The Deck Investigates - 3 of 3: Our Lingering Obsession

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

We go back to Argos to revisit a family we told you about previously, but focus on one brother in particular who was a recurring theme in our inbox after releasing The Deck Investigates. We ask the Marshall County coroner to reconsider Darlene’s cause of death for the sake of future investigators. 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

There's one person who's been a recurring theme in our inboxes since the release of this series. He's the person of interest we actually know the least about. A modern-day ghost. No social media presence, no phone number, no criminal record, no spouse or kids. And he's the only Parson brother still alive today. This is episode 18, Our Lingering Obsession. I first told you guys about the Parson brothers back in episodes 12 and 13

when I had my whiteboard revelation and we realized that Nelson had been confusing the Lemon and the Parson families during our conversations with him. Once we unpacked all of that and made a family tree, we realized that there were at least four Parson brothers who would have been young men in their late teens or early 20s back when Darlene was murdered.

Three of those brothers showed up in the case file in the first few days after Darlene's abduction. They were subjects of tips from the public, mostly people claiming the police sketch looked like them. Also, it's clear the locals knew about the infamous buried bus at the Parson property, which is very close to the Hulse house. It seems like the boys had a reputation for running around that area, and maybe one or two of them were rumored to have been associated

with the marijuana patch right behind the Hulse house. So it's not surprising that they popped into people's minds. But it was the youngest brother, the one we refer to as Mike Parson, who was almost impossible to research. We aren't using his real name here because he has no known criminal record. Nelson told us Mike was always sort of on police's radar, but he didn't know if he'd ever been interviewed or even had the ability to be interviewed because of his mental state.

I mean, the only one that would have been would have been... Is that driven by a prejudice? One of the stories is that an officer knocked on the door and he came to the door with a aluminum foil hat to ward off the raids. That's what inspired so many of you to reach out to us. And it was your emails that made us revisit Mike as a person of interest. If Mike had a mental disability, is there a chance that he was nonverbal?

That was the question you guys kept asking us. The girls described the sounds the man who attacked Darlene was making as like grunts and growls. And it could be possible that these sounds could come from someone who is non-verbal, which also could explain why he was never interviewed. But my mind didn't immediately jump to that conclusion. I mean, there are lots of different ways to interpret what Nelson meant by Mike's inability to be interviewed. But it was an interesting thought. We knew we needed more information about Mike, but that started proving very hard to get.

We filed records requests for any inkling of a criminal history and came up empty, aside from some speeding tickets and reckless driving charges. Now, the one thing that did tell us was that he was able to drive, at least at one point. But he wasn't arrested for those incidents, so there weren't even any mug shots for us to see if he matched the suspect description. The only photo we've been able to find of him was from the eighth grade when he was enrolled in Argus schools, which proved to not be super helpful. But then our luck turned around a little when we received a very helpful email back in March

from a relative of Mike Parson. Finally. Now, we agreed not to identify them, but we did confirm that they're a family member. They actually grew up going to the Parson house, and they confirmed something that we had heard. The second-to-young youngest brother of the Parsons had actually died in an accidental electrocution on the property, and this family member said that Mike and another brother, the one that we called

Jay Parson in episode 13, the two of them had witnessed it. I'm going to have a voice actor read some of the quotes from our interview with the Parson relative, but names have been changed to pseudonyms. I think maybe Mike would have done it. He fits more of the profile. He fits more of someone who would do something like that. One of our relatives had said that one time, Mike had been gone for a few days.

He was off in the woods, living like a dog, and that he would growl and bark and stuff like an animal, and they would dig holes in the backyard and bury things, which you talked about in the podcast. And another relative at one point was able to sneak back there with some other cousins, and they went in the tunnels, and they found a straitjacket and some other weird stuff, and then they got scared and ran out. Mike had a trailer of his own that he accidentally burnt down. He accidentally burnt down his mom's house, and they had to build her a new one.

Unfortunately, our source didn't have any idea when that fire was. I would love to know if it was after 1984. He also had cardboard people that he would cut out and sit inside his trailer and talk to. And there's another thing. One of his wives went to their house. She always went to their house, all the time. But at one point, Mike pinned her in a back room to rape her.

And Jay came in and pulled him off of her. She's pretty tough, so when I heard this story, I was like, whoa. All of this was a lot to take in. I mean, a straitjacket in the underground tunnel and cardboard people. But after so many years and the way stories tend to grow over time, those could be conflated. I mean, you could say the same for the growling and barking. But what about his alleged disability? Our source didn't remember Mike being nonverbal. I don't remember him being different

at all when we were young. But we were told that Jay gave him drugs and that it messed up his brain. And when he came back from the Institute, that's when he was different. If you remember, Mike seemed to have been ruled out by police in the early days of the Hulse investigation because he was a patient at a mental health facility called the Bowen Center. According to an old police report, three days after Darlene was murdered, Marshall County Deputy Rex Gilliland went to the Bowen Center. According to an old police report, three days after Darlene was murdered,

Marshall County Deputy Rex Gilliland went to the Bowen Center in Warsaw, Indiana, and confirmed Mike's alibi. The report states that on the morning of the murder, Mike was, quote, at the Bowen Center on Friday from 9 a.m. till 2 a.m. per Karen Rosegarten, an employee. At one o'clock, his father arrived and they had dinner from one till two, end quote. The report is signed by Rex and dated. Now it seems Rex is still alive today. So we reached out to him

to see if he could remember any other details or to see if he spoke to Mike or his father directly, but we couldn't get ahold of him. I also really want to ask Rex if there is a typo in this report because it says that Mike was there from 9 a.m. till 2 a.m. And I wonder if maybe he meant 2 p.m.

because it seems more likely that he ate a meal with his dad from 1 to 2 p.m., not 1 to 2 a.m. And if that's true, where was Mike before 9 a.m. and after 2 p.m. on August 17th? And how precise were those times? Did employees see Mike there or could he come and go pretty loosely as he pleased? Emily stopped by the Bowen Center over the summer because it's still open

today and has a few locations in northern Indiana. And someone at the front desk was like, yeah, I have no idea what our sign-in policies were in the 80s. And they basically gave us a number of a public relations rep who never called us back. But the Mike Parson intel didn't stop there. In the spring, we got another message from a local who said, quote,

he would ride his moped by our house and wait at the end of our driveway for my sister to get off the bus. He would never say anything to us, but just stare at us. He was a very strange young man. I believe he lived alone with his mother. He actually broke into our home while we were at church one Sunday and stole a beer and one of my mother's undergarments. I always thought he was somehow involved and maybe that's just because I was terrified of him." End quote.

After that, we received a message from someone else who said that they actually saw Mike the day before Darlene's murder. According to our source, Mike was seen sitting in a hand-painted green car at the Argus Park and Shop on August 16th, 1984. And right after they saw Mike sitting in the parking lot, they went into the store and saw Darlene Hulse.

They said Darlene was buying something inside the store the very moment that Mike was in the parking lot. And apparently Mike and Darlene were parked right next to each other. This person was spooked enough back then that they reported this to then-detective Dave Yoculet after they had heard what had happened to Darlene. But Dave told her that she must be mistaken because Mike had been at the Bowen Center. We knew that we needed to do some on-the-ground reporting to sort all this out and to try

and confirm some things for ourselves. So the first stop in a small town when looking for information, usually the local watering hole. There's a bar in Argus called The Bear's Den. It's one of those Midwestern dives where patrons still smoke cigarettes inside with a jukebox playing Tom Petty on repeat. The first time Emily and I went there last year, we made the mistake of showing up after dinner when the regulars were already pretty sauced.

When we asked some locals about Darlene's case, instead of concrete information or even local rumors, we ended up just hearing ghost stories, like literal ghost stories. But when Emily went back in July, she decided to try again. And this time, she entered the Smokey Bar in the middle of the day to try and get some more information on Mike Parson. Do you know why there are these people? Or if they come around here? He's the youngest. Yeah, he's way out there. The bartender had worked there for decades and said that she thought Mike Parson lived underground in tunnels out on his mom's property where the buried bus is.

I swear, every single time we went back to Marshall County and brought up Darlene's case, someone mentioned the buried bus at the Parson property. We also heard from people that there were other buried cars and even underground tunnels on the property that the brothers had dug years ago. The bartender said she thought Mike still lived there with his mom. Then a man sitting at the bar overheard Emily and the bartender

and joined the conversation. When Emily asked if he knew Mike Parson, he said, quote, I'm his best friend, actually. Oh, really? He's got a lot of problems, ma'am. Is he okay? He's alive. Do you have his number? He can go out to his mother's house because I think he's already been questioned about that before. So there was only one thing left to do. Go to the infamous buried bus property and try and interview Mike Parson ourselves.

Hey, let's see if anyone's home. It was a short drive from the Bear's Den to the Parson house, and when Emily pulled up, she noticed that there were two cars there. Last year when she went, the property looked as if no one lived there. But this time, there were cats all over the lawn as well. It was Mike's mom who answered the door. Hi there.

Are you... Hi, my name's Emily, and I'm a journalist. Yeah. I ran into... in town. Uh-huh. He told me to tell you hello. I'm a journalist. I ran into in town. He told me to tell you hello. I don't know.

Oh, friends with I think? Could be. He told me that might be here. Does live with you? Yeah. Is he available? gets a pretty gun. Okay.

And I don't know how he'd react. Sure. Now you'll notice we removed all names mentioned in this conversation to protect identity. But Mike's mom went on to say that her son hasn't left her home for two years. She eventually came out of her house and took a seat on her front porch and chatted a little further. She seemed genuinely curious about why we wanted to talk with Mike. She eventually came out of her house and took a seat on her front porch and chatted a little further. She seemed genuinely curious about why we wanted to talk with Mike. We're looking into the Darlene Hulse case and a name had come up and I... What case? Darlene Hulse. Who's that?

Do you remember her? She was... It's an unsolved murder from 1984. What was it? You don't think it had something to do with that? Do you remember her? She was, it's an unsolved murder from 1984. Good Lord, you don't think it had something to do with that? I'm not saying that, but we, his name came up a couple times, and we just, we wanted to give him an opportunity to talk if he wanted to, but like I said, probably wouldn't even come out if I asked him to. We asked Mike's mom if she could remember anyone coming around to ask Mike anything about Darlene's case back in the 80s. She shook her head no. But then...

Seems to me like, at that time, my son was still alive. And they brought that up and they both went in and took lie detector checks. Oh really? Yeah, they volunteered for that. The names we cut were her two sons that we've been calling Jay and Mike.

In the old case reports we've only seen a polygraph for Jay Parson, not Mike. So then we asked if she recalled her sons ever saying anything about their police interviews or even Darlene. And the only thing she remembered came from her older son, Jay. I think I remember there was two murders at that time and it was a little girl who was killed. Brandy. Mike's mom kept bringing up her other son, Jay.

It seems like from her perspective, that's who, at least in her household, police focused on. We asked her if Mike has ever mentioned Darlene's case to her, and she said no. She also couldn't recall if police searched their property back then. In fact, she thought they lived at a different house in 1984,

but all the records we've been able to locate indicate otherwise. Before leaving, Emily left her business card and said that if Mike felt like talking, he should call us. I never leave this place. Schizophrenia, I guess, is caused by childhood trauma. When he was eight years old, he seen his brother, his 10-year-old brother electrocuted. He said that's what causes schizophrenia.

I'm sorry. And there's days when he has his good days and other days when he's talking to his voices. Mike's mom said his condition has worsened over the years. Back when he was a teenager, he drove and had his own car and didn't outwardly show many signs of the mental disorder he now struggles with as an adult. There were just a few thin walls separating Emily from Mike and the answers that he might have held.

But this is as far as we would press. When mental illness is a part of the equation, there's an ethical line we don't want to cross. Yeah, we got to be dogged when searching for the truth behind what happened to Darlene, but we also don't want to go around causing more harm than is absolutely necessary. Did we want to talk to Mike? Yeah, of course.

Do I want to go back there with an excavator and search their backyard for a fireplace poker or a green car? Would love to. And maybe one day, if he's having one of his better days, Mike will give us a call. But until then,

I can only go off of what we have. So I went back to the FBI profile. The special agent summarized that the offender went there to sexually assault Darlene, even bringing duct tape with him to help secure her. He also notes that because

the man didn't bring a weapon with him, he likely thought he'd be able to get control over her pretty quickly. But because of the way Darlene defended herself, he reacted impulsively and violently by grabbing the closest weapon, the fireplace poker. The analysis says that when Marie and Melissa ran from the house, the offender was in a frenzied state and decided to remove Darlene from her house to take her somewhere to continue the sexual assault. It also states that the manner in which the victim was, quote, brutally assaulted, dragged, and her body disposed of

indicates the possibility of the use of drugs or alcohol by the offender prior to the attack, end quote. We know Mike and his brothers lived nearby and that one of them had an old green car. We also know that there have been allegations of sexually deviant behavior with Mike. In addition to that, we know that he and his brother Jay were experimenting with drugs back then. The FBI analysis said that the man was probably in his low 20s to 30 years old. Mike would have been 19 when Darlene's attack happened, and we still don't know what he looked like in 1984. But 19 isn't far off from low 20s,

though it's worth mentioning that he is the youngest person of interest that we've personally looked into so far. The special agent's report also says that the killer would not have more than a high school education and would not have done well in school. From yearbook pictures alone, which are by no means the end-all be-all for records, it seems like Mike may have quit school in 1979 and never graduated. We also haven't been able to find out if he's ever held any type of a job.

But here's the part of the FBI report that really sticks out with me as it relates to Mike Parson. Quote, We would expect him to be living alone or with a significant family member, such as a domineering mother, older sister, or grandmother, upon whom he is somewhat dependent. He would be described by others as a loner and likely does not have a close circle of friends, end quote.

Of course, this analysis was done decades ago, back when authorities thought Darlene died of blunt force trauma to the head. But as you all know, we are now exploring the differing opinion by Dr. Bill Smock that Darlene could have been strangled, which might change that assessment. And speaking of Darlene's cause of death, as of now, it is still technically listed as blunt force trauma.

But because it's still an unsolved murder in Marshall County, we reached out to the elected coroner there, John Brolich, to see what he thought of the new opinion around her cause of death. And our conversation with him got him thinking about the case again and looking at the old crime scene photos for the first time in a very long time. Poor lady went through hell trying to survive. We asked him what he thought about the lack of a skull fracture, which is what got us asking questions related to her cause of death in the first place. trying to survive. We asked him what he thought about the lack of a skull fracture,

which is what got us asking questions related to her cause of death in the first place. And he actually said something related to Darlene's attacker that we hadn't considered before. Well, the first thing I would think about was the amount of injury to the head. You would almost wonder if that person was either a smaller person or not very strong or not very old.

To do that much damage to the tissue and not cause a skull fracture, that kind of makes me wonder. That's curious. Makes me curious. Just a few years ago, we had a young lady that was attacked by a person high on meth, and he attacked her with a machete, and he hit her in the head a few times, and there were obvious skull fractures. So I realized that the fireplace device is not sharp, but it's pretty rigid metal. And you would think that if somebody took a full swing

that you would very positively have skull fractures. So I kind of wonder if that person either was a young person or a small person that didn't have a lot of strength. But then you'd have to wonder how did they get the body removed out into a vehicle and then discarded out into a wooded area. I suppose adrenaline could account for more strength after the initial attack. But in the chaos of a violent crime,

I guess there could be other plausible reasons that her skull didn't fracture. Coroner Grolick admitted that both Dr. Rick Hoover, who did the autopsy in 1984, and Dr. Bill Smock, who we interviewed in episode 14, are both more qualified to make such determinations. But during our conversation with Coroner Grolick, out of the blue, he brought up none other than Mike Parson.

I'm a kid kid lived underground. Everybody said he was crazy. I tried to serve them once. I worked part-time for the sheriff's department. I worked, and I think I tried to serve him papers once. And there were two of us because they knew he was a little psycho. And he come out of the door

charging at us. So we just got back in the car and left. Do you remember what you were serving him for? No, I had no idea. Coroner Grohlick couldn't remember

when that was either, but it was a long time ago when he worked part-time as a reserve deputy for the sheriff's office. It's also interesting that if they were there to serve him court papers, that they never returned to finish the job. They just, what, left and never went back?

I mean, what were they serving him for? I have so many more questions about this. I mean, we even put in a records request for any such filings at the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, and it came back empty, like nothing. But there's something else I want to touch on that he said. I think it's important to note that everyone we talked to about Mike Parson described him in that same way, crazy. And I can't help but wonder if the rumors and negative talk around his mental health have driven people to view him in a

sinister light, when in reality he could just be a man who has been struggling his whole life. Before we ended our interview with Coroner Grolick, we asked about Darlene's underwear, because if nothing else, we wanted to make sure the coroner was aware of the unexplainable transfer of blood droplets.

They really don't look like drops that came from her head if she was in an upright position. And there's no notes in the coroner's report about, you know, trying to make sense of this blood. Because if you look at the colored photo from the scene, her underwear isn't exposed. Right. Does the police, state police still have her underwear? What a great question. We certainly hope so.

It was on an evidence list, but without confirmation from state police or Nelson or lab techs, which we have not been able to get, there is no way for us to know for sure how it was preserved or stored or if they even still have it. A trained evidence technician, I think, could probably saturate that blood and collect some with some sterile saline in a swab and identify a DNA from that.

That DNA could be Darlene's, but it could also be the killer's DNA, just sitting in evidence storage for 39 years. Same goes for the semen. Coroner Grolick thought it would be unlikely for the semen found during an autopsy to have been Ron's, unless the two were intimate, like right before he left for work that morning. And according to Ron's recollection, they had been together the night before. But for some reason, everyone assumed the semen was his. Though if you remember, Nelson couldn't remember

why that assumption was made. I think they did a, well, I know they did a, a red kit, per se, and it was sent off to the lab, but there was nothing that they were... Well, there was semen, but they figured it was... Rot. Yeah. Because they thought... Did they do tests to determine it was Ron's?

Um, I don't know. I don't know. Coroner Grohlick said he would need to have a conversation with both Dr. Hoover and Dr. Smock before making his own determination on Darlene's cause of death. But he said if he ends up being convinced that she did die by strangulation, he would amend the cause of death in her file and on her death certificate. Some people might wonder why that even matters,

and here's why I think it's important. As Nelson told us more than once. I've told everyone that my intent is in mid to early 2024 to either be running for a different post or retiring. Those are two very different things. Yes, I'll be 70 years old at that time. It's very likely that Nelson won't be the last person to touch Darlene's case. Investigators and prosecutors will come along someday

who might be willing to try and solve it. And when they do, it's paramount that they have the most accurate information possible. I mean, what if there's a confession someday, but the cause of death doesn't line up with what's on paper? Would it get thrown out? Ignored? I know it's a lot of what ifs, but I just want everyone to be dealing in facts, no matter what those facts are. Sometimes when I'm just sitting and spiraling down and down the endless rabbit holes, I think of Marie, Melissa, and Kristen. It's almost impossible to imagine these children witnessing their mom being attacked by a stranger in their own house at any age, but especially at

the vulnerable ages they were. Someone stripped them of their sense of safety and of any future memories with the woman who loved them the most. And in broad daylight, he drove off getting away with a heinous crime, leaving those little girls to grow up without their mom. The woman who they would always remember as the person who spent her last waking moments

fighting to protect them. And here we are, 39 years later, and the tables have turned. Marie, Melissa, and Kristen are the ones fighting now on behalf of their mom. And the wild part, the thing I think about the most, is that they aren't even vengeful. In fact, when we filled them in on what we learned after visiting the Parson house about the childhood electrocution tragedy about Mike's condition now,

their response was, that's so sad and what a horrible life. Over the past 15 months, I have been in constant awe of them. Anytime we update them on certain things about specific persons of interest, they were the ones showing empathy for these men. One of which is very

likely to be the person who killed their mother. If this person is still alive, if they would just, they could even reach out to one of us and just tell us, and I would be happy with that. I would just want to know. It's really not about punishing.

There's no punishment that would be sufficient. No. No. No, I'll let want to know. It's really not about punishing. I wouldn't want to, there's no punishment that would be sufficient. No, no. No, I'll let God handle that. I just, I just need closure, that's all. As of this recording, no one from Marshall County or the Indiana State Police will meet with us or give us an update. Nelson still won't meet with Darlene's daughters, so they aren't being given any updates either. Local media has tried to press, but they just get blanket statements that don't answer any real questions, but rather just blame silly journalists for getting people all

worked up. So if this doesn't work, what do we do after that? That's a good question. What do you do when your mother's been murdered, taken in front of your eyes 39 years ago, and the only person in charge of the case won't talk to you? Years ago, when I first started talking to Kristen and got a grasp of everything they were up against, I told Emily that their frustration must feel similar to screaming underwater, because no matter how hard you scream, no one's really ever going to hear you. And I have a deeper understanding of that feeling now,

at least to some extent. I know we caused some waves in Marshall County with this series, but all I can hope for now is that somebody in a position of power decides to do the right thing and find the truth for Darlene and her family. And I also hope that all of you will start screaming with us. If this were your mother, your sister, your daughter, you would scream. So scream. Not hateful or menacing, but just be heard. You can still sign the petition in Darlene's case. You can share this series.

You can even send emails to those in positions of power asking for updates and letting them know that everyone's watching. Because even though this series might be over, I'll be keeping one eye on Marshall County until there are answers. The Deck Investigates is an Audiochuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?