The Deck - Jennifer “Moonbeam” Hammond & and Christina White (10 of Hearts & 3 of Clubs, New York)

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Our cards this week are Jennifer "Moonbeam" Hammond and Christina White, the 10 of Hearts and 3 of Clubs from New York. Jennifer “Moonbeam” Hammond and Christina White,  both young women, disappeared from trailer parks in the quiet town of Milton, New York. Both were ultimately found in nearby remote woodlands. And even though they didn’t know each other, police believe that both likely crossed paths with the same someone… who led them to the same cruel fate. And that potential connection might be the key to unraveling the mysteries that have surrounded these cases for way too long. If you have information about either case, call the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office at [phone], or use the contact form found at this link. To apply for the Cold Case Playing Cards grant through Season of Justice, visit www.seasonofjustice.org. Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllc The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Follow The Deck on social media and join Ashley’s community by texting [phone] to stay up to date on what's new!

Our cards this week are Jennifer Moonbeam Hammond, the 10 of Hearts from New York, and Christina White, the three of clubs from New York. Both young women disappeared from trailer parks in the quiet town of Milton, New York. Both were ultimately found in nearby remote woodlands. And even though they didn't know each other, police believe that they both likely crossed paths with the same someone, someone who led them to the same cruel fate. And that potential connection might be the key to unraveling the mysteries that have surrounded these cases for way too long. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. In early November 2003, police in Littleton, Colorado made a call to detectives at the Saratoga

County Sheriff's Office in upstate New York, nearly 2,000 miles away. They had just gotten two reports about a missing young woman, 18-year-old Jennifer Hammond. One had come from her father who lived there, and the other had come from her boss. But investigators in Colorado realized that there was nothing they could do, because even though Jennifer was from Littleton, she was last seen in the town of Milton, smack dab in the Saratoga Sheriff's jurisdiction. Jennifer's dad and her boss told police that she had been working for a company called Atlantic Circulation, which sells magazine subscriptions door to door.

And she had only been in New York since late July of that year. But according to Saratoga County Sheriff's Investigator Matt Robinson, who's working the case now, she had been on the road with the sales crew for a while, traveling city to city. Here's investigator Robinson. The company that she works for would start on the west coast, and over a course of time make their way all the way across the country. They're hitting a certain area for a couple of weeks and then they'd move and then go

to the next area for a couple of weeks and then move. It wasn't a lot to go on, and as soon as detectives dug into the case, they realized that they had their work cut out for them. Because Jennifer hadn't just gone missing, she had been missing for a while. Her sales manager told them that he left her at the entrance of the Creek and Pines trailer park in Milton at around 1 p.m. on Saturday, about two months ago, on August 30. Like usual, the plan was for Jennifer to pedal magazine subscriptions door to door throughout the development for a few hours until the manager came back to pick her up.

It depended on how big of an area they were going to cover, whether there was one, two, three of them dropped off at the same area. That Saturday, Jennifer was dropped off alone. She walks into the park, they turn around and leave to go to the next drop off location for the next kid. And she was not there when they came back to pick her up about three and a half hours later. The team manager on the day calls his boss and says like, hey, Jennifer's not at the pick up location, what do you want me to do? They had him drive all through the park and look for her.

Now Creek and Pines was a pretty large mobile home community, over a hundred lots and more than half a dozen little roadways. So there were a lot of places she could be, but she was nowhere in sight when they went looking for her. And when her team got back to the hotel they were staying in, they noticed that all of her stuff was still there. But that wasn't necessarily a cause for concern to those traveling with her. She had told people I miss was like a common occurrence because there are a bunch of teenagers that would come and go from work all the time.

Did she was planning on going back home? That when they left Albany, she wasn't going to travel with them, she was going to go back home. So at first, they felt well, she probably just went back home. Maybe she just went back to Colorado. So they weren't overwhelmingly concerned with it. As investigator Robinson pointed out, that wasn't unusual. Traveling sales jobs can be enticing, especially to young people with wanderlust. But those jobs also have a high rate of turnover with folks bouncing in and out.

The sales crews weren't exactly living in the lap of luxury. Like in Jennifer's case, she and a group of co-workers had been sharing a couple of rooms at a low-budget hotel and nearby Albany. It wasn't a shock that she might want to go head home eventually. Jennifer's boss had called her dad soon after he last saw her. I guess just to give him a heads up about the situation. And her dad told investigators that he already knew that she was basically over the magazine job. She had reached out to him in late August and said that she was sick of working and being on the

road, although she didn't mention any specific problems. But she had asked him to buy her a bus ticket home, which he did. Now she never mentioned a particular date that she'd be leaving. And her dad wasn't too worried when she didn't promptly show up. Or even when he didn't hear from her for a while. As he explained to police, it wasn't unusual for Jennifer to be out of communication. He said she was kind of a wandering hippie type. I mean, her nickname was Moonbeam.

Her dad kind of described her like a very free spirited person. This is what she wanted to do. She wanted to travel the country and just see places and do different things. He assumed she'd be home when she was ready, but weeks passed, and when she didn't return to the hotel for her belongings, her boss reached out to her dad again, offering to send her stuff back to Colorado. And that's when he started to get really concerned. So by the time it was all said and done, it had been more than two months since anyone had laid eyes on her or spoke to her, which was a significant gap of time for police.

But even more challenging than that was the total lack of direction they had to go in. When they can, as the trailer parked, the day after the report hit their desk, not a single person recalled seeing Jennifer. And even though Creek and Pines had a chair of residents with questionable paths, including some registered sex offenders, No one in that park had secured the right to the public. questionable pass, including some registered sex offenders. It wasn't like she had previously met any of these people or had connection to a new idea. No one in that park had security cameras or anything that would offer a peek into what happened to her that day.

And the possibilities were overwhelming. Especially if one of those possibilities was that she'd gotten on a bus to go home because that meant she could be missing from anywhere between New York and Colorado. We were able to confirm through the bus company that the ticket was purchased, but it never got picked up. She never went to the bus station and picked up the ticket. But that didn't mean she was still in New York. Her dad said she was known to hitchhike

when she was in Colorado. So the left behind bus ticket wasn't even a real clue. Maybe she had gotten a ride instead, and in that case, she could literally be anywhere in the country. Detectives tracked down other members of the magazine sales crew that she worked with, because at least that seemed like a decent jumping off point. The National Consumers League ranks traveling sales among the five most dangerous jobs a team can have. And like many companies that employ door-to-door sales teams, Atlantic Circulation had a bad reputation for scamming customers and exploiting its young workers.

But despite their questionable operations, they made themselves available for police. We did a whole investigation into the company and the people who worked there. Obviously, the people should was directly working with. And there was nothing. Like a good leader, a solid connection specific to this case. And all the magazine people were cooperative with us. They didn't give us any kind of a hard time or push back in our investigation. They didn't give them a hard time or push back.

But they didn't give them any helpful information either. They said they had no idea where she was or who she would be with. According to a Denver Post article by Howard Pancratz, Jennifer was outgoing and friendly. An investigator Robinson said she got along fine with everyone on her team, but she didn't have like a bestie who she confided in. She hadn't spoken to any of them about any kind of major like ongoing problem that she had or anybody that was given her a hard time or anything like that. She had never been to Saratoga County before and didn't have any connections there, besides her job. And even though she'd go out in party sometimes, there wasn't a set crowd she

hung out with. It was just random people. Word of her disappearance rippled through the trailer park. But beyond that small community, I don't think anyone in the area knew she was missing. She was just an unknown missing person. Don't know where she is, don't know what to look for, don't have anybody to go question it. So the keys go kind of cold per se, pretty quickly. It just falls off a cliff, there's just nowhere else to go.

It would stay that way for years, forgotten about. So much so that when another young woman went missing, it seemed like another isolated incident in an otherwise quiet region. Almost two years later and a mile and a half away from where Jennifer was last seen, 19-year-old Christina White left her family's trailer in the Stockade Mobile Home Park. It was around 10.30 at night on Thursday, June 30, 2005, and she was leaving pissed off because she had gotten into a spat with her younger brother. Here's her mom, Suzanne.

I guess Christina had gotten into an argument with her brother about leaving her dishes all over in the sink and, you know, that kind of stuff. I was at work. She called me and said she was going to go for a walk because she was just really upset. She needed to cool while. Her brother and her grandmother saw her leave. Even though she told her mom she would be back by the time Suzanne got home

from work, like around midnight. Christina never returned. But everyone knew she liked to take long walks, especially when she was upset or needed to think. Sometimes she would walk for hours. So for her to just be gone wasn't immediately a source of concern. But Friday passed, then Saturday, and there was still no sign of Christina. We were calling everybody that she knew, that we knew, that she knew, and nobody had seen her. It wasn't uncommon for her to go for a day or two, but after a couple of days, nobody hears from her, they don't see her mom got cancer. On Sunday, July 3rd, Suzanne called police to report Christina missing.

The early consensus among detectives was that she might have run away. Maybe she was cooling off after the family disagreement. After all, Christina had finished high school and she didn't have a job at the moment, so it's not like she was missing any formal commitments. But her mom, Suzanne, was worried. Whenever she had left the house previous to that, when she had like run away, they always called my mother to let my mother know she's okay.

So police started investigating, just trying to locate her. We started going through their close friends, we had a couple of ex-boyfriends, we talked to them, uh, did our neighborhood canvas the same ways we would do for any missing person. No one they spoke with knew where she could be. And her cell phone offered detectives little in the way of digital breadcrumbs. But unlike with Jennifer, who was just passing through the area,

Christina had roots in the county. People were more aware that she was missing, and they had more to offer in terms of leads. For instance, three different people reportedly saw her walking down the highway stock a trailer park is on. But investigator Robinson says he's not sure how reliable those sightings were. None of the witnesses were positive that it was her they saw. Plus, she was known to walk on that particular highway all the time, so even if they saw her, it could have been a different day. Not to mention, they all said they saw her at different times and different locations along the road. Although in general, it seems like they placed her clear across town about three miles east of Stockade,

possibly in the early morning hours of Friday, July 1st. Now Suzanne told us that Christina had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder with schizophrenic tendencies. She was prescribed medication but hadn't been taking it on a regular basis, and she didn't bring it with her when she left that night. The only things missing, along with Christina, were the things that she always carried with her — her cell phone, her wallet, and her knives. And that might sound unusual, but these weren't like kitchen knives.

They were decorative, folding knives, something that you might find like in a gift shop. She always had one or more on her. From what I gathered, it seemed like they were more of an accessory to go along with her gothic style, not something she had for self-defense. Now, investigators Robinson said that none of Christina's loved ones were alarmed about her immediate mental state or well-being. But as days turned into weeks and then months, the urgency defined her grew, especially when police started monitoring her bank account. Christina got disability benefits and the money was direct deposited to her, but she hadn't

been spending it. In fact, they, but she hadn't been spending it. In fact, they saw that she hadn't touched her account at all. The aspect of the investigation changes from she's a teenager who's out doing something stupid somewhere to maybe this is more something else. You know, after like a week, I told my father she'd not come home. Unfortunately, Suzanne was right.

On Friday, March 10, 2006, a hiker walking his dog through an off-beat and densely-wooded area in Date Town, State Forest in the town of Greenfield, which is about six miles away from Christina's home, he made a grim discovery. Skeletal human remains. They weren't buried. They were just lying on top of the ground.

According to the Saratogian, the hiker rushed to a nearby home for help and frantically told the resident that he had found a skull. They called 911 and law enforcement quickly swarmed the woods where they guarded the remains all night until a forensics team could take over Saturday morning. Sheriff's deputies and police dogs scoured the woods and found even more bones, nearly a complete skeleton. All of it was promptly brought to a hospital so a forensic pathologist could compare the teeth to dental records of missing people across the state. We only have a couple of missing teenage girl cases, so we narrowed it down pretty quickly.

Christina was the first one we went to because it was more recent and definitely from the area, and that's where we started. Sure enough, they quickly determined the remains were Christina's. And, at the scene, crime scene texts recovered some hair and remnants of clothing, including a pair of pants nearby, presumably hers, and investigator Robinson said it is possible she was sexually assaulted. What they didn't find were any of the things they figured she had when she'd left home. No wallet, no phone, no knives.

In fact, investigators couldn't find any weapons at the scene or nearby. But the moment they examined her bones, they realized whoever killed her used something. Because it was obvious that she had been stabbed multiple times around her ribs between her chest and her abdomen. So this was a homicide case now, and investigators ramped up their investigation big time. One of their first moves was to return to Dakedown Forest to look for more clues. The coroner thought that her body had probably been there since not long after she went missing. But police weren't surprised that it took a while to find her remains. They were almost

a hundred feet deep into the woods off the side of a road that rungs alongside the forest. This whole area, I mean, it's all thick, brush, and pine trees, so it's not a place people typically find themselves in. The closest houses are a quarter mile away, and popular hiking trails are on the opposite side of the road. But even with all that distance, when detectives spoke with nearby residents, they were able to corroborate the coroner's general timeline, because locals had noticed something around the middle of July back in 2005. People thought maybe a deer had been hit because they could smell something, and there's a ton of wild animals in that area, so like a deer getting hit by a car and decomposing on

the side of the road, then you smell it as you drive by. It wouldn't raise any concern, but there was no deer corpse. Investigators questioned local teens who hung out in the surrounding woods. They conducted a lengthy interview with the hiker who found her just in case. And they revisited everyone they had already talked to and took statements from a bunch of new people. We went through and did full like background and full workups on all of our ex-boyfriends because that's where your brain goes immediately. Old girl gets killed, it's probably your ex- exploit friend. So we went through all those people.

We were able to eliminate them either through alibis or through other people, like witness statements and things like that. Detectives quickly realized that the investigation was going to be challenging. And for the exact opposite reason that Jennifer's had been. Jennifer didn't know anybody, so they had no one they could turn to for potential information. But Christina, she knew a ton of people, so they had to speak with everyone.

The main source of the investigation was just interviewing and re-interviewing her friends, her family. Other people she associated with in a park, her friends from school, her friends from the community. We interviewed like 1200 and something people. We have these like totes that have all the paperwork in it. Christina's case is six totes.

Jennifer's case would fit in a folder. Some tips seemed promising. Like Christina had told friends that a guy had been stalking her or harassing her in some way. She'd mentioned that to a couple of people, but nobody who had any idea who he was. The techers weren't even sure if this was one dude or several, and they couldn't narrow it down. We did a lot of different things to try to identify

who this guy who was giving her a hard time or guys, or whoever it may be, but nothing that ever bore any kind of fruit. There was very rough descriptions, like some guy in a truck." Suzanne had heard a similar vague account from her daughter about six months before she disappeared, but at the time she hadn't been overly concerned. Suzanne said Christina didn't seem all that worried about it either, so she just told her daughter to be careful. Along the way, investigators also got calls about various knives people found here and

there, aided which they took into evidence, but none could be connected to Christina. So even as the leads rolled in, investigators found themselves with more questions than answers. They knew that statistically, the killer was likely a man, and someone Christina knew. Beyond that, they didn't really have a theory. But Christina's mom told Saratogian reporter Jim Kinney that she did. She had suspicions about at least one person, John Regan, a 49-year-old man from a prominent family in Waterbury, Connecticut. You see, a few months after Christina went missing, on Halloween night in 2005, John attacked

a teen girl in the Saratoga Springs High School parking lot, which is only 10 minutes away from Milton. According to New York Times reporters William Yardley and Michelle York, as the girl was loading up her car after track practice, John tried to force her into his van. Luckily, she managed to fight him off, and her coaches heard her screaming for help. He drove off and they chased him and directed police to his location.

And chillingly, when they looked in his van, they saw the back seat had been removed, and there was a shovel, a noose, a tarp, and a syringe loaded with a sedative. John, who was married with three kids, was arrested for attempted kidnapping, and although he had no prior convictions, investigators soon discovered that he was actually awaiting trial in two separate cases in Connecticut, both involving sexual assault allegations. They learned that John was first arrested in 2004 for trying to sexually assault the 21-year-old co-worker,

and a DNA sample after that arrest connected him to an unsolved rape from 1993. Back then, a woman named Donna Palumba told police that someone broke into her home while her husband was traveling and sexually assaulted her while her children slept down the hall. He concealed his identity, so for years she didn't know who he was. Though it turned out, now that they had the DNA match, that he was her husband's childhood friend. But even before, anyone knew who Donna's attacker was, the case became infamous in her area. But for infuriating reasons. Because as she shares on her website,

Jane Doe know more, when Donna reported the assault, investigators accused her of lying and they threatened to arrest her. In 2001, Donna won a civil lawsuit against the City of Waterbury and its police department for how badly they screwed the whole investigation up. Maybe if they hadn't, John wouldn't have had the chance to go after his coworker and a high school girl more than a decade later. And if that's not maddening enough, the statute of limitations for sexual assault had expired by the time his involvement in Donna's case came to light, so he could only

be charged with kidnapping. So back to 2005, by the fall, John had pleaded not guilty to the charges involving his coworker and Donna, and he was out on a $350,000 bond when police got a call from a concerned photo clerk at a Connecticut Walgreens. This clerk told him that John had brought in some disturbing pictures he wanted developed. All surveillance-style photos of women in Waterbury, including the coworker he was accused of trying to assault. And John must have gotten word that police were going to be after him because that is when

he headed to Saratoga Springs, where his mother and her family were from. Relatives of his still owned property in the area. He was apparently working on one of their houses while he was in town. So according to that New York Times article, knowing that he may have operated outside of his home state, authorities in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, where he sometimes traveled for work, began exploring potential connections to various unsolved sex crimes and murders that had taken place over nearly two decades.

And after Christina was found, Saratoga County deputies got looped in on their investigation. In just our talks as a group of investigators like who are possible, potential people who could be involved, he's somebody whose name has come up. Because of the crimes he's been known to commit and his connections to the area. Detectives learned that John had no conformable alibi for the time period when Christina went missing.

But, investigator Robinson said he can't call John a suspect, or even a person of interest in her murder. We can't rule him out, but we have nothing that really connects him to it either. And there's other information that indicates that maybe it's not him. In 2006, John pled guilty to all of the charges he was facing in the two different states, and all told he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. But investigators were never able to definitively link him to any other victims. And despite their efforts, they couldn't make any more leeway with Christina's case.

Until Sunday, October 25th, 2009, when another awful discovery changed everything. Dear season had just begun, and three hunters were trekking through Lake Desolation State Forest in Greenfield, not far from where Christina's body had been found. This terrain was rugged and the area was isolated. They weren't on a trail and the closest road wasn't even paved. There's nothing other. You can go for like a mile in any direction. There's no houses or nothing. So they were shocked when they stumbled upon part of a human skull. According to Times Union reporter Dennis Yusko, law enforcement initially thought it belonged to a child under the age of 12, and there were a few possibilities for who it could be, including a name that will be familiar to crime junkies,

Jelique Rainwalker. He was a boy who disappeared under very suspicious circumstances from a town about a half hour away in 2007. But based on various local news coverage, it seems like investigators ruled him out pretty quickly. As they searched the area with a fine tooth comb over the next few days, they found more and more remains, including a portion of an orbital bone, the bony structure around the eye. They also found a lower jawbone with teeth, a few of which had unique dental work. And thanks to teeth and dental records, police were able to quickly determine

that this actually wasn't a kid. It was five foot two 110 pound, Jennifer Hammond. Now remember, the investigation into her disappearance had never gained any traction. We didn't know if she was actually here or if she'd hitchhiked to Indiana. We had no idea. Until we found her, that case really hadn't gone anywhere at that point.

But finally, detectives had something they could work with. And one theory came together almost immediately. They suspected that whoever killed Jennifer also killed Christina. Once we found Jennifer and we started digging more into both of them together, we really started to find that they were almost certainly linked. There were too many parallels to ignore. The girls were around the same age. They vanished within two years of each other from mobile home parks in Milton.

Their bodies were found within a few miles of each other in wooded areas of Greenfield. There were no weapons found at either scene, and Jennifer had also been stabbed to death, probably in the same area of the body as Christina, although Investigator Robinson won't come out and say that in so many words. Was she killed in the same way as Christina? Um, that's likely. Stabbed, same area. That's likely. Stabbed, same area. That's likely.

They even had similar features like reddish hair and petite builds. Though there was a key difference, at least in how the murders might have gone down. The nature and how they were found indicates that Christina's probably happened in a lot more of an urgent, almost like this was an in-progress thing, where Jennifer's was probably coordinated, which is why maybe the one was hidden much better than the other. And based on how far out Jennifer's body was found, detectives theorized that the killer might have taken her

to the location on an ATV or something. Somebody went out there probably with the intent of doing what they did, whether she's writing on an ATV or somebody and then something happens, or whether she was already deceased and somebody's supposed to be. I can't say that absolutely, but with Christina's indications that the scene are probably that something happened very nearby, that's not probably how the suspect planned it. For instance, maybe the killer made a move on Christina, and she started fighting him off, which caught him by surprise.

But they can't tell one way or another if Jennifer was sexually assaulted because her body was out there for even longer. Although it's not clear exactly how long. There were only tiny scraps of her clothing left and leaves and dirt had built up on her remains, which, like I said, were mostly above ground. Although detectives couldn't tell if the perpetrator just didn't bother burying her because the train was rocky and he figured no one would find her, or if maybe she had been buried

but was unearthed naturally over time. So it's not like the neighbor can say, you know, anything about something that they saw or heard or smelled or anything like that. She's out in literally the middle of nowhere. But the nature of both scenes indicated that the killer probably knew the area pretty well. Where they were found, that's an area that you're not going to know about unless you knew about the area, right? So whether they were a resident or somebody who at least frequented the area. Detective started looking for links between Jennifer and Christina, any overlap between people they

hung around or anything, really. But if they ever found something, investigate a Robinson's not saying. They also spent some time trying to determine if their deaths were connected to another disturbing local situation, which will also be all too familiar to crime junkies. That's the 1998 disappearance of Suzanne Lyle. Suzanne was 19 when she vanished, and she was from Milton, but Suzanne, who was in college, went missing near her SUNY Albany campus. And even though detectives can't be sure the cases aren't linked, at least not until they're all solved, it just didn't seem likely. So they cracked open John Regan's case file again.

By this point, John was serving his sentence in an upstate New York prison. Presumably, he never confessed to anything about Jennifer or Christina because if he did, I'd be telling you a different story. And even though police discovered that John didn't have a confirmable alibi for the time of Jennifer's disappearance either, they still couldn't draw a line between him and either victim. But to be fair, there also really wasn't a link between John and that high school track star that he tried to kidnap.

Although Matt Apuzzo of the Registered Citizen reported that back in 2005 before John left his home in Connecticut for Saratoga Springs, he visited the website of a local newspaper and read an article that twice mentioned that girl by name. Now there have been other people who have come on investigators radar over the years. And some that have come on mine

as we've been researching these cases. Like according to Wendy Libertor's reporting for the Times Union, in 2017, a guy named Harold Walcott, who was a manager of the Creek and Pines trailer park, pled guilty to criminally negligent homicide after he put a tenant into a chokehold during a fight. But it turns out that Harold didn't actually live there or manage the park back in 2003. And he's not even a consideration for police in these cases. In 2019, Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zerloh told WNYT News Channel 13 reporter, Jerry Gretsinger, that he thought he knew who killed both girls. They just didn't have enough evidence to prove it.

But law enforcement theories have shifted, as new development surfaced. And investigator Robinson told us that things have changed since the channel 13 piece was aired. Whatever suspect the sheriff had in mind back then, might still be the culprit. Like that's not something they've disproven. But at this point, they don't think it's the most likely scenario anymore. I've had the cases since 2016, and we've done some stuff with it, especially with technology and things, because technology just continuously advances, so we've tried to do a couple of

different things there. Even though he wouldn't elaborate on any current working theories, Investigator Robinson did imply that at least one person he's eyeballing lived in the Creek and Pines trailer park back when Jennifer went missing in 2003, though it's worth noting that now that trailer park is known as Kateros Acres. What's interesting is, if the witness accounts about Christina walking a few miles from her home on the night she left are accurate, That means she went right past the road that Cree Campines is on. The entrance of it is literally less than one-sixth of a mile away from the intersection that she would have gone through. And this really is where the episode was going to end. But after we sat down with investigator Robinson,

a new potential lead came to light. Just in late September of 2023, a nine-year-old girl was kidnapped while riding her bike at a state park camp ground about 25 minutes from Milton. After a harrowing two-day search, police arrested 46-year-old Craig Ross Jr. According to Times Union reporter Brenda J. Lyons, he was caught after investigators lifted a fingerprint from a ransom note he allegedly left in the

girl's family's mailbox, which matched prints on file from an old DWI arrest. They tracked him down to a camper behind his mother's mobile home where they found the girl, a life, thank God, and hidden inside a cupboard. State police had recently investigated Craig after he was accused of sexually abusing a different girl that he knew. But apparently he denied the allegations and the case was closed without him being charged. So what does this have to do with Jennifer and Christina? Well, Craig and his family are long time locals. His mother's

trailer, which she's been living in for three decades, is only about a thousand feet away from Creek and Pines. And Craig lived in the same trailer park as Christina in the early 2000s. Which again, this trailer park also changed its name later. It's now known as Saratoga Village Mobile Home Park. So that means that their time there probably overlaps since Christina's mom Suzanne said that her family was there for about five years when her daughter went missing. But she did say she doesn't remember ever meeting or knowing Craig.

Now the Sheriff's Office is assisting the state police with the recent kidnapping case. And as of October 2023, investigator Robinson said they were looking into potential involvement Craig might have with any major cases in the area, including Jennifer's and Christina's. But he also said that there's no evidence linking him to either homicide. According to Brendan Lyons reporting, the investigator wouldn't disclose a police ever interviewed Craig about Jennifer or Christina. But he said Craig's name had never surfaced in their investigations, at least, quote,

not with any kind of significance. End quote. So for now, the search for a killer or killers continues. I still hope that with all of the knowledge that's out there nowadays and everything that can be done, that they figure it out. Police are optimistic that both cases can be solved. Somebody somewhere knows exactly what happened. I would say to like listeners or anybody in the public, if you think you know something, call me.

If you have any information about Jennifer Hammond or Christina White, please contact the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office at 518-885-6761. The Deck is an audio chuck 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?