The Deck - Patricia Allen (Queen of Hearts, Washington)

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Our card this week is Patricia Allen, the Queen of Hearts from Washington.On October 3, 1995, Patricia Allen was asleep on her couch when she was stabbed once so precisely that it nearly cut her heart in half. So begins one of the most mysterious homicide cases out of Yakima, Washington. With no shortage of suspects – including a woman who some believe wanted to become Patty – this case is truly stranger than fiction. Or, if you have any information at all about the October 3, 1995, murder of Patricia Allen, please email the Yakima Cold Case Unit at [e-mail]. You can also submit an anonymous tip through CrimeStoppers of Yakima County at crimestoppersyakco.org.View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/patricia-allen  Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

Our card this week is Patricia Allen, the Queen of Hearts from Washington. On an October night in 1995, Patricia Allen was asleep on her couch when she was stabbed once so precisely that it nearly cut her heart in half. And so began one of the most mysterious, downright, bizarre homicide cases in the Pacific Northwest history. With no shortage of suspects, including a woman who some believe wanted to become Patty, this case is truly stranger than fiction. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. Rennbills had been living in Yakima for about six months after following his girlfriend Patty out to Washington's high desert from their lush hometown in California. He got a job in a sawmill working the second shift.

That's what he was doing on the night of October 3rd into the early morning hours of the 4th of 1995. He was on the sawline until about 1 a.m. When they were let out, he offered his co-worker Wayne a lift home. They made a stop at his girlfriend's father's house to see if he had finished a new paint job on Wren's truck. He hadn't. And from there, Wren dropped off Wayne and swung over to Taco Bell for a late-night dinner. By 2 a.m., he pulled into the Glenmore Green apartments on the west side of Yakima and parked in front of apartment U-92, where he hoped Patty was still up.

He juggled a few things in his hands as he went to unlock the door, a piece of wood from work, his bag of takeout, and his keys. But weirdly, he noticed that the deadbolt wasn't locked like it usually was. When he walked in, the living room was dark, except for the TV which flickered with static and the kitchen light at the far end of the living room cast a yellow glow. He set the wood down and noticed Patty's side. silhouette sitting on the foot of the couch in an odd position. She was leaning back against the middle cushion with her arms extended out.

Wren called to her, but she didn't answer or move. As Wren moved closer, he quickly saw why. In the glow of the TV, he saw blood. I mean, Patty's T-shirt was soaked along with the couch and the carpet. Wren lunged for the phone, one of those 90s-cordid clear plastic. ones, only to find that Patty was sitting on it. So barely thinking straight, he ran to the building manager's unit and banged on the door. Ren pushed past the manager when he opened it and rushed to the phone to dial 911. After hearing police and ambulances were on their way,

Ren called Patty's dad. He was the middle of the night and Mr. Allen didn't answer, so Ren left a message on his answering machine. His message wasn't long. He just said that he thought Patty was dead. The Yakima Police Department dispatched Detective Nolan Wentz to the crime scene, and as he approached the front of the apartment, something immediately caught his eye.

There was a screen on the window into that bedroom that had been removed and was leaning up against the wall. The window was open, and it appeared to have some prime marks on the aluminum. It was old aluminum-type windows. There had been a stick

that was in that window, and And if that stick had been in the channel in place, you would not have got that window open. The stick was laying on the floor, so it had been removed from the inside. I don't know how conscious or consistent Patty was in security. Detective Wentz noted that the bedroom itself was devoid of any furniture, just a few trash bags full of clothes. So he initially focused his attention on the living room where Wren had found Patty. By the time Detective Wentz examined Patty himself, EMTs had moved her from the sitting position against the couch and laid her facing up on the floor. She wore a dull red t-shirt and black jeans with the buttons undone.

Wren told him that was common for Patty, though. She would sleep in her clothes and undo the buttons on her pants just to be more comfortable. And an autopsy the next day confirmed that there were no signs of sexual assault. Wren said it wasn't weird that she was in the living room either because they didn't have to. have a formal bed. They each slept on one of the two couches in the living room that faced the hulking black 90s television. Detective Wentz theorized that Patty had probably fallen asleep on the couch that night, as usual, and was surprised by her killer who thrust a knife once so hard into her sternum that it pierced her lung and nearly severed her heart in half.

Detective Wentz noted that Patty would have only had seconds to live with that kind of wound, And based on the lack of defensive wounds, he determined that Patty must have been startled awake by the attack, tried to get up and then collapsed against the couch. And on the couch was a sloppily folded, striped towel. Right on top of that towel was a rather large kitchen knife. Now, this is an older kind that had the real sharp separations, and that was what was used to kill her.

According to Wren, the knife, which still had blood on it, came from their own butcher block that was missing. What wasn't theirs was that striped towel. That was likely brought by the killer. The rest of the living room was pretty messy, littered with takeout boxes, half a dozen beer bottles, and random trash. But Detective Wentz had the team collect everything,

right down to the empty box of nerds candy on the floor. I spent a lot of time there, trying to see if I missed something, if there was something I needed to look at. And I returned to that place numerous times because we didn't release it right away. I wanted to make certain I had covered everything. And I eventually fingerprinted the entire apartment.

He also cordoned off the entire area and began to canvas the whole apartment complex. And at that time, on the backside, if you keep walking on the sidewalks, it leads you back to some other apartments, all similar in size. And then there was a fence, so this would be traveling east. And they found a butcher block of knives tossed over the fence, laying on a ground. Unfortunately, the springtowers had come on in between us finding that.

So everything got drenched pretty good. This was the missing butcher block from the crime scene. But this puzzled Detective Wends. Why would someone remove the knife block from the crime scene but leave the actual murder weapon? I don't know what to make of that. It certainly isn't behavior you would expect to see unless it was somebody who thought that that knife block would somehow point towards them. DNA was extremely early in being used. And I would think that they would probably be more concerned about fingerprints.

That was something that was used commonly. So it made me think that, okay, they had their fingerprints on that. They wanted to take that with them. But when they found that that fence was blocking their path, they just tossed it over the fence and then came back out and went around the other way and then left. And then forgot all about going to retrieve the knife block. While police didn't retrieve any additional physical evidence in their canvas, they did get an interesting statement from Patty's neighbor, Jeff Shaw.

Jeff shared a wall with Patty and Wren's unit, and he told police that sometime between 11 and midnight, he was awoken by two voices, a man and a woman's. Now, he couldn't make out any of their words, but he made a comment that the girl was going to, quote, get laid, though he couldn't explain why he thought that. Interestingly, the officer who interviewed Jeff also noted that he had a small scratch on his face that Jeff could provide no explanation for.

After all was said and done, the only thing that seemed to be missing was Patty's purse. But something about this didn't feel like a simple robbery gone wrong to Detective Wenz. Yes, the fact that the murder weapon came from the victim's own home suggested to him that the killer probably hadn't been prepared to commit a murder when they arrived. But he and Sergeant Kevin Kays, who eventually worked on the case, see the symbolism of stabbing someone in the heart as a potential message. it struck her lung and her heart and it basically cut her heart in half

which is very precise so when you think about a surgical murder this would be it it's just bizarre how it's just right over her heart I mean that to me screams like a personal a personal attack on somebody it's like the love story gone wrong

you know and when you think about this case you know, there is the love triangle possibility. Was that somebody who thought there was something more and was angry about it and his heart was broken? Was there someone in Patty's life who had their heart broken? The obvious place to start was with Wren. In a conversation with police, Wren said that they'd actually been on the fritz

not too long before the murder when he found out another man had sent a vase of flowers to Patty. Wren told police that he found out Patty had met this guy, Rick Rhodes, when she went out to a local bar with her stepmother. According to Wren, Patty's stepmother encouraged her to go out with Rick because Patty and Wren were already having issues. Ren said that she did, but it seemed like Rick had stronger feelings for Patty than she did for him. So Rick had sent her flowers and a teddy bear.

Then when Wren learned the full story, he got so angry he smashed the vase on the front walk, packed up all his furniture from their shared apart. and moved out. But in the last couple of weeks before the murder, Wren and Patty had reconciled and he moved back in. Our reporter hasn't been able to make contact with Rick, but police did corroborate this story with him back in 1995. And all in all, they believed Ren.

They believed that he and Patty were on an upswing and he wouldn't have had a motive to kill her. More importantly, they knew that he wouldn't have had the opportunity. You see, Detective Wentz was able to narrow down a timeline for when Patty died based on her movements that day. Patty worked at a local store as a cashier, and her regular shift was from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The day of the murder, October 3rd, Patty left work a little after 6. A receipt found in her car showed that Patty then went to an ATM and withdrew $5. This was at $6.52. A takeout bag found at the crime scene told detectives that she had gone to

a fast-food joint called Burger Ranch after the ATM. And then phone records put her at home by 7.30 when she makes a quick call to her father. Her last confirmed interaction with someone was at 8.17 p.m. That's when she made a long-distance phone call to a friend back in California, who spoke with Patty for about 25 minutes. And this friend noted that Patty did seem a little down, but, I mean, the conversation was like a normal catch-up and Patty didn't talk about anything that was wrong. That call ended at around 8.45 p.m.

And after that, Patty's time is unaccounted for. But Wren's is. Detective Wens was able to verify that Wren was at work on the saw line from 2.30 p.m. on October 3rd to 1 a.m. on the 4th. So Detective Wence had to look beyond him. And in doing so, look more holistically at all the relationships in Patty's life. Friends and family described Patty as strong-willed, down-to-earth and beautiful. She also spoke her mind and could sometimes be callous with a person's feelings, even with the people she was really close to.

In a more formal second interview with Wren, Detective Wenz learned that a few months before, a man named Nathan had lived with them at the apartment. Nathan was a friend of Wrenz from back in California, and Wren said that Patty did not like him. She was jealous of all the time Ren and Nathan spent together. She threatened to go to the landlord to have Nathan evicted so Nathan decided to leave where he wasn't welcome and go back to California. Detective Wentz did interview Nathan, and while he confirmed that he and Patty didn't get along, he told Wentz that he was in California at the time of the murder, and the detective was able to verify that.

Ren also told Detective Wentz about Patty's former best friend Brandy, whom she met at work. They spent a lot of time together. Brandy did spend a lot of time at their apartment there. They would get together regularly to watch TV programs, and one in particular was 90210. Patty was a real strong, world one. Brandy was the one that was really kind of stand back, make-mile, didn't say much,

and Patty kind of took advantage of that. She boxed her around, did all kinds of things, told her that she was being a doormat for another guy, that Brandy was seeing. And just, you know, if Brandy would do something she didn't approve of, she let her know right way. The more Detective Wentz dug into the dynamic between Patty and Brandy, the more significant Brandy became to the investigation.

It was clear that the women had a complicated friendship. Detective Wentz believes that Brandy idolized Patty, and he even went so far as to theorize that she wanted to be. Patty. Co-workers told Detective Wendt that while Brandy was usually meek and mild, she would sometimes have emotional meltdowns under stressful situations, and her job wasn't without stress. Apparently, the store that Patty and Brandy worked at was like the Love Island of mid-90s

Yakima. Detective Wence learned from a co-worker that before Patty's murder, Bramette's, Brandy's boyfriend went out with another woman who also worked there. Brandy threatened her, which she got fired for. Plus, Brandy had some health issues, too. She had severe alopecia, so she didn't have a lot of hair on her head and wore wigs all the time. And Patty would often go with her when it was time to go get another wig, and they'd go over to the west side.

It gets better wigs over there to buy new different wigs. But eventually, the friendship dynamic started to change. Now, Brandy was interesting in the fact that she kind of wanted to be Patty, almost to the point that she went over the top. She bought a car just like Patty. At one point, Patty even became suspicious that Brandy was trying to take Ren from her. And she didn't think Ren was totally innocent in all of it. Wren told detectives that just a few weeks before her murder, Patty had a cute. them of having an affair.

And this wasn't all in Patty's head, by the way. Just a month or so before the murder, Ren told Detective Wentz that Brandy had called out sick from work, and Patty caught them, hanging out alone at their apartment. And then on another day, Patty discovered that Brandy had spent her lunch break with Ren. Patty found out that Brandy was out in the car with Ren in the parking lot, and she's dead upset. You're trying to make moves on my guy. and set her straight.

You are not to be around, him at all. In fact, you can just stay away from me. Our reporter spoke to a woman named Andrea, who reached out to us because of my TikTok post on Patty's case. Andrea was dating a coworker of Wren's at the time, actually Wayne, the guy who Wren gave a ride to on the night of the murder. And Andrea told us that five days before the murder, she met Patty for the first time when Wren invited them over to their place.

Wren and Wayne left to go to the store, and Patty told Andrea all about Brandy and how she was trying to steal Ren from her. Andrea said that as far as she knew, Wren never mentioned Brandy to Wayne, and she didn't know if they were actually having any kind of affair. Wren himself told Detective Wend's that nothing romantic happened between him and Brandy. But when Patty drew the final line and cut Brandy out of her life, it couldn't have come at a worse time. On October 3rd, this is the day of the murder. Co-workers told Detective Wentz that Brandy discovered she was pregnant. But when she'd gone to tell her boyfriend the news,

apparently he didn't have the most supportive reaction. But she tells her boyfriend that she's pregnant. Well, I'll tell you what. Instead of being reassuring or anything else, he says, I'm going to go have dinner with my folks. I'll talk to you later, and off he goes. So she's left. pregnant and basically alone.

According to documentation in the police case files, Detective Wentz spoke with Brandy about the pregnancy and she confirmed it directly to him. But even though Patty had cut things off and pissed Brandy off so bad that coworkers overheard her calling Patty evil saying she hated her and that she, quote, wished Patty would go to hell, Detective Wentz can still see a world

where Patty is still the person that Brandy wants to turn to in this time. Patty's at home. This is the night that they normally get together for their television program. It would only make sense that she would go by there. Now, I don't know if Patty was the kind to hold her grudge very long. If she set you straight, she would probably be comfortable thinking that that was it, that was going to take care of it.

It would make sense for Brandy to go there because that's her best friend. That's somebody she could talk to about all of the. these issues happening. But did she go there that night? According to an issue of TV Guide from 1995, this wasn't actually the night that a new episode of 90210 would air. That would have been the next day on October 4th. And finding any physical evidence of Brandy being in Patty's apartment

wouldn't be all that damning since police knew they'd previously been friends. Unless they could find that evidence on something directly connected to the murder, like, say, the murder weapon, or that striped tass. And lucky for Wentz, this is right about the time results came back from the lab on the evidence collected at the crime scene. There were no fingerprints found on anything the killer would have touched, including the knife or the knife block. However, lab technicians found four hairs on the striped towel. Two of them belonged to Patty. The third hair appeared to be a pubic hair that was not patties.

And the fourth proved to be not brandies, but not, not connected to brandy either. You see, the fourth hair wasn't hair at all, in the sense that it wasn't biological material like human hairs are. This strand was synthetic, like, say, hairs from a wig. Now, Detective Wentz hadn't talked to Brandy yet. He was busy collecting as much information and stories about Brandy before he approached. And he wasn't just getting anecdotes from before Patty's murder. Several attendees of Patty's funeral came to him and described Brandy's odd behavior at the service. All of these people come to me and say, her behavior was just over the top at the, you know.

What do you mean by that? Well, I guess she was just wailing and carrying on and hanging on to Wren. And everybody's going, this is, this makes no sense. This is someone who was her best friend, sure, but it's like she is inserting herself as Patty with Rent. Andrea, who also attended Patty's funeral, told us that Brandy's behavior was odd. She said Brandy was standing next to Ren for the whole service, rubbing his back and otherwise acting just a little too familiar. And then she overheard Rent telling Brandy that he was going to drop her off at home before heading to the wake at Patty. his dad's house, but Brandy insisted that she go with him to the wake.

And this struck Andrea as strange and inappropriate, so much so that she remembered this detail for 30 years. So after hearing several similar accounts, Detective Wenz decided it was time to bring Brandy in for a formal interview. It was one of the oddest interviews I've ever experienced. She picked a point on the wall and left. Her body was still there, but she was gone. I don't know where she went. And it was kind of like talking to a mannequin. She just removed herself from the situation.

She no longer wanted to participate, but she did not want to come out and say, I don't want to do this. Detective Wendt said that Brandy, point-blank, denied killing Patty. She never even came close to confessing to anything. But she also couldn't account for her time on the evening of October 3rd, so Brandy didn't have a good alibi. Now, Brandy did agree to take a polygraph test, which came out inconclusive.

So frustrated that that exam wouldn't tell him if Brandy was lying or not, Detective Wentz hired another polygrapher whom he trusted to conduct the second test, which Brandy agreed to. But when it came time to actually do the second exam, she never showed up, which only served to heighten Detective Wentz's suspicions. As did Brandy's continued follow-up with her. him. She wanted to stay close and see what was going on. She would actually call me. I mean,

I don't have a confession, and I would need that to be able to go after her. Because although I have this tremendous volume of circumstantial evidence, I don't have that one little piece of physical evidence or her admission that that's what happened. And when you're dealing with those type of things, you've got to be able to satisfy in your own mind that this is going to hold up in court, because that's your ultimate goal. And I wasn't there yet. He felt pretty sure Brandy was lying, but he couldn't prove that. He was more confident that she was trying to move in on Ren, though, because guess who were living together in California by the spring of 1996? Detective Wentz only learned about this when he did a follow-up call with

So we talked for a little bit. I said, how's things going? Okay, have you heard anything? I said, no, not so much. He tells me that Brandy was down there with him. Well, you know, if you hear something, let me know. Well, the next day he calls me back and says that she had been listening to the conversation he was having with me. Ren also told Detective Wentz that he and Brandy were now dating, and she had moved with him back home to live with his mother in Santa Rosa, California. And that wasn't all. And as soon as we hung up, she asked him who was at, what was Detective Wentz? And she panicked, called mom, got a plane ticket back to Yakima, and abandoned all of her stuff.

Just left it, her car, everything. And I'm thinking, are you kidding me? This is, this makes no sense. This is a knee-jerk reaction that should not have happened. Brandy's quick exit from California meant that Detective Wentz had an opportunity to execute a search warrant on Brandy's things that she left behind. I talked to the captain and let me go down there, and I got a hold of detectives in Santa Rosa,

and we seized her car, everything that she had left behind, trying to look for some kind of forensic evidence. We went through everything, snatched everything up as best we could. In Brandy's car, police found one or two of her wigs that they sent to the lab to be compared to the synthetic hairs that were recovered from the striped towel at the crime scene. And the lab says these fibers from this wig are not similar, but are not the same. Where Brandy went after this is anyone's guess. Detective Wenz assumed that she went back to live with her mother in Yakima. We do know, however, that Brandy and Wren either got back together or continued their relationship and lived for a while in California.

And by the way, in case you were wondering, because I know I was, whether it was really Wren's baby that Brandy was pregnant with, here's what I know. Detective Wentz said that Brandy's mother came forward of her own volition to tell him that Brandy had made the difficult decision to have an abortion. But she said they still had done a paternity test and determined that the father was not Wren. It was Brandy's boyfriend. However, aside from discussing it with Brandy himself, Detective Wens never actually saw any documentation of the pregnancy or of the abortion or the paternity test. And he acknowledged a reporter that he thought Brandy could have even made up the whole pregnancy to begin with. At the time, Detective Wenz didn't think the paternity was relevant to the investigation so he didn't probe it. further. And try as we might, we haven't been able to reach Brandy or her ex-boyfriend whose baby

her mom said it was. Years later, Detective Wentz wasn't exactly sure when, but years later, he got one final phone call from Wren. The last time I talked to him, he called me kind of out of the blue. And he told me that he and Brandy would go back and forth and joke about big kitchen knives. And she would joke that if you get out of line, I know where the kitchen knives are. Well, he calls me out of the blue. Apparently, Brandy decided that they were going to be no more. And he comes home from work, and the house is cleaned out.

And she's gone. Took everything, except one thing left in the kitchen, the big kitchen knife. Wren told Detective Wend's that he thought this was Brandy's way of confessing to him. He asked Wren if Brandy ever did confess in a straightforward way, and he said no, and that's actually what prompted the story about the knife. Sometime after Wren and Brandy broke up, though, again, unclear exactly when, Wren ended up moving to Thailand for unknown reasons, and because of that, it's been difficult for detectives and us to reach him for follow-up.

and police's last contact with Brandy was actually in 1996 when she came in to submit a pubic hair sample for the lab to use for comparison, which we know didn't match. Detective Wentz eventually left Yakima PD to become the chief of police in Wapato, a small town on the edge of the Yakima Reservation. So years later, Sergeant Kevin Kays and his partner, Detective Drew Shaw, took over the investigation. Though YPD didn't have a cold case,

unit per se, so they couldn't devote many hours or resources to cases as old as Paddy's. When it was their turn to take a crack at it, though, they too were suspicious of Brandy. But they felt like now they had better forensic technology at their fingertips. And the first thing they did was root through the evidence room and identify items from Patty's case that could be retested for suspect DNA, starting with the objects the killer had to have touched. Now, unfortunately, the knife block didn't yield any DNA or fingerprints, but the knife did. Testing of the knife handle identified two different DNA sources. Now, of the two DNA sources, one was either too degraded or there just weren't enough markers to make it

eligible for sequencing, but the other one could be sequenced to the point of developing a profile. Now, authorities had to consider that the DNA found on the knife handle could have belonged to anyone who spent meaningful time in Patty's home since it come from the knife block at her place. Most obviously, Patty herself. But when they compared, Patty was not a match. Now, no one can confirm for us what the belief was among investigators around whether this profile was male or female. To me, it seems like they thought the profile. They thought the profile file was female, because instead of clearing Wren next, who lived in the home just like Patty, they went straight to comparing Brandy's DNA.

And in our first conversation with Yakima PD's evidence text, she told our reporter that the DNA was female. Now, luckily, they already had Brandy's DNA on file from that pubic hair sample she gave, and Brandy was not a match to the DNA. The unknown profile has since been added to Kodis, where you know, profiles are automatically compared to other samples from offenders in the system. But so far, there haven't been any hits. But here's the thing.

It's not surprising that Brandy wasn't a match, because the Yakima PD Lab tech later emailed to say that she'd been in touch with a scientist who actually ran these tests on the knife and confirmed that the suspect DNA on the knife was clearly male. So was thinking this DNA was female just a misreading of the lab report in 2025? Or did detectives believe all along that it was female DNA and only recently look at their lab reports for this episode and find out that they should be looking for a male suspect? When asked to clarify this, Yakima PD declined to elaborate.

Now, since Detective Wentz retired, he hadn't had the opportunity to. follow-up on new developments in Patty's investigation. He actually didn't even know that suspect DNA had been identified on the murder weapon. So our reporter, Jennifer Amel, broke the news to him that the DNA didn't match his main person of interest, Brandy. Had you heard that before? Nope. That's entirely new to me. What do you think? I don't know. I would love to know whose DNA that is.

Same. Same. And is it even the killers? If the DNA belonged to Wren, for example, that wouldn't necessarily prove anything since he lived in the home with Patty. Not only has his DNA never been compared, detectives never collected a sample from Wren or any of the other men involved in this investigation. So we don't know if any of them are a match. And there's also the other DNA contributor from the knife. We know a profile couldn't be developed, so we don't know if that's potentially Patty's DNA.

But what if it's neither Patty's nor Wrens? What if two people were involved? It turns out that in July of 1995, three months before Patty's murder, two people broke into Patty's apartment. And guess how? By prying open, the same bedroom window Detective Wentz paid so much attention to day one.

which now calls into question whether the window is as relevant as they always thought. And it gets weirder. The people who broke in were Patty's paternal aunt, who was also named Patty Allen, and her boyfriend, Randy Jared. Aunt Patty went by her previous married name, Patty Raspberry. So I'm going to refer to her as that to avoid confusion. Now, Patty's father told police that when Patty and Ren moved to Yakima,

they didn't have much in the way of furniture. So Patty Raspberry decided to sell them her couch. And since the young couple were still trying to get jobs, it was agreed on by all parties that they would pay for the couch in installments. But according to Patty Raspberry, they never did finish paying her. So one night, she and her small-time criminal of a boyfriend, Randy, allegedly broke into Patty and Ren's apartment. Now, for what exactly we're not sure?

Because though the incident report from Patty's murder says that Patty reported the burglary, Detective Drew Shaw told us that minor reports from 1995 have been destroyed. But Wren told police that he and Patty were asleep in their bedroom when they say Patty Raspberry and Randy broke in through the window. They were quickly awakened by the noise and caught Patty Raspberry and Randy red-handed. Wren said he just asked them to leave, and they did, without incident. Do you recall anything, like, in terms of an alibi for Patty Raspberry and or her boyfriend?

You know, at this point, I don't remember. I don't remember focusing on them much at all. I know they had been there, but it just seemed bizarre to me to just out of the blue decide to go there and kill Patty and then run out the door. It makes no sense. A background check on Patty Raspberry

revealed 11 criminal charges, including burglary, breaking and entering, narcotics possession, and forgerate, among other lesser charges. Her boyfriend Randy had several drug charges, a DUI conviction, as well as a domestic assault charge in 2008, violating an order of protection in 2009, and even a strangulation charge in 2010.

It was not immediately clear to us which, if any, of these charges against Patty Raspberry and Randy Jared led to convictions. In the incident report for Patty's murder, the officer notes that Patty had said she was afraid of her aunt, and Patty had limited contact with her after the break-in. The Allen family told Detective Wendt that they had a number of disputes with Patty Raspberry and that she had a substance use disorder, and they left it at that. Randy died at April of this year, and Patty Raspberry has not responded to our request for comment.

We know Randy's DNA was never collected, so it cannot be compared, though police notes say that Patty Raspberry and Randy both had, quote, good alibis. though what those alibis were exactly have been lost to time. But there were still several other men who came up in the investigation, like Rick Rhodes, the guy who sent Patty Flowers after their date, Nathan, the roommate who Patty sent packing back to California, and Jeff Shaw, that neighbor with the scratch on his face. According to police notes, Rick Rhodes also had an alibi for the night Patty was murdered,

so Detective didn't look into him any further. Now, what the alibi actually was, detectives we talked to don't remember. And we tried reaching out to Rick, but he hasn't responded to our request for comment. Nathan, the roommate, also had a verified alibi. He was in California at the time. Which leaves Jeff Shaw, the neighbor. Now, in a strange twist of fate, Jeff is actually the uncle of Detective Drew Shaw, who is overseeing cold case investigations for the Yakima Police Department now.

Detective Shaw described his uncle as the dude from the Big Lebowski, and he said he didn't know his uncle to be a violent man. Detective Shaw said that he was the kind of guy who was friendly with everyone and held a job at Costco only to support his golf habit. A fact that stuck with our reporter Jennifer, as she later interviewed Wentz about the striped towel that was found at the crime scene. I dug as much as I could as to where did this towel come from, and it was sold through Costco.

Wait a minute. Didn't Shaw work at Costco? Yes, he did. We were not able to confirm if Shaw worked at Costco at the time of the murder. And even if he did, anyone could have purchased that towel. It's not evidence that he committed this murder. Throughout the investigation, Jeff's story never changed. He said he was at home, asleep when he was awoken by a male and female voice around 11 or 12 that night.

He said he did have his TV on, so that might have confused him, but there was no one home with him to confirm his alibi. Detective Wentz said he even brought Jeff in for a polygraph, and Jeff passed. Now, Jeff has since passed away, so current investigators, and we can't talk to him ourselves. Detective Shaw, however, told us that he can't rule out his uncle, despite him passing a polygraph. And when we asked if he was going to submit his own DNA to see if there were any familial comparisons. Detective Shaw said that he wouldn't be commenting publicly. And there's one final loose end here. Not too long before Patty's murder, and I don't have an

exact date, but Patty called the police to report a prowler. Today, no one remembers much about this. It's just an offhanded mention in an incident report from her murder. And like any report from a break in attempt, it's since been destroyed. The officer who took the report passed away in 2020 as well, so we couldn't even talk to him to see if he remembered anything. But Detective Wentz told us that he thought the prowler turned out to be someone who lived in the apartment complex, someone who either had mental health issues or a substance use disorder. Now, the evidence tech told us, like Wren, they do not have DNA samples from any of the men

I've mentioned, so they aren't able to rule any of them out forensically. It's also very important to note that Brandy has never been charged. charged in this case. We reached out to her for this episode in every way we could think of, but we are not sure if she even received our requests. But Brandy, if you're listening, we would still love to speak with you. Even though he's now retired, Detective Wentz has never stopped thinking about this case. Oh, this will live with me forever until I depart.

I mean, all of these cases do, but I try to forget them, erase them from memory. Because they're not always memories that you want to have. But this one, they train you when you're going through your different classes to not get personally involved. You want to keep a distance away from these things. And I understand that. I would do my best to make certain that I was open to every different possibility that I wasn't always right. But on the same hand, if you don't have some personal involvement, personal drive, You're not going to do a good job.

You've got to have that fire in your belly that makes you go that extra bit to make certain that what you're doing is the right way. In a way, I guess I kind of take things personal. And if I have a case that I don't have a solution to, yeah, it stays with me forever. To this day, police have never found the one item taken from Patty's home, her purse and her wallet. So if anyone remembers finding a purse in or around Yakima, Washington, around October of 1995, please reach out. Or if you have any information at all about the October 3rd, 1995 murder of Patricia Allen, please email the Yakima Cold Case Unit at YPD Coldcase at yakamawa.gov. I'll put that in the show notes.

You can also submit a tip anonymously through the crime stoppers of Yakima County. at Crime Stoppers, Y-A-K-C-O.org. The Deck is an audio-chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit the Deckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.