The Deck - Maggie Long (4 of Spades, Colorado)
Episode Date: December 28, 2022Our card this week is Maggie Long, the 4 of Spades from Colorado. In 2017, 17-year-old Maggie Long went missing in rural Park County, Colorado, only to be found hours later as the victim of the most ...brutal murder the area had ever seen. For the past five years, Maggie’s horrific murder has weighed on law enforcement in the small community as they’ve struggled to get any answers to the nagging questions surrounding her case. If you know anything about the murder of 17-year-old Maggie Long in 2017, please call the Maggie Long tip line at 303-239-4243. To learn more about The Deck, visit www.thedeckpodcast.com. To apply for the Cold Case Playing Cards grant through Season of Justice, visit www.seasonofjustice.org Follow The Deck on social media and join Ashley’s community by texting (317) 733-7485 to stay up to date on what's new!
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Our card this week is Maggie Long, the four of spades from Colorado.
In 2017, 17-year-old Maggie went missing in rural Park County, Colorado, only to be found
hours later as the victim of the most brutal murder the area had ever seen.
For the past five years, Maggie's horrific murder has weighed on law enforcement in the
small community as they've struggled to get any answers to the nagging questions surrounding
her case.
I'm Ashley Flowers and this is The Deck. It was around 7pm on December 1st, 2017, when Connie Lewis pulled up to her little sister's
high school in Bailey, Colorado.
Her sister Maggie was helping with a Christmas concert that night, and Connie promised that
she would be in attendance.
She even planned to stay the weekend so the two could go Christmas shopping together. But when Connie walked inside the high school, she
wasn't met with Christmas cheer. Instead, she was greeted by her younger brother
Derek and several of Maggie's friends who were standing around looking worried.
Everyone is asking where Maggie is. They don't have a name. It's like 90s in charge of the VIP
lounge. She's supposed to bring all the refreshments
and the snacks and everything.
Where's Madgie?
Immediately, a wave of concern washed over Connie.
Madgie was super responsible.
So she wouldn't just not show up for something
without telling someone, especially if it was an event
that she helped organize.
But before freaking out, Connie wanted to make sure Maggie hadn't just somehow totally
spaced the concert or lost track of time or something.
Connie stepped outside to call Maggie, but her phone went straight to voicemail, which
actually kind of happened a lot around there, because Bailey is a pretty rural mountainous
place, and the reception is spotty.
So Connie knew it was possible,
Maggie just didn't have service wherever she was.
At this point, I'm thinking she'd have the house
because sometimes she gets so busy
and she exhausted herself to the point
where she'll just like take a nap for a couple hours.
So maybe she like fell asleep,
but I waited around to see if she'll show up and I
kept my eye on the door and she now this time like the opening band has started
and I'm like okay she's still not here. I was getting that like weird feeling
that something was off. So Connie left to go to her parents house which was like
this huge two-story house that they owned where the family lived on the first floor, and they actually rented out the smaller top floor.
On the 10 mile drive there, Connie kept trying to call the man who was currently renting
out that second story.
His name was Robert.
And Robert had just been texting Connie about an hour prior, something about weird noises
at the house and how the lights were flickering so she knew that he was home, but now he wasn't picking up.
His phone was going straight to Boy Smell too,
so she eventually just left him a Boy Smell asking him
to go check and see if Maggie was downstairs asleep.
When Connie finally arrived at the family home,
she turned into the three quarters
of a mile long winding driveway,
and that's when her stomach dropped.
Even though she could hardly see the house from the end of the driveway through the layers
of trees, it was immediately clear that something terrible had happened.
There was a lot of promotion, there was like a ton of sirens and I just still smell the smoke. But our house, the driveway, it kind of
winds up into the woods. So you can't see very plainly from the
county road what was going on. Like I could just see the lights
kind of you can see it like through the trees. With a pit in
her stomach, Connie continued down the driveway and the scene she found was overwhelming.
Connie's mom Heather had just arrived home to and they were taking it all in together.
Patrol cars and fire trucks were crowded in front of the house, which was enveloped in billowing smoke, though the house was still standing.
And I just stopped there and I was like, okay, what's happening?
And there was a fireman who he like vaguely mentioned.
Like, oh yeah, it seems like it was a burglary.
We did, like, there are some missing weapons.
And I remember him saying, like, it's just really messed up.
And I was like, come on, wait, I don't...
I didn't know what was happening. I was very confused.
Adding to the confusion was something else Connie and her mom saw in the driveway.
And that was Maggie's car, which meant that Maggie had to be home.
But they didn't see her anywhere outside.
So, at this point, be home, but they didn't see her anywhere outside.
All Connie knew was that there had been a fire.
The home had possibly been burglarizedized and her little sister was still missing.
So with no answers inside,
Connie did what any good big sister would do.
She began calling people,
getting the word out about Maggie's disappearance.
One of the first people she phoned
was their older sister, Lina,
who was living 900 miles away in Minneapolis at the time.
Connie called me and was, you know,
sounding very emotional, kind of relayed the scenario
that she kind of just said that
because so many was wrong with the house,
it seemed like there was a fire
that they can't find Maggie.
Being so far away and feeling helpless,
Lina did what she could to help find her little sister.
She posted on Facebook begging for anyone who had seen Maggie to call the police immediately.
Linna's Facebook post read in part quote,
Please, anybody who is from Bayley, Colorado, I need your help.
My sister Maggie Long is missing.
Time is of the essence.
She is 17 years old, Asian female, long-ground hair with blonde highlights.
She was supposed to be at the high school concert tonight.
Any details are welcome."
Unbeknownst to the long family, as Lina was making that post, first responders were processing
a baffling crime scene inside their home that was unlike anything the community of Bailey
had ever seen before.
Just like the firefighter implied to Connie, the home had been completely ransacked, and
it looked like there had been a burglary.
A huge firearm safe that looked like it had been dragged from the primary bedroom was
laying in the middle of the living room, which right away told responders that they were
dealing with more than one perpetrator if they were able to lug that safe into the living
room.
Other items were scattered about, almost like there'd been some kind of struggle.
And there was a trail of accelerant throughout the home, which solidified the theory that
they all probably had at this point.
They were looking at a burglary-turned-arsen.
The whole home had sustained heavy smoke damage, but as they searched the house, they realized
there was only one room that bore
the brunt of the fire. Wendy Kippell, who at the time was an investigator with the district
attorney's office in Park County, was on the scene that day. And she recalled that the whole
room, which they determined was a bedroom, was burned down pretty much to the studs.
Everything was really burnt in there and unrecognizable pretty much as objects.
Among the heaps of ashes and unidentifiable scorched objects, they saw something that was recognizable,
something that they would never be able to unsee.
A top what looked like a bed was a severely burned human body.
The body was so badly burned that it was impossible to even loosely identify.
Parts of the limbs had even been burned off.
But there was one thing that was immediately clear.
The person had been restrained with their arms behind their back and a coat had been pulled
down over the victim's hands which actually preserved them and duct tape was used to tie them together.
Now although first responders couldn't identify the body right away, they knew Maggie was
missing, so putting two and two together, they notified Connie and her mom.
After breaking the news to the family authorities knew that they couldn't stay quiet, they had
to address the public. Bailey is a tight-knit community of about 8,000 people and law enforcement knew
that everyone was worried sick about Maggie. So the park county under Sheriff wrote a statement
about the situation that was posted on Facebook the very next day. The post is now deleted,
but the flu reported that it read in part, quote, on scene investigation is wrapped up. Cause and origin of the fire is inconclusive.
Still no sign of her,
no body at the fire scene.
End quote.
And yeah, you heard that right.
No body at the scene.
Why the Sheriff's Office felt the need to blatantly lie
to the public like that
is something present day investigators still struggle to wrap their minds around.
I still to this day do not know why they didn't want to put out
there that Maggie was, in fact, found at the house.
Her family knew because they notified them right away.
They knew she was dead, but yet they were still putting it out to
the public that Maggie
was still missing. And I just, it blew my mind as an investigator with the District Attorney's
Office. I think maybe they thought they could get whoever committed this crime before it
got out that she was murdered. With the public still in the dark about what happened,
investigators began interviewing people.
And one of the first people that they talked with
was the person who called 911.
That upstairs tenant, Robert.
Robert told investigators that he left work that day at around 7.45 in the morning and then
didn't return to his apartment until 6.40pm.
When he got home, he said that he saw Maggie's silver Cadillac parked right out in front
but didn't notice any other strange vehicles in the driveway or anything.
It wasn't until Robert got into his upstairs apartment and settled in that he realized
something was off.
He heard concerning noises from the first floor,
like lots of banging and commotion.
Then he started smelling smoke.
So that's when he texted Connie.
Now, you're probably asking yourself
why Robert texted Connie instead of reaching out
to somebody who currently lived
at the Long's house like Connie's parents,
or even their younger brother Derek, or even Maggie.
But Connie told our reporting team that she recalls Robert actually texted her mom first,
but she was likely too busy at the restaurant to respond, so that's when Connie and Robert
started texting.
She said they had each other's numbers because they used to work at the restaurant together.
So, anyways, as the loud noises continued, Robert told investigators that he grew more and
more worried.
So about 20 minutes after he got home, this would have been just before 7pm, he called 911.
And he said that after he made that call, he saw a man standing out in the driveway.
When he heard the sounds and he went out his door and there's like a small deck area and then steep stairs
that went down to the front of the house and he went out and kind of looked out
and he saw this guy standing at the bottom of the stairs but he was standing back
enough that that guy he said couldn't see him is kind of like peeking the edge
and he could see him. Robert said that from where he was standing,
he couldn't see any strange cars
that he could offer investigators a description of,
but he did get a really good look at the man.
He described him and what he was wearing
and he said he is wearing like khaki colored shorts,
long shorts and a t-shirt,
which for December, that's kind of unusual dress for up here.
While investigators were talking with Robert, other detectives were interviewing Maggie's
family trying to piece together what Maggie had been doing that day.
Here's the timeline that they came up with.
She left for school at 6.30 that morning and stayed there till around 2.40 in the afternoon
when she told friends that she was leaving to go home
to grab snacks and water for the VIP lounge at the concert.
That would have put her arriving home at around 3.10 pm.
And we know that 911 call came in around 7,
which meant that there were nearly four hours
unaccounted for.
And because so much of the evidence was destroyed
in the fire, investigators were left to speculate
about the horrors that happened in that window.
We're pretty sure she was sexually assaulted,
and they maybe tried to get the combination of the safe
from her.
She probably gave them the combination of her safe
that they brought from her room into the master bedroom,
but she may not have known the combination to the big safe
that had the large amount of cash in it,
and sexually assaulted her in her room,
bound her hands behind her back.
Through talking with Maggie's family, authorities
were also able to identify what items had been stolen
in what now they knew was a robbery.
A green gun safe and all of its contents were gone.
There were some jade figurines from Maggie's safe
that were missing, a pearl necklace
that had been gifted to Maggie from her parents,
an AK-47 style rifle, a Burretta handgun,
and somewhere around 2,000 rounds of ammunition.
Now Maggie's parents had the serial number for the AK-47 that they could provide police,
but unfortunately they couldn't find the serial number for the Burretta handgun.
For the serial number that they did have, though, investigators entered that into the National Crime Information Center,
or NCIC, so they'd be notified if a gun with that serial number, was ever recovered from
another crime, or if it was sold legally.
But to this day, there have been no hits.
While all of this was going on, investigators were having Robert sit down with a sketch
artist to create a composite of this mystery man that he saw.
There were no security cameras or anything that saw this guy, so detectives had no choice
but to rely solely on Robert's memory.
I'm going to put that sketch that they created in the blog post for this episode, which
is on our website, thedeckpodcast.com.
But the drawing is of a young white man, possibly in his 20s, with a very short haircut.
He had almond-shaped eyes and this square chin.
Now, none of his features are super pronounced,
so he really just kinda looks like your average Joe.
But even after getting this sketch,
investigators weren't done with Robert just yet.
They also wanted to vet his alibi
before clearing him as a potential suspect.
I mean, on paper,
he seemed like a promising person of interest.
He had no relation to the family at all. He was a newer tenant. And since he used to work for the longs,
he likely knew their schedule. So investigators checked with Robert's employer who confirmed
that he was at work when he said he was, until 615 that evening, which would have put
him arriving home at around 640, just like he said. And that wouldn't have given him
enough time to commit the crime
before calling 911. So with that, he was cleared as a suspect.
Back at the Long's home, an arson investigator with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation
was carefully examining the scene. He determined that the accelerant used to start the fire
was gasoline, from a gas can in the Long's garage. It wasn't even something that the killers had brought with them.
It was looking more and more like this was a crime of opportunity, like the assailants
had no plans to kill when they entered that home, but then something changed.
As investigators continued sifting through the home and collecting evidence, they were
still being secretive about what really happened.
There had been no communication to the public to clear up what the undershare of heads said,
and authorities were unwavering in their silence, even as the days passed by.
Three days after the fire, which would have been December 4, Maggie's autopsy got underway,
and it confirmed what detective suspected all along.
Since both of her hands were well preserved, the coroner's office was able to compare fingerprints
from Maggie's driver's license, and it was a match.
But because of the state of her body, the coroner was unable to determine if she'd been sexually
assaulted, but they were able to determine how she died.
Wendy Kippel was present at the autopsy that day and remembers the horrifying discovery
well. Her trachea had sit inside of it and the only way that happens is if you're alive, when
you're in the fire.
So she was literally burned alive.
This is probably the most brutal murder I have ever seen in my career.
Now, I just, I can't imagine the horror that that poor girl went through."
That's not the only thing the autopsy uncovered. The coroner also scraped Maggie's fingernails and
got some possible DNA which was sent off for testing. But after the autopsy, the Park Towney
Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney's Office did something weird. Instead of sharing the devastating news with the community that there was a body found
in the fire and it sadly was maggy, they just stayed quiet.
In fact, they wanted to make sure that everyone else stayed quiet, too.
So on the day of the autopsy, a gag order was issued, which obviously only added to the
confusion for the community, because to them, was issued, which obviously only added to the confusion for the
community because to them, this was still only a missing persons case and a possible arson.
So we couldn't talk about the case, and we couldn't say Maggie's dead.
And I think that's why they put out the gag order to keep people, anybody close to the
case from saying, no, there was actually a body found in the house. And it turned out to be Maggie.
While investigators were staying quiet, waiting for the perpetrators to come forward, Maggie's family
was quietly mourning their unspeakable loss. Their sweet Maggie, who was just days away from her 18th
birthday, was so suddenly and horribly stolen from them. Lina and Connie told our reporting team
that their sister was the best person to be around.
She was funny and smart and caring
and a huge overachiever.
She was involved in just about everything
a high schooler could be, key clubs,
doing council music theater drama club
and even speech and debate.
I think kind of just aside from the things that she did and the things that
she participated in, Maggie was always a very social and inclusive person who was very emotionally
intelligent and just like a social butterfly, just just a very inclusive person, just very warm,
and super funny. Like she was in the area, it's like just super nerdy. It's just like the interactions
you would have with her, because she would just like laugh really hard, like making her laugh was something that like I love to do
because then she would just like lose it like hyperventilate and like that would make me
like be really silly and it's funny because like we me and her had like a pretty significant
age difference like nine years, but even despite that it was just like she was she was brought
out the silly and this and me and she would She threw her head back, threw her body back,
and full body laughter.
Yeah.
And she would notice you.
She did this thing where she would say something
or when somebody would respond to her in a way
that she thought was weird.
She would do a weird side eye as if there was like a third party.
As if there was like a camera, right there?
She would kind of like fourth wall.
Yeah, kind of like in the office, you know,
and Jim would just like look at the camera.
She would do that.
It would be really funny.
She would always like apologize,
but she would run into inanimate objects.
Actually made a sorry jar for her. So every time she said sorry to objects, she had
to put a dollar in it.
The Longs had to privately grieve, to say goodbye to those side eyes and apologies and all
the things that they loved about Maggie that were taken away without warning.
By whom?
Whisper's were slowly spreading around the community about what
had really happened to Maggie, even though the authorities weren't talking. And tips
began coming in here and there with people reporting suspicious cars that they saw, speeding
away from the direction of the Long House on the eve of December 1st. A few people saw
a silver or white minivan driving away from the home, but that description
alone wasn't super helpful, because in rural Colorado, that's like trying to find a poorly
described needle in a haystack.
As the days passed by with no word from authorities about the status of the case, the community
at large was becoming increasingly frustrated, because with every passing day, they grew
more convinced that the rumors they were hearing were true.
And there was a lot of, I mean, chatter on social media about how the investigation was being handled and that people of the community felt like the sheriff's office was hiding stuff from the community and they were understandably upset because they felt like, well, we have a killer at large and
they're still saying that Maggie's just missing.
So a lot of people in the community were upset and still are upset about it and understandably so.
The community would remain in the dark about the truth until December 7, almost a week
after the fire, when Park County Sheriff Fred Wedner broke the silence and issued a press
release.
The release read in Park Quote,
�It comes with great sadness, we report, that human remains discovered in the burned
home of the Long Family have been positively identified as those of 17-year-old Maggie Long.
We would like the community to help us in this endeavor and ask that you reach out to
us to report if you observed any suspicious vehicles, individuals, or activities along
County Road 43 in Bailey on December 1, 2017.
At this time, due to ongoing activities in this case,
the Sheriff's Office will not comment on any details or status
of the investigation, signed Sheriff Fred Wagner.
The community was devastated.
Not only was it confirmed that Maggie was gone,
but also that they had been blatantly lied to by the Sheriff's Office.
The staff of the local newspaper The Flume
asked Sheriff Wagner why his office made that false claim to the public the day after the fire.
He replied, quote, we made our comment, we'll live with it."
The public was heartbroken, but they now knew the truth, and tips began flooding in.
One person even called local police and said that they could give descriptions of two
suspicious people they saw that day.
Somebody said, hey, we saw this vehicle coming at a high rate of speed down the road from
the direction of the Long's house, but it's December at 7 o'clock at night on a windy
narrow road.
They said these two guys, they saw in that vehicle.
How do you see them at 7 o'clock at night in the dark on a windy road going past each other at 45
miles an hour? Even though it seemed unlikely that the witness's memory of these two guys was
reliable, the Sheriff's Office was in no position to be turning away potential leads, so they had the tips to work with a sketch artist to make composites. You can see those images
on our website as well.
The Sheriff's Office also caught wind of rumors that might point to a potential motive for
the robbery and murder. Supposedly, the longs were having money problems, even though
they owned two popular restaurants and a liquor store. But the gossip was that they owed some money, and that's why all of this happened.
Now, it's not super clear how seriously this rumor was taken,
but it seems like it would have been easy to brush off,
because, like I said, the Longs were successful business owners,
and investigators were becoming more and more convinced
that was actually the reason they were targeted,
not because of money problems,
but because of their money.
The Longs had Asian food restaurants in Park County
and one liquor store,
and they didn't deposit their cash
that they aren't too trusting of the banks,
so they keep their cash at home.
And there was a large amount of cash in the big safe.
So police's theory was that Maggie got home that day and had interrupted a burglary in progress,
and that's why she was killed. But it was a theory that they wouldn't be able to prove
until they caught the killers themselves, a hope that was fading more and more as the days crept by.
Eventually, authorities got the results back from the skin cells found under Maggie's
fingernails, but the results weren't exactly what they'd hoped for.
Testing revealed that the cells were from two separate people, but the DNA was only enough
for partial profiles.
That meant that they wouldn't be uploaded to any databases, but they were enough that
if any future suspects came on their radar, they could do a direct comparison.
But six months went by, and there were no suspects, no one to compare to that DNA.
And that's when another eerily similar case in Missouri had everyone hopeful that Maggie's
killers had been caught.
In June, two men broke into a 20-year-old woman's home in Johnson County, Missouri.
They tied her up, beat her, and demanded that she give them
the combination to her safe.
She refused, so they poured gasoline on her.
They lit her on fire and then fled.
Thankfully, the woman survived. She somehow managed to escape and put out the flames on her skin.
Just days later, law enforcement announced that they'd caught the guys who had done it.
24-year-old Antonio Bowen and 22-year-old Vincent Rist. When word of this horrible crime spread
to Bailey, everyone was optimistic that these were
the same guys who took Maggie's life.
I mean, both cases were home invasion robberies that ended with a woman being lit on fire that
happened just months apart.
But it wasn't just the striking similarities in the case that stuck out to the small park
county community.
It was the fact that one of the suspects, Vincent, bore a striking resemblance to the first composite sketch
created for Maggie's case.
I mean, it literally looked like a drawing of this guy.
We actually have the composite next to his mug shot
on the blog post for this episode.
But just as quickly as everyone had gotten their hopes up
that these were the killers, their hopes were dashed.
Colorado investigators compared the partial DNA profiles
that they had gotten from Maggie's fingernails
with the two guys arrested in Missouri
and neither of them matched.
It was a dead end.
The months continued to drag by with no substantial leads.
The anniversary of Maggie's death came and went
and detectives were no closer to catching her killers
than they were on day one.
Even though the community was a year removed
from the heinous crime,
it was still fresh in their hearts,
and they wanted to honor Maggie the best way that they could.
So in December, to celebrate what would have been her 19th birthday,
friends, family, and members of the community joined together
and handed out sandwiches to those in need,
which is exactly what Maggie had planned
to do on her 18th birthday.
Despite Maggie's loved ones keeping her memory alive
and law enforcement, so desperately wanting
to give her the justice she deserved, the case went cold.
Even as turnover happened and new eyes were put on the case,
there was still little movement.
In 2019, Park County welcomed a new sheriff, and he brought on Wendy Kippel as a detective,
but the case was still stuck in a rut.
I mean, investigators chased down small leads here and there, but the next big development
in the case wouldn't come until May of 2021.
That's when the FBI made an announcement no one was expecting.
They were now investigating Maggie's murder as a hate crime.
This was huge for the case.
It meant investigators would have additional resources and manpower to pour in defining
Maggie's killers, but the announcement was met with confusion from the community.
In Colorado, a hate crime is legally defined as, quote, a threat or act of intimidation, harassment, or physical force that is motivated by bias against a person or group
based on their actual or perceived race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, and physical or mental disability.
End quote.
Now, up to this point, the public was under the impression, based on what they
were getting from authorities, that Maggie was killed because she interrupted a burglary.
She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. So were police still holding back material
info that completely changes the lens in which one would view this case? And if so, what
are they holding back?
It seems like this big question mark
looming over the case is one that hasn't really been
publicly addressed.
So our reporting team asked Maggie's sisters
if they've ever received an explanation
for the labeling of her murder as a hate crime.
And their answer was gut wrenching.
When you look at the pattern of attacks against Asian-American properties,
Asian-Americans in that kind of COVID era, you'll see that there was like a number of times committed against Asian families
because of the cultural differences of, you know, not trusting banks, having cash at home.
There were patterns of Asians that own restaurants to, you know, not be at home
because they're working at the restaurant during, you know, long hours.
So, is that why we were targeted?
You know, that's one arm of it.
The other ones, you know, when you're looking at it as who is the victim
here and why did that person become a victim if they were somebody else would have escalated
to this to that level. And so, you know, now we're talking about violence against women as a
hate crime, race aside, you know, you're looking at an extremely violent crime and the elements
of the crime that occurred would that have happened if it were a man? You know, would that
have happened if she were not a young woman? And, you know, what are those elements that
allowed the crime to get to that level, you know, in a situation of a burglary, why would
you not just kill somebody but why would you burn them alive? Like that's messed up, right?
Wendy Kippell, who is now a sergeant with the Sheriff's Office, wants nothing more than
to put the assailants behind bars. And she's hopeful DNA testing will advance to a point
that that is going to be what cracks this case.
I think eventually technology will get us there.
I've talked to our DNA analysts down at CBI,
and they think within a short amount of time,
like two to three years out,
maybe sooner we can hope that technology
will get to the point that we can develop something more
from the evidence that we do have,
but so far we just don't have it, which is frustrating.
Because we don't have anything else at this point.
We don't have anybody coming forward and saying anything.
Sergeant Kippell told our reporting team that she believes
the people who killed Maggie were not locals.
I just don't think that they're from here,
because if they're locals, somebody's going to start talking.
They can't keep quiet for five years
and not have anybody say anything.
If there are several guys that are involved in this, why hasn't somebody come forward?
Why hasn't an angry ex-girlfriend or ex-wife or ex-friend say, you know what?
I know who did this and go after him."
But she acknowledges that there are other factors that seem to point to the assailants being
from the area.
Like how would they have known what house to target?
The long place was in a really remote location.
How would out of towners have known that the family had large sums of cash stowed away
at home?
These are the questions that keep Sar Sergeant Kippel up at night.
And they know at Lina and Connie too,
because they know someone out there holds the answers.
That person just hasn't come forward yet.
You know, definitely been a stand still investigation,
and we just need people to, you know,
come forward and speak out.
And if the lead doesn't go nowhere,
then that's okay, it doesn't go anywhere.
We've gone through a lot of leads,
but we need more to look into in order to make any progress.
I think just that somebody knows something
and that there were multiple people involved.
And those multiple people have relationships and families and connections.
I hope that anyone who's listening who has a bad feeling that they come forward with it.
There's nothing to say that those people aren't going to do this again.
Someone else's sister, someone else's daughter, someone else's cousin.
So Maggie was, in all of this experience,
Maggie was truly innocent.
Maggie was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In closing, I want to read something, Maggie wrote
after one of her classmates passed away.
And after Maggie's death, these words were featured
in her school's yearbook to comfort the people
now mourning her loss.
She wrote, quote,
I think the only real cure to cope with loss
is to continue to be good people.
Be kind, be caring, be passionate, be thoughtful.
Know the value of the people around you
and spread good vibes.
But most importantly, don't limit your boundaries.
Share love and consider everyone around you from strangers to acquaintances to peers to friends.
We all have our circle of close people,
but it surely wouldn't hurt to feel the comfort of everyone on your side.
I think enough people have experienced pain to understand that life is far more measurable in joy and good memories
than to be scorched with cruelty and loss.
If you know anything about the murder of 17-year-old Maggie Long in 2017, please call the
Maggie Long Tip Line at 303-239-4243.
The deck will be off next week, but we will return the following week with a brand new episode.
The deck is an audio chuck production with be music by Ryan Lewis.
To learn more about the deck and our adfacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.
So what do you think Chuck?
Do you approve?
visit thedeckpodcast.com.
So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?