The Deck - Mary Beth "Pixie" Grismore (10 of Spades, Indiana)

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Our card this week is Mary Beth "Pixie" Grismore, the 10 of Spades from Indiana. In February 1978, a 26-year-old mother of two disappeared from her rural Indiana home the day she was scheduled to mov...e to Iowa with her new husband. Months later, she was found strangled to death in the trunk of her own car in Ohio. For more than forty years, Mary Beth “Pixie” Grismore’s case has haunted law enforcement as they sift through the unanswered questions surrounding her disappearance and murder. Although the case has been ice cold for years, police are hopeful that the tip they need to bring new life to the investigation is right around the corner.If you have any information on the kidnapping and murder of Mary Beth Grismore AKA “Pixie” please call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI, that’s Or visit tips.FBI.govTo 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

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Our card this week is Mary Beth Pixie Grismoor, the 10th spades from Indiana. In 1978, Pixie was a young newlywed, excited about moving from Indiana back to her home state of Iowa to be with her new husband. That's when she vanished from her own home in the middle of the night, leaving behind few clues and a chilling mystery that's been unsolved for more than four decades. I'm Ashley Wednesday, February 22, 1978, and a woman who will call Eleanor had just arrived at her sister Pixie's house. She was to be there bright and early, along with Pixie's two best friends, Dottie and
Starting point is 00:01:16 Bev, who were all helping Pixie pack the last of her things before a moving truck got there at 10.30. You see, Pixie was moving out of the house she shared with her ex-husband and their two young sons, which was on the family's farm. She was picking up everything and moving her and her two boys to the middle of nowhere town, Horton, Iowa, some 400 miles from her tiny rural town
Starting point is 00:01:38 of Marshall, Indiana, and she was moving to be with her new husband, David. But when Eleanor got to Pixie's house at eight, she saw Doddy and Bev but noticed Pixie's car wasn't in the driveway. Doddy and Bev said that they hadn't actually seen her yet either, but they were able to let themselves inside because Pixie rarely locked her door, something most of her friends knew. Minutes ticked by and there was still no sign of Pixie. Her purse was there,
Starting point is 00:02:06 and the clothes that she had been wearing the day before were there, but Pixie herself was nowhere to be found. Eleanor called Pixie's new husband David and Iowa to see if he'd heard from her, but he hadn't. The two had only been married for 12 days, and Pixie had spent most of that time in Indiana preparing for the move. Eleanor also phoned Pixie's ex-husband Robert, who lived in Marshall, but he said that Pixie wasn't with him either. Now Robert was actually the reason that Pixie was in Indiana to begin with. She and Eleanor were actually from Iowa, but Pixie moved to Indiana in the early 70s when
Starting point is 00:02:41 she married Robert. And not long after that, Eleanor also married an Indiana man and ended up living just a mile down the road from Pixie. Needless to say, the two sisters were extremely close, which is why when Pixie got remarried to a man who lived back in Iowa, it was kind of bittersweet for Eleanor. She was sad to see Pixie leave the small Indiana town that they both called home for several years, even though she was happy that her sister found love again. And she knew how excited Pixie was for the move, so she was excited for her. Which is why when Pixie wasn't home that morning, Eleanor couldn't shake the sinking feeling in her stomach that something was terribly wrong.
Starting point is 00:03:21 She searched the house for more clues and noticed that it looked as if Pixie had slept in her bed, so Eleanor wondered if her sister had just left to run an errand. But Bev and Doddy said that they went out the night before with Pixie, and she hadn't mentioned anything about needing to go anywhere the next morning. By the time 10 a.m. rolled around, Eleanor couldn't explain away her fears any longer, so she called the local sheriff to report Pixie missing. There was no hesitation. The sheriff's office filed the missing person's report right away, and deputies responded to Pixie's farmhouse to begin an investigation.
Starting point is 00:03:58 Investigators poked around the house but found no evidence of anything sinister, and few clues pointing to what might have happened to Pixie in the early morning hours of February 22. I mean, there were no signs of a struggle, no signs of a robbery, or any kind of break in at her house whatsoever. In fact, a dispatcher for the County Sheriff's Office told the Indianapolis News a few days after Pixie's disappearance quote, there's no reason to believe there was foul play, but there's no reason to believe there wasn't either. Dottie and Bev were the last ones to see Pixie, so they were questioned right away.
Starting point is 00:04:35 They told officers that they had a girl's night the night before as a little going away kind of last hurrah for Pixie. They had all squeezed into the front seat of pixie's 1973 Ford Thunderbird because the back seat was already packed to the brim full of stuff for her move, and they made the 20-minute drive to the nearby town of Tara Hought, Indiana. Dottie and Bev said that they went to dinner at Red Lobster and then to the movies where they saw looking for Mr. Goodbar, a crime drama starring Diane Keaton. After the movie,
Starting point is 00:05:04 the girls told police that they all went dancing at a bar called Bodisco where they had a great time until Pixie dropped them off at home around 120 a.m. When they said they're goodbyes, Pixie told them that she would see them in the morning to finish packing. And that was that. Dottie and Bev said that she wasn't acting weird at all and genuinely seemed to have every intention of seeing them both in less than seven hours. So of course, their first worry was maybe she'd gotten in a car accident on her way home,
Starting point is 00:05:35 but that didn't make any sense because her clothes that she had been wearing the night before and her purse were found at the house. So she had to have made it home at some point. By mid-morning, Pixie's family and police were half expecting for her to just walk in and any moment and explain that this whole thing had been a misunderstanding. And she just gone to run that errand.
Starting point is 00:05:56 But investigators didn't want to leave anything to chance. So right away, police pulled out all the stops. They got groups together to do ground searches. They used helicopters for aerial searches. They even put one of their most prominent detectives on the case, who was credited with solving the Holland's Burgmerters. An infamous quadruple homicide in Indiana. But despite their best efforts in those first few hours, they found no trace of pixie. With so little physical evidence available,
Starting point is 00:06:28 law enforcement needed to try something else. They needed to learn more about pixie's life in hopes of tracking down leads that way. They wanted to find any clues about why she might have left or find anyone who might have had it out for her. As with a lot of cases like this, the spotlight quickly turned to the significant other, but not Pixie's current husband, her recent ex-husband, Robert.
Starting point is 00:06:50 Pixie and Robert had gotten married in 1972, and the relationship probably seemed somewhat normal on paper. They were essentially living the American dream, a big farmhouse in a cute little town and two adorable kids, but investigators quickly figured out that their marriage was far from perfect. You see, there were some rumors swirling around town that Pixie hadn't always been faithful to Robert, and one such allegation involved a man that she worked with. Keep in mind, Marshall was a small town. It still is today, so I'm sure police didn't exactly trust every rumor they heard.
Starting point is 00:07:27 But the clock was ticking and they wanted to find Pixie, so they had to follow up on everything, even if it was just gossip. People around Marshall told police that between May and November of 1977, Pixie worked at Turkey Run State Park, first as a lifeguard and then as an attendant at the State Park's gate entrance. And according to a tip police received during her employment at the park, Pixie was having an affair with the park manager, who was also married. According to police, this affair went on for a few months.
Starting point is 00:08:01 When Robert was interviewed by detectives, he said the affair had essentially become public knowledge by the time he and Pixie divorced in late 1977. Detectives working in the case today aren't sure if the park manager was questioned because it's not documented in the case file, but what they do know is that Robert really didn't seem all that bitter about the whole situation. By all accounts, the divorce was amicable. So any theory that the police may have initially had about Robert being a jealous or vengeful ex-husband, melted away once detectives talked with him and realized that he wanted to help in any way he could. I mean, he just wanted Pixie to be found safe. Our reporting team talked with Pixie's sister for this episode, who,
Starting point is 00:08:42 again, were calling Eleanor because she didn't want to use her real name. And she said that she never thought Robert was involved with her sister's disappearance in any way. She said there is no chance Robert would have ever kidnapped or hurt Pixie. And by the way, Eleanor wasn't comfortable with being recorded for this episode because of the pain and fear still surrounding her sister's case to this day. But she still wanted everyone to know the kind of person her sister really was. She said that Pixie was this super likeable and popular person in the community.
Starting point is 00:09:14 Eleanor said that she always looked up to Pixie because people just gravitated toward her. And she was talented in just about every way possible. She could sing and play the piano. She excelled in school. She was in beauty pageants. She was even a finalist in the Miss Iowa pageant when she was 18. But maybe the biggest thing that stood out about Pixie was her confidence. Eleanor said Pixie was ambitious, a natural leader and a trailblazer in a lot of ways. Pixie was involved in local politics and ended up serving as the county coordinator for the US Senator, Birchby.
Starting point is 00:09:49 And she even went on to become Park County's first Democratic chairperson when she was just 24. So it's that confidence that drew people to her. And Eleanor said she still channels her when she needs confidence herself. But it wasn't just Eleanor who felt this way about Pixie. Her whole family adored her. needs confidence herself. But it wasn't just Eleanor who felt this way about Pixie.
Starting point is 00:10:05 Her whole family adored her. So when police were struggling to find any clues about what happened to her, Pixie's family took matters into their own hands. Eleanor stayed at Pixie's house when police first arrived the morning of February 22, and she wrote out a long list of the items that she knew were in Pixie's car. Since Pixie's Thunderbird was missing, officers said it would be helpful to know what exactly they were looking for. Eleanor's list was detailed and gave officers items to be on the lookout for. Things like a music box,
Starting point is 00:10:36 with ceramic figures that played Laura's theme, and an antique barn wood plaque with the words Henry, how could you? In those first few days, police took photos of Pixie's house and collected any evidence they could, and searches continued for her in and around Marshall. But they found nothing. Rumors continued to fly both about what happened and about Pixie herself, but none of them stuck as actual leads. According to an article in the Illinois newspaper called the Pantograph, by the time April rolled around and there was still no sign of pixie,
Starting point is 00:11:10 her parents decided to hire a psychic to help find their daughter. But this wasn't just any psychic they hired. This lady was known for helping police solve criminal cases. According to a 1991 Chicago Tribune article, law enforcement estimated that out of the prediction she provided, approximately 80% ended up being accurate. So when this psychic told Pixie's parents that their daughter had been shot in the head, and her body had been dumped somewhere near Turkey Run State Park, police wasted no time. Now, if you've ever been to Turkey run, it is this beautiful,
Starting point is 00:11:46 heavily-wooded 1100-acre park about an hour west of Indianapolis, with rugged trails and canyons and a creek that runs across the property. That meant that there was a lot of land for police to cover. So on the weekend of April 8, 1978, about six weeks after Pixie's disappearance, law enforcement and volunteers from the community formed a search party to scour the park. Everyone searched tirelessly for hours and hours, but they eventually had to call it quits when they found zero evidence to suggest that Pixie had been there at all before she was killed, much less that her body had been dumped there. To most people, the search probably seemed like a last-ditch effort to locate Pixie because detectives had exhausted the few leads that had come in. And now, even the supernatural tip they pursued didn't pan out. It seemed like all hope of finding Pixie.
Starting point is 00:12:41 Dead or alive was lost. But then, 70 days after her disappearance, a disturbing discovery, a whole, state away, left everyone with more questions than answers. P.S.P. In the spring of 1978, police in Whitehall, Ohio, a town barely east of Columbus, Ohio, received a call from the innkeeper of a local holiday inn. The innkeeper was calling in a parking complaint about a car in their parking lot that seemed like it was abandoned.
Starting point is 00:13:21 When officers got there, they found a silver, blue, 1973 Ford Thunderbirds sitting on the east side of the hotel's parking lot, backed into a parking space near some trees. Here is Detective John Dickie with the Whitehall Police Department, who is working the case today. When they were able to look into it, it didn't have any license plates on it, the license plates were missing, but the vent plate was still there and all that. So when they looked into it, they determined that the car had been reported stolen. Officers towed the car to the Whitehall Police Department, and before inspecting it, they
Starting point is 00:13:53 did some more digging in the national database. They realized that not only was the car reportedly stolen, but it was associated with an Indiana woman who was missing. The report said that Mary Beth Pixie grismore and her Thunderbird disappeared back in February in a little town in Indiana that was more than four hours west of Whitehall. Now, I know I'm mentioning a lot of different towns across a few states, so to help you visualize all of this, I actually put a map in the blog post for this episode on our website, thedeckpodcast.com. And we'll link out to that in the show notes.
Starting point is 00:14:29 At the Whitehall Police Department, officers got the car into their evidence bay, which is basically like a garage below the agency's offices. And when they got it inside, they noticed a really bad smell. So fearing the worst, police pride opened the trunk, but they didn't immediately see anything out of the ordinary. They saw some blankets and some towels, a raincoat, and then a foot. Police quickly removed the clutter from the trunk, revealing the decomposing body of a woman. She was wearing blue jeans and a knit sweater that was pulled up over her head and around her neck was a thin rope. Even though she was in an advanced state of
Starting point is 00:15:11 decomposition, Whitehall police could tell that the body matched Pixie's description mainly because of her blonde hair. Whitehall detectives notified the authorities in Indiana that they discovered Pixie's missing car. And, what they believed was her body. And sure enough, after requesting dental records from the Indiana State Police, it was confirmed that it was her. Because of the state of decomposition she was in, police knew that she had likely died weeks before she was found, perhaps even on the very day she had gone missing. The coroner found no signs of sexual assault, and her cause of death came as no surprise,
Starting point is 00:15:49 strangulation by rope ligature. Now that Pixie's case had been reclassified from missing person to homicide, the FBI got involved since her abduction crossed state lines. And something that stuck out to investigators right away was the clothing that she was wearing. Like I said, Pixie was dressed in blue jeans and a sweater, but here's what puzzled investigators. She wasn't wearing any undergarments. To them, there were two possible reasons for this. Our investigative team got an exclusive interview with FBI Supervisory Special Agent Ed Wheely
Starting point is 00:16:23 for this episode. He's working the case today today along with Detective Dickie. To me there's two possibilities. She was murdered and then dressed in those clothes by someone else that's certainly a possibility. She did sleep nude. Okay, if it's early in the morning and you hear a knock and you know the movers are coming and you rapidly jump up and pull some clothes on to go answer the door or you hear something at night and you jump up and pull
Starting point is 00:16:55 rapidly those are the two possibilities of that. FBI agents leaned into their biggest and really only clue. Pixie's car. It had a few items scattered about but it certainly didn't look like the car of someone who was moving their entire life from one state to another. Specifically, some of the items that Eleanor had mentioned to them were nowhere to be found. Things like household items, some of Pixie's oil paintings that she liked to sign in all caps. And specifically, an antique wall clock that her father had repaired and penciled his initials inside of. After noting the items that were missing, they gathered what they could. Things like beer bottles, a bandaid, and a bag containing a map.
Starting point is 00:17:38 And they dusted for prints. Investigators were able to pull some prints off the car's exterior, but Agent Wealy said that they never got any hits on those. Police checked pawn shops in the Whitehall area to see if someone had tried to sell the missing items, but they came up empty. You can actually find a complete list of all of the items that were missing from Pixie's car on our website.
Starting point is 00:18:00 It's based off that original list that her sister made for police the morning that she was reported missing. If you somehow have one of those items or if you know someone who does or maybe you even see one of the missing items while you're out thrifting, we're going to have a number that you can call. We're going to put it on the website and at the end of this episode. Police are still looking for those items. So now that police knew all of the items that were missing, some of them valued at hundreds of dollars, they began wondering if robbery was the motive. But they didn't have enough evidence yet to settle into that assumption.
Starting point is 00:18:35 And it didn't take long for another entirely different theory to be considered. A possible serial killer. According to reporting by the Indianapolis star, police almost right away noticed similarities between Pixie's murder and another infamous unsolved case in Indiana. Six months before Pixie disappeared, another Indiana resident went missing.
Starting point is 00:18:58 Her name was Ann Louise Harmire. Ann was a student at Indiana University traveling and like Pixie, she was also known to be a successful beauty pageant contestant. On September 12, 1977, she was driving through Eastern Indiana on her way back to school after spending the weekend at home when her car started acting up as she approached the town of Martensville, which is this town about an hour and a half south east of Marshall. So she pulled off to the side of the road and then just disappeared.
Starting point is 00:19:30 Anne's body was found a month later in a cornfield a few miles away. She had been sexually assaulted and it appeared that she had been strangled with her own shoelaces according to Dennis Royalties reporting for the Indianapolis Star. The similarities between Anne's and Pixie's cases were ones that detectives pondered for a while, but they could never get that theory to stick. Maybe it was because the two women vanished from different parts of the state, or maybe there was just no evidence to point to the possibility of Pixie and Anne being killed by the same person. But whatever the case, investigators
Starting point is 00:20:05 once again went back to the drawing board. Though some internet sleuths may still be left to wonder if they're connected, since Ann's case is still unsolved to this very day. Detectives talk to Pixie's ex-husband Robert again, but he still wasn't even close to being a suspect. Not only did he seem genuinely distressed that Pixie had been murdered, but he also had't even close to being a suspect. Not only did he seem genuinely distressed that Pixie had been murdered, but he also had a solid alibi. Robert's mother placed him at her house from around midnight on February 22nd
Starting point is 00:20:34 until much later that morning. But the thing about murder investigations, especially in small towns, is that while police need evidence to think of someone as a suspect, members of the community don't. Robert had an alibi and wasn't acting suspicious at all. But that small town gossip was hard to shake.
Starting point is 00:20:55 Even in those days before social media, the court of public opinion was a thing. People thought that Robert was involved in the murder. Perhaps he hired someone to kill Pixie, or maybe he'd done it himself. But Pixie's sister Eleanor told us that Robert was truly distraught after Pixie's body was found. And the rumors floating around town only rubbed salt in the wound. And it couldn't have been easy for Robert and Pixie's two kids. They were just two and three at the time of her death, but as they grew up and became
Starting point is 00:21:25 aware of the speculation surrounding their father, I'm sure it was beyond hard on them. And I can't imagine how frustrating this was for a family that just wanted to find the person responsible for taking a life of their loved one in such a sinister way. Although the locals struggled to move on from Robert, police continued to pursue other leads. One such lead police found interesting came from a man who was a mechanic in Rockville, Indiana, which is about 10 minutes outside of Marshall. He told police that he had done some work on Pixie's car in February, just a few days before her disappearance. So the mechanic says that he sees a car that's... so he works on her car earlier in the week,
Starting point is 00:22:09 and then on the morning that she disappears, he recalls seeing the car, and it was being driven by a male. But the problem was, the mechanic couldn't recall much about what the guy looked like. He just knew for sure that it was a man driving the car, and it wasn't Pixie's husband or ex-husband. In June, the mechanic agreed to submit himself to something a bit unconventional, in hopes
Starting point is 00:22:34 of getting a better description of the man. He sat down with a sketch artist, and allowed himself to be hypnotized. While under hypnosis, he recalled to the artist what he saw, and the artist made a composite sketch of this mystery man. That sketch became the only description of a possible suspect that police would ever get a hold of. Sure, it was obtained through unconventional methods, but investigators had no other physical descriptions of their killer, so they took what they could get. We got a copy of
Starting point is 00:23:05 this composite sketch which you can find on our website. As far as we can tell, this sketch wasn't ever publicized though, so it makes sense that no one came forward saying they recognized the man. As the weeks and months dragged by tips slowed down, and the search for answers seemed to stall. And it stayed that way for about two years. Pixies friends and family worried that they would never know what happened or why. But then, in 1980, the FBI got a tip that had everyone hopeful that they'd finally get some answers about Pixies' gruesome murder. Two years after Pixie's death, her husband David, the Iowa farmer, placed a reward notice
Starting point is 00:23:45 in an Iowa paper offering $10,000 to anyone who could provide information leading to the person or people responsible for Pixie's death. And in March of 1980, an FBI agent got a call from a man who will call Ralph. And what Ralph told this FBI agent got everyone's attention. He might know who killed Pixie. Ralph said he had a buddy by the name of Pete Cochley. Both Ralph and his friend Pete were from Columbus, Ohio, which is eight minutes west of Whitehall. According to Ralph, Pete had left Ohio for a trip to
Starting point is 00:24:32 Indiana sometime around the end of 1977. Pete was kind of a drifter, so it wasn't unusual for him to up and leave like that. A few months later, sometime in the spring of 78, Ralph got a call from Pete, who said that he was finally back in Ohio and wanted to hang out. Plus, Pete said that he had some stuff that he wanted to show him. So Ralph went and picked up Pete, and he was carrying two boxes packed with stuff, items that clearly weren't things
Starting point is 00:25:01 that he had packed for his trip to Indiana. Like it was mostly silverware, stuff like that. Now at first police were like, okay, this sounds like a bit of a stretch, but Ralph's story didn't end there. He said that later that same day, Pete's brother came over to hang out with them and they were both asking Pete where he got all the houseware.
Starting point is 00:25:21 And Pete was like, oh, I stole this stuff from an abandoned car at a hotel. Pete even offered to show them the car, so the men walked together to the holiday in in Whitehall. When they got there, Pete showed Ralph the car parked on the east side of the lot and said that's where he had gotten the boxes full of stuff. Ralph told police that Pete also wanted them to help him steal the rims off the car's tires, but Ralph said that he caught a nasty whiff of something coming from the car, so the three of them left the hotel parking lot, and
Starting point is 00:25:54 that was that. Ralph told the FBI agent that he didn't really think anything more of it until he saw the reward in the paper, and then it all seemed to connect for him. Pete had been in Indiana around the time Pixie went missing. He had those boxes of random items. He led him to the mysterious car. It made sense to Ralph that Pete was probably connected to Pixie's murder. And Ralph actually ended up taking investigators
Starting point is 00:26:20 to the holiday and parking lot to show them the parking spot. And surprise, it was the exact spot that Pixie's car was found in. So by the time police got this tip from Ralph, Pete was already in prison for another murder. He was serving 16 years for the 1979 killing of an Ohio woman named Patricia Height, who had been stabbed 47 times. Knowing this, about Pete just made him look like an even more viable suspect. But law enforcement didn't think that this was the extent of his murderous rampage. Although it's never been proven, Pete was suspected of killing numerous people who were
Starting point is 00:26:56 experiencing homelessness in Texas before he was arrested for Patricia's murder. So Pete's history, combined with Ralph's statement to the FBI, led to Pete becoming the prime suspect in Pixie's murder. And adding to all this suspicion was the composite sketch that police had on hand, the one that they got by hypnotizing that mechanic. Now, if you wanna see the sketch again, it's on our website.
Starting point is 00:27:21 Agent Wealy told us that when he saw the composite sketch and compared it with Pete's mug shot, his jaw dropped. Yeah, I was pretty shocked when I got this picture as I, oh boy, that's a dead ringer, you know, you got to be careful with composites, but that was pretty darn close. But even though Ralph's statement and the composite sketch resemblance were pretty damning, Detectives knew that they would need more to actually charge Pete with the crime. So detectives took a copy of Pete's mugshot and showed it to multiple people in Marshall. Investigators were trying to independently determine if Pete had ever visited that part of Indiana.
Starting point is 00:28:03 determined if Pete had ever visited that part of Indiana. And sure enough, at least one person said they'd seen Pete in Marshall before. And this informant even knew of a buddy Pete had in the area that he'd been staying with for some time. A man by the name of Bob Vermillion, what's more is that Bob Vermillion actually lived very close to the house, Pixie, and Robert shared in Marshall only about a quarter mile away.
Starting point is 00:28:25 Here's Agent Wheelie again. Ironically Bob Vermillion was from Columbus, Ohio too, and he moved back there, which is eight miles from Whitehall. So you've got witness putting it, and I'm telling you, Marshall and Diana is off the beaten path to put someone in Marshall and Whiteullo that's very suspect there. The evidence was stacking up against Pete, but everything was still entirely circumstantial. What investigators were holding out for was a confession from Pete himself. Police did get to interview Pete about Pixie's murder while he was in prison for the murder
Starting point is 00:29:00 of Patricia Height, but Pete denied any involvement in Pixie's kidnapping and murder. Pete also denied ever being present at the Whitehall Holiday Inn. He claimed that everything Ralph said was an outright lie. And unfortunately, Pete stuck to that story, and police were stuck waiting for a confession that would never come. In 1982, three years after murdering Patricia Height, Pete died by suicide in prison. It had been four years since Pixie was killed, and the primary suspect was dead, and police had virtually no other leads to follow. And with that, Pixie's case went cold,
Starting point is 00:29:39 and the case remained nearly motionless for decades. But don't go thinking that's the end of the story. The case wasn't closed and put away for good. In 2007, Agent Wealy got a hold of the case and started reworking it. And right away, he had an idea. Nearly 30 years had passed since Pixie's murder, and DNA could be the missing piece of the puzzle investigators needed to finally close the case. So Agent Wealy went out on a limb and asked the Whitehall Police Department if they still had the evidence for Pixie's case.
Starting point is 00:30:10 He was especially interested in the rope that had been around Pixie's neck when she was found. He knew that it had to have been loaded with her killer's DNA. And sure enough, Whitehall PD did still have the evidence. It had been sitting there untouched for three decades. So Whitehall police sent the evidence to Agent Wealy, who then took it to the FBI's lab for testing. I was like, awesome, I was like, oh, we're so excited.
Starting point is 00:30:36 So he sends it out to us. We take it to the lab and they open it up, and they're like, plastic. As most of you might know, storing evidence in any kind of plastic is a big no-no for investigators nowadays. Plastic invites moisture and mold and ultimately destroys any usable DNA. So modern-day detectives now know to put their evidence in paper bags or envelopes, but this was the 1970s before anybody really knew better.
Starting point is 00:31:21 This was a huge blow to the investigation. Since there was almost no physical evidence tying Pete to the crime, they would need to hear from an eyewitness or get some other form of evidence to be satisfied that he was in fact the killer. But unfortunately, it was far too late for confession, and no one else was coming forward with information. You can't stop obsessing about it and trying to figure out what happened. And it's frustrating because you hit a point that I can't take this any further. What do you do in that situation? You try to give the family as much closure on it as it can.
Starting point is 00:32:05 If this is the only evidence I have, I can't get a conviction based on this. I probably wouldn't even get charged as file. But, you know, the individual is deceased. You know, how much, how much closure can you give the family? You know, I think we have strong evidence to believe. He was there. So unfortunately, we just, evidence to believe he was there. So unfortunately we just, not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Starting point is 00:32:30 When we asked Pixie's sister Eleanor what she thought about the Pete theory, she said that she's not 100% sure and she's not making any conclusions until there's enough evidence to warrant one. For more than 40 years, that's what Pixie's family had been waiting for. The evidence they needed to understand what happened to their beloved Pixie and why.
Starting point is 00:32:51 Eleanor, Pixie's children, and all the other members of her family have waited long enough for justice. Investigators never gave up on this case and they're not about to start now. So if you have any information on the kidnapping and murder of Mary Beth Grismore, aka Pixie, no matter how insignificant you think it might be, please speak up. Call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI, that's 1-800-225-532-4, or you can visit tips.fbi.gov. And again, please check our website. or you can visit tips.fbi.gov. And again, please check our website.
Starting point is 00:33:27 Check that list of items that we're missing from her car. You might have seen one. You might have one, and that might be the missing piece to the puzzle. 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?

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