude, but that's also his future crime attitude also. I'm going to do what I want to do. Zip also wasn't surprised we mostly struck out trying to get interviews with Jason or others who knew him. Someone like this, I think that's why you have witnesses who will come forward, but they're not going to say that they want to be the guy to point the finger and say that's him. There was an important distinction I wanted to make clear

about Jason's alleged bar confession to see what Zip thought. From everything that they heard, he wasn't, when he like is drunk and confessing, it's not like a threatening, I did this, I'm going to do this. It's always like super sad. Because again, it wasn't planned. Like he wasn't, he didn't go in there and say, I'm going to kill this lady. It was just, it went too far. And I think that's when it comes out.

And a lot of times too, you know, it doesn't mean anything until you tell somebody. And that makes it real. And I think that's why sometimes when he's that intoxicated, it comes out. I just keep thinking, why would this person who reportedly heard this confession just make it up? They aren't friends with Jason or even the same age or have beef or anything. From what we've heard, they weren't even there together, just acquaintances in the same small town when one of them whispered something heinous that the other has never been able to shake off.

And we're told, even though it's third-hand, that it rattled this person so much, he ran home that night and immediately told his roommate what Jason said at the bar. So it seems like if it all was true, there's no reason to lie about this. But good investigations have to consider every lead. And while we waited to see if Jason would come around to talking to us

or if the investigators would make any big moves, we had more tips to weed through and more people we needed to track down, which meant one more trip back to Argus to revisit a new brother in a family that we've already told you about. You ever seen the movie The Shining? Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Yeah. Is he violent? Well, he's different. That's next on episode 18, Our Lingering Obsession. You can listen to that right now.