The Deck - The Deck Investigates S1 | Part 2

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

This is The Deck Investigates Season One, episodes 7-12. Click HERE to sign the petition and demand justice for Darlene Hulse.If you believe you have information about Darlene Hulse’s 1984 abduction and murder in Argos, Indiana, please email [e-mail]. To view information and photos referenced in these episodes, visit: https://thedeckpodcast.com/the-deck-investigates/. Find more of The Deck Investigates on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllc The Deck Investigates is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at [phone] to share your thoughts about the case, discuss all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

By January 1987, Marshall County authorities were noticing a pattern emerging. Here's an excerpt read from Sergeant Dave Yoclet's case summary. In the past several years, since 1982, this officer has been involved in the investigating of several violent crimes that have occurred in the extreme southern portion of Marshall County, Indiana. Two of those crimes involved homicides, one of which was in 1984, the Hulse Homicide, the other in 1986, the Pelts Homicide. In each of the three cases that have been investigated, I have found to be a two-year interval. The geographical area and the close proximity

of each of these cases are a concern of this investigator. Yookalit starts that window of time in 1982 because he's including Pam's case. If you remember from last episode, Pam is the woman who survived a break-in and attempted rape in December of 1982. That was the first of the three cases. There's nothing I can find that shows what exactly the thread was that finally connected all three. 38 years later, and the people in charge today say that they don't know either. But I think it was just one of those things, like an autostarogram.

It's fuzzy until you see it. And then once the image within the picture emerges, you can't unsee it. Brandy was killed just a mile and a half away from Darlene in the middle of the day. It's easy to see why Darlene's case, which was still fresh in everyone's mind, was compared. But unlike Darlene, Brandi got a harassing phone call before her death.

And maybe that is the piece of red string that they were connecting from Brandi to Pam. Because if you remember, Pam too got a harassing call right before the intruder broke into her home. Once you're looking at Pam's case, you're reminded just how similar that was to Darlene's murder. Darlene's body was found just a stone's throw away

from Pam's home. On their own, they can seem different, but altogether, you see the picture, right? A triangle of connections from each case back to the other. Sergeant Dave Yoclet had no idea if he was right. But there was a way he could begin to find out. This is episode seven, Bring in the FBI. If the string connecting Pam and Brandy's case was the phone calls, then that is where

police were going to start. For the first time, it seems. Because in December of 1987, there is documentation of police requesting the phone records for Pam's home from August of 1982 to January of 1983. They requested such a large window of time because Pam had other harassing phone calls prior to the break-in. She even got one after where the man breathed into the phone and said that he was the one who'd been inside her home. She reported all of those calls to police, but for some reason, officers never checked to see where the calls had come from in 1982.

Or even in 1984 after Darlene was murdered and left in a wooded field right by Pam's house. So why now, you ask? Great question. One I love to get the answer to. But no one connected to the investigation has given us a solid answer. So I can only guess. But I think I have a good guess. It stems from the way I hear people, mostly men, talk about Pam's case now. They'll tell you, yeah, he broke in, but nothing happened. And I think that's how they thought about it then. Nothing really happened.

After Darlene's murder, it's clear from the tips that were called in and the canvassing that was done that harassing phone calls were commonplace in Argus at the time. So even though a line had been crossed, a very serious, very physical line into Pam's home, it doesn't seem like a lot of resources were expended trying to figure out who that man was that crossed the line. Pam went on to live in fear after her attack. She always wondered what the man in her home was capable of, if he would escalate. And now, with a woman dead and a child dead, a child who had received a similar call, police were probably wondering if this guy had escalated. So now they decide to pull Pam's phone records.

They got the call logs back almost immediately after requesting them in December of 1987. And that was it. Once they had those, Pam's case was solved. That easy. The harassing calls pointed to one man, a guy from nearby Culver, Indiana named Kenneth McCune Jr. Two calls prior to the break-in at Pam's house were made from Kenneth's home, and the one made to Pam's house just before the home invasion

was from Kenneth's dad's barn, where he worked. Now, Kenneth wasn't exactly a stranger to police, but he also wasn't considered a local bad boy the way that Ricky Mock and Danny Bender had been. While those guys seemed hard up for cash, Kenneth's criminal motivations seemed sexually driven because he had been accused of being a serial flasher. There had been several complaints made by women about a man flashing his penis in different places around the county, and one of those women specifically identified Kenneth.

Police learned that Kenneth went to high school in Culver but lived in rural Marshall County, not too far from where Pam lived and not too far from where Darlene's body was found. They also learned that he had worked as a farm hand on his uncle's farm, which was even closer to the woods where Darlene's body was found. He'd also worked as a bus driver for Culver School District

and dabbled in used car sales throughout the 80s alongside his dad, Kenneth Sr. Now they knew they had Kenneth Jr. for Pam's case. Along with the phone records pinning him as the caller, there was actually a tip early on in Pam's case from Kenneth's sister saying that she saw her brother's truck in front of Pam's house the morning of the crime. Now, she had a caveat in that very same statement saying that it wasn't her brother's truck, just one that looked exactly like it.

But his name was there in their case file from just weeks after Pam's attack. But they weren't ready to move in on Kenneth just yet. If this was bigger than just Pam, they wanted to be sure. So Sergeant Yoclet pulled in the big guns, and he wrote to the FBI. The undersigned, investigating the homicides of Brandy Peltz and Darlene Hulse and the home invasion of Pam, has investigated these crimes from the standpoint of being individual cases and that the assailants responsible for those cases are separate individuals and that these cases are unrelated, and it is only coincidence that they have occurred

within a particular geographical area. At the same time, this officer has geared my investigations to include that very well, that all three of these cases may be linked together, and I base that opinion on several similarities that I feel exist in each of these cases." In total, the summary Sergeant Yoclet submitted was five pages long and went over every detail he knew of each crime. Yoclet was requesting help. He was looking for insight into what characteristics they could expect to find in the perpetrator of the Hulse homicide. But I also think by including information about the other cases, Sergeant Yoclet was

trying to see if the FBI saw the same connection he did. From the response he got, it doesn't look like the FBI even acknowledged the other cases. They just honed in on the analysis of Darlene's case. But what FBI agent Thomas Salp had to say about the analysis of Darlene's case. But what FBI agent Thomas Salp had to say about the profile of Darlene's killer was very enlightening. Offender Characteristics and Traits The offender in this case is a white male. Our experience and research reflects that the behavioral factors noted in this crime suggest that the offender would be from the low 20s to 30 years of age.

Our research and experience reflects that offenders will dispose of victims' bodies in locations that are familiar to them. In this case, the remote, isolated area where the victim's body was found suggests that the offender had a strong familiarity, the remote, isolated area where the victim's body was found suggests that the offender had a strong familiarity with the area, which is most likely due to having lived, worked, or visited in the area. Our experience relates that the offender would not have more than a high school education and would not have done well scholastically.

His school records would likely reflect disruptive behavior. He has an inadequate personality and is lacking in interpersonal skills. He has a difficult time relating to females and feels insecure when in their company. Any relationships with females would be marked with conflict or even physical violence. His choice of female companionship would be with someone considerably younger than him that he would be able to dominate. We would expect him to be living alone or with a significant family member, such as a domineering mother, older sister, or grandmother, upon whom he is somewhat dependent. He would be described by others as a loner and likely does not have a close circle of

friends. The brutality at the crime scene reflects anger, resulting from short or long-term stressors in the offender's life experiences. Our research and experience reflect that these precipitating stressors can be the result of conflict with a significant female in the offender's life, employment pressures, death of a significant person, etc. The use of drugs or alcohol by the offender in this case should not be ruled out. Although the offender apparently brought duct tape with him,

the crime scene does not reflect a great deal of criminal sophistication. The offender likely has a police record that would reflect assaultive type behavior, possibly sexual assault, and drug or alcohol related violations. If the offender is employed, it would be in unskilled to semi-skilled work, and he would have a spotty work record, which also reflects an inability to work well with others. The time of the assault also indicates that the offender did not have to account for his time on that morning. If the offender owns a vehicle, it would reflect his financial and social standing in the community. Post-offensive behavior. After disposing of the victim's body, the offender would have gone to a location he

considered safe to decompress. He would not have any remorse for his crime, and his only concern would be a fear of being connected to the crime. He would have cleaned the blood from his clothes. However, our experience indicates that this offender would not be likely to dispose of the clothes he wore during the commission of the crime. The offender would have become reclusive for several days following the crime and would have tried to establish an alibi in case he was questioned by the police.

If he was employed, he may have provided a reason to be absent from work the day after the crime. His physical appearance would have deteriorated more than usual, and if he uses drugs or alcohol, his consumption of those products would have deteriorated more than usual, and if he uses drugs or alcohol, his consumption of those products would have increased. Persons who know him well would have recognized his increased anxiety. If contacted by the police, he likely would have appeared cooperative, but would have claimed no knowledge about the crime. He would probably have followed the progress of the investigation through the media and by overhearing others in the community. However, the offender would not be likely to engage

in conversation about the crime. At the time, there was only one person to hold up against this profile and compare, Kenneth McCune Jr. On one hand, a few of the characteristic traits matched McCune to a T, familiar with the area? Check. Only a high school degree? Check. Odd jobs? No established career? Check, check. He even slightly resembled the suspect description with his long, skinny nose. But one thing that didn't match was the fact that Kenneth was married, with kids.

Knowing what they knew about Kenneth's alleged flashing habits, that fact puzzled investigators. It seems that in 1988, Yoclet tried to talk to Kenneth, specifically about Darlene's case. Here's a reenactment of that transcript. Kenny, you're familiar with the investigation I've been conducting into the death of Darlene Hulse? Yes. Were you familiar with Darlene Hulse? I knew where she lived.

Okay. How was it you knew where she lived? Well, one time me and my dad had bailed some straws and hay down a road and when that happened the way it was described to me where it had happened was associated with that particular year we bailed the hay as far as you know my memory goes. You'd never seen Mrs. Hulse when you were bailing hay or driving up and down the road? I could yeah I think. Do you remember where you saw her at? I think she I went down in front of the house and the kids were outside or something I'm not sure. Were there any other times other than this that you'd saw Mrs. Hulse anywhere?

I wouldn't know if I would recognize her, you know, walking down the street or anything, no. That was only part of the transcript of Kenneth's interview with Sergeant Yoclet. We have this part because the recording of that interview was played during a court proceeding that we did a records request for. That's the only part they played in court, and we don't have documentation of the full interview, so I'm not sure where the conversation went from there.

And we weren't able to find any further documentation about how or even if they tried to connect Kenneth to Darlene's case back in 1987. And obviously, a few similarities in an FBI profile aren't enough to accuse him of murder. So later that year, they just moved forward with cases that they did have evidence for. In November 1987, police charged Kenneth with public indecency for one of the flashing incidents, the one where the victim identified him. And a month later, they arrested him for the 1982 home invasion and attempted rape of Pam. At first, Kenneth had denied the crime.

But when he realized that police not only had record of him calling and harassing her, but they also had collected blood on her doorframe where the intruder had cut himself and it belonged to him, the jig was up. Kenneth admitted to everything and took a plea deal for a lesser charge of burglary. The prosecutor just dropped the attempted rape charge altogether.

Oh, and that indecent exposure case, that actually went to trial. Kenneth was acquitted, but according to the transcript from his 1989 sentence modification hearing, he admitted that it was actually him. Now I wanna take just two seconds and acknowledge how infuriating this must have been for Pam. All these years, they had the evidence they needed to solve her case, but it took two more people dying for them to thoroughly investigate it.

And when they finally did, the end result had to feel like what they were saying all along. Well, nothing really happened to you. He just broke in. She deserved to be believed from the beginning. And I guess delayed justice is better than nothing, but it meant that she lived in fear for nearly five years before Kenneth was finally arrested. Despite being caught in a lie over Pam's assault,

Kenneth denied having anything to do with Darlene's murder. He went on to serve time in prison until 1991, and then he went on to live a crime-free life. His wife stayed with him, they raised their daughters, he kept a job, and even volunteered in his community. Now, we don't have access to any of the reports or documentation on Brandi's case, so I don't know if Kenneth was ever questioned about her murder. We asked prosecutor Nelson Chipman, who is in charge of that case today, if they were

ever able to trace the call Brandi got before her murder, and if any calls were linked back to Kenneth McHugh. But he wouldn't say. I would highly doubt anything in Brandi's case was ever linked back to Kenneth. Like I mentioned last episode, her case went on to garner far more attention and he has never been named by anyone official or otherwise in connection to the case.

Like I said last episode, after Brandi was murdered, her death really overshadowed Darlene's. And former Sergeant Dave Yoclet seemed to take offense today when I told them Darlene's name isn't known around town, because they say they remember it so well. But it's the truth. After 1987, Darlene's case had come to a screeching halt, and it stayed there for damn near 40 years. That is until the one daughter,

who was too young to remember anything, started asking questions. I remember dad saying, if you have any questions, you can go ask Marie Melissa. So I started inquiring then. You were young. We always told you. I mean, I don't remember, like you said, a knot.

It was never a secret. Do you remember how old you were when you started asking your sister's questions? Probably seven or eight. I remember sitting on the steps in the garage and asking some things. And I'll never forget one time, Wilsta said the one thing that she regrets was not getting me, not grabbing me when they were running out. And I think that's kind of piqued my interest. Like, what do you mean? Like, where was I? What was going on?

So then I started asking more. And I just always told myself, when I get older, I want to do some digging and see what I can find or if I can ask questions that I want to know about to the detectives. So that's kind of where I'm coming from. And then it got to a point about seven years ago where I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. What Kristen would go on to do would completely change the trajectory of her mother's case.

That's next in episode 8. It all goes through one guy. You can listen to that right now. In 2016, Kristen was all grown up and a mom of her own when she decided to take her mom's cold case into her own hands. It got to a point about seven years ago where I was like, okay, I want to do this. I was sitting at home with little kids and I just started reaching out and like, hey, is there anything new, anything going on?

Who can I talk to? And a lot of them were, no, there's nothing new, there's nothing I can tell you because I don't know anything type of thing. She was asking all those questions over the phone and via email from hundreds of miles away. So it's not like she could just march down to the prosecutor's office and demand answers. You see, it had been decades since Kristin or any of her immediate family members had lived in Indiana.

Back in 1989, five years after Darlene's murder, Ron got a new job opportunity with the Doar Manufacturing Company. So the Holes family moved away from Argus, and not just out of town, to a whole different state. This is episode 8. It all goes through one guy. By then, Ron and his wife, Chris, had also added a son to the family. So Marie, Melissa, and Kristen had a new baby brother. Tons of changes for their family in just five years.

So the girls were a bit hesitant about leaving Argus. It was the only place they'd ever called home, even though it was a constant reminder of their family's biggest tragedy. I was not excited because I was leaving all my friends and all of our family was there. I was not excited. And the South is so different from the North. The only part I was looking forward to moving down here is because I got my own room. They're like, we're going to get you your own room.

I was like, okay, that works. From 1984 to 1989, the family was defined by what happened to Darlene and the failed investigation into finding her killer. The move wasn't exactly intended to be a fresh start for them, but in many ways it was. They settled in and all of a sudden no one at school knew the horrible thing that had happened to their family. Of course, they would visit family members

back in Argus every so often. I mean, we would try and go back twice a year, but then they got fewer and further between after that. But we would go back for a long time. But it got to the point where they sort of dreaded going back there. They figured if a huge breakthrough ever came in Darlene's case, someone would let them know.

But in the 30-plus years since, no one ever called. So when Kristen started making calls about her mom's case back in 2016, she was frustrated to learn that nothing had been done in years. She found out the case file was essentially sitting on a shelf in Marshall County Prosecutor Nelson Chipman's office in Plymouth, Indiana. So I reached out to Nelson and he talked to me because he remembered about mom's case.

He said he had her picture up in his office still, but that there is nothing new going on with it. Of course, Kristen's next question was, well, how do we change that? She pushed and pushed call after call, but she felt like she was getting nowhere. Kristen even arranged an in-person meeting with prosecutor Chipman, and he basically dismissed her, saying that what's been done has been done and there's not much else he can do.

I said, you guys, the case files are just sitting there collecting dust and he leaned across his desk. He goes, you don't think I know that? I was like, well, obviously nothing is gonna get done when it's just sitting there. You know, have a fresh pair of eyes, look at it, something, you know, do the touch DNA testing. After that meeting I had with him,

when I left, I got up and left his office in tears. And I didn't, we haven't spoken since then. Kristen left that meeting not knowing if anything would even happen. And Marie knew how hard Kristen had worked for years by that point, trying to get some movement in their mom's case. So, being the big sister she is, Marie called prosecutor Chipman. I said, you know, you don't understand what it's like. I said, you don't have this in your life. And I said, you need to be a little more gentler with her because you are coming

off rude and you've got to understand where she's coming from. And I just think he's lost that sense, that touch of things because it's not his personal life. And I get that, but you still don't need to talk that way. A little more kinder. There were no apologies or mending fences. Instead, Nelson assigned someone in his office to act as a liaison between Kristin and himself. But maybe something about what Marie said tugged at his heartstrings.

Or maybe Kristen's persistence paid off. Either way, Kristen was shocked, surprised, encouraged, all the emotions when in 2019, prosecutor Chipman was in the local news talking about how they were planning to use new DNA technology to try and solve Darlene's case once and for all. Detectives are not giving up. Right now, they are starting over with fresh eyes,

once again tracking down persons of interest and conducting interviews. Chipman also says they're choosing new pieces of evidence to send to the Indiana State Police Crime Lab. of evidence to send to the Indiana State Police crime lab. Kristen was hopeful. She could feel answers just around the corner. But around the same time, that liaison that Nelson had appointed, Kelly, who'd been keeping Kristen in the loop on stuff that was going on in the case,

she left Nelson's office for a different job. She still tried to keep up to date on the investigation in order to text Kristen updates, but new information was scarce after that. It took some time, I mean, so much so that Kristen thought the ball had been dropped yet again. But at some point, she heard that they had gotten some kind of DNA off some piece of evidence,

but the details were fuzzy. Now she knew nothing was going to happen overnight, but months were going by, and then years. February 2021 was when I came across that 2018 news story. I had stumbled across Darlene's story and become a little obsessed as I've been known to do, but there was just nothing, a big void where I expected answers were sure to be. Now, normally I'd set my Google alerts and wait for something to pop,

but I don't know what it was about this one. Instead, I found Kristen on Facebook and sent her a DM. And that message put us on a wild journey that I could have never imagined. After my message to Kristin, we hopped on a phone call and she got me up to speed with everything she'd been doing since 2016. Which included not just pushing the prosecutor's office, but doing some sleuthing of her own, creating maps, connecting important events through newspaper archives. But she said that she was stuck.

What needed to happen was DNA testing, which brought us full circle to the reason for me reaching out. My big question was, well, what the hell happened after that article in 2019? And she said, she had no idea. She explained to me the falling out that she had with prosecutor Nelson, and by 2021, his liaison no longer worked in his office.

Her only lifeline of communication was gone. So really, she had no idea exactly what evidence they had or what was happening with it. I've worked with a lot of good people in law enforcement. And I've worked with a lot of families. And this kind of rift that happens is something that I'll never fully understand, but it happens. I knew there was no fixing it by the time we came in, but maybe there could be a bridge. Maybe we could be that bridge is what I was hoping. When I asked Kristin if she wanted our help,

I'll be honest, she wasn't jumping. I mean, don't get me wrong, she wasn't against it, but I think over the years, she learned to keep her hopes tempered. So instead, she gave me a resounding, at this point, it wouldn't hurt. We dipped our toes in slowly. Kristen sent us everything she had,

and we tried wrapping our heads around the case, one little piece of the puzzle at a time. By 2022, I had assigned our reporter, Emily, to start digging into Darlene's case full-time. And like any good reporter, she knows that our reporter Emily to start digging into Darlene's case full time. And like any good reporter, she knows that you gotta get to the source. And the source in this case is prosecutor Nelson Chipman. So she started there. It took several phone calls to Chipman's office before he even called her back.

And when we asked for a sit-down interview with him, this's just very uncomfortable. Foreign says the guy who had gone on local TV saying he was reopening the case. What's changed between then and now that makes you not want to do another interview? I mean, isn't it always worth trying? Say that again. What was the last part? Isn't it always worth trying just to get some new publicity out there in case it does spark someone's memory? You're listening, right? Even if Nelson doesn't think anything will come of this, he's the gatekeeper.

And I know this because we also tried getting interviews with the Indiana State Police and the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, even the state crime lab, and they all say that we have to talk to Nelson, that he is in charge of the case. And I just have to preface this by saying it's unusual for a prosecutor to be the gatekeeper of a case that has never even been close to an arrest. He's not a detective and his office doesn't have detectives. But when we asked him why he had it, he said that he just inherited it from the prosecutor before him.

Like at some point, Darlene's case went from the jurisdiction of the Marshall County Sheriff's Office to the Indiana State Police and then the Marshall County Prosecutor's Office. But no one really has a logical explanation for why that happened or any real plans to transfer it again. But Emily is nothing if not persistent. for why that happened or any real plans to transfer it again. But Emily is nothing if not persistent.

Let me just pop by your office and we can have a conversation, she said. And reluctantly, he agreed. I think it'll be worth our time either way. All right. Okay, thanks, Nelson. I will. I hope I don't regret it.

Emily traveled to Plymouth, Indiana for that meeting. And the first thing Nelson did was take her to see the photo of Darlene that he keeps on the wall in his office. What has made you want to keep that up on your wall? Just a reminder of what we're here for? Our big goal for that first meeting with Nelson, which was in September 2022, was to see what results, if any, they had gotten from the new DNA testing they allegedly tried around 2018 or 2019.

And keep in mind, Nelson talks in circles, and sometimes the details are fuzzy or he says he can't answer a question. But about a half an hour into the interview, he started to open up a bit. And he said, okay, yes. After Kristin and I had our disagreement, I sent off a piece of evidence for MVAC testing and the results were exciting, but quote, not a slam dunk. So it sounds like you got something partial. Right. And it identifies a you got something partial. Right.

And it identifies a male. An unknown male? Yeah. Right. I mean, they don't have a standard to go with. If we had a standard, you'd be here taking pictures of a perp walk or something. Right? A partial profile isn't enough to put in CODIS, but it is enough to do direct comparison tests.

Do you have DNA swabs for the suspects in the case? I can't talk about that. So Nelson wouldn't say if they were in the process of doing any direct comparisons with suspects or persons of interest, but he was sort of willing to theorize about what he thinks happened to Darlene. And his theories, even decades after the crime, are very similar to what Sergeant Dave Yoclet was theorizing back in the 80s. Though they're still in touch today, so that's likely where the theory came from. I think it's one person. I think it was sex driven. You would think that the

person would have the tendency of done something like that before and would have done something like that after. You would think amateur. I'm an amateur. That paradigm, that way of perspective for me has proven useful through the years of if I'm going to go into a courtroom, those people in there, in the jury box, they're going to know less than and I need to convince them. So if I'm gonna convince them I need to be convinced. Do you think it was someone who has really strong local ties who's lived here who lived here at the time and sounds like still might be in the area? You're not gonna let up are you?

When we asked Nelson to explain how he managed to have a falling out with a victim's daughter He said that when she first reached out He was really open with her about investigative information and that he was getting criticized by certain people Quote-unquote on his side for being too open and then everything came to a head when they met in person. Nelson even accused Kristen of lying about her grandfather's funeral in order to come to Indiana to meet with him. It was just, it was a bad scene,

and she was very emotional. She'd come up here, she said she came up here for a family funeral, and, but she couldn't tell me where it was or whatever was going on. I think it was just an excuse to get here, which is fine, I could feel for her. It was very uncomfortable. For the record, I don't think it matters why Kristin was in Indiana. I mean, she has a right to meet with authorities in charge of solving her mom's case anytime she wants.

But just in case anyone's wondering, her grandpa did in fact die. We found the obituary complete with funeral service information. Yeah, I mean, I don't blame them for wanting answers. Oh yeah. And I felt bad. I hate for it to have ended like that. And I sure as hell hate like if in 14 months, 16 months, whatever it is, 18 months, and I'm gone.

You know, I sure hope whoever takes over, if it was just gonna be Tammy, that they'd take over with as much passion. Passion. Prosecutor Chipman is saying that he hopes whoever takes over his job will have as much passion as him when it comes to trying to solve Darlene's murder. But this guy talks a lot about retirement. He's been in the role for a decade, and when Emily met with him in September 2022, he was in the middle of running for re-election, and he ran unopposed, so he won the bid for

Marshall County prosecutor in November 2022. But he says he'll be retired by 2024. He also talks a lot about how busy his office is and how huge their workload is and how they don't have a dedicated investigator working on Darlene's case. Do you wish you had like a full-time cold case investigator looking at both of these cases? I couldn't justify that. If it was supplied, yeah, it would be great.

But just two cases. We had three, but everybody seems to think pretty well that the suspect on the third one is deceased. So, apparently, in Nelson's opinion, two unsolved murders isn't enough to justify a dedicated homicide investigator. And, unfortunately, passion without action ain't gonna cut it.

So, Emily and I decided decided we'll do it. We'll investigate Darlene's case and we'll start from scratch. What we didn't realize in the fall of 2022 after that first meeting with Nelson was just how much more there was to uncover. Part of that meant staying on Nelson's good side, because the guy's a talker. You can tell he wants to talk and be a part of this. And to his

credit, he gave us time, a lot more than we expected. So Emily thought, why not ask for just a little more? She asked if he would take her out to the crime scene. Yeah, if you, if you want to go that way, I can lead you that way. Yeah? Let's do it. Nelson escorted Emily himself, past Darlene's house and the patch of woods where her body was found. And along the way, he opened up more about his real theory of Darlene's murder.

And it gave us a really great place to start our investigation. That's in episode 9. Let's go for a ride. You can listen to that right now. Okay, so tell me where we are now. We're just a mile south of Plymouth, old 31 headed south to Argus. Argus is about 15 minutes south of Plymouth, and it's mostly just cornfields and back roads between the two towns. Once you turn off of new US-31 onto old Highway 31,

you cross some railroad tracks, and a few miles south of there, you pass right by Brandy Pelts' old house, where she was murdered in 1986. All right, well, let me get the feel here. We'll come up, the first one will be Pelts. All right, I think Pelts is in the left-hand side with the trees here. Yeah.

That's it? That's her. Yeah, Peltz. This is episode 9. Let's go for a ride. The Pelts House is right on the Tulane Highway. It's a yellow two-story home with a front porch and a driveway to the right with trees and fields on either side. By the way, we have photos from this ride along with Nelson. They're on our website, thedeckpodcast.com. As you keep going by Brandy's old house,

a few more miles south and you come to 20B Road, where the Hulses lived. Still, still gravel. Sorry, first house on the left. Who lives there today? I don't know. There used to be a house there, but I don't think that was grandpa's.

I thought grandpa was across the road. Unlike the Pelts home, the Holts' lived a little ways off old 31, so you have to turn onto 20B Road, which is unmarked, and there's a field before you get to their house on the left. The ranch-style house is still there, and looks similar to how it did in the 80s. Same door, same windows with a few updates to the siding and stuff.

Do you think that he was watching the house in the days leading up to August 17th. Um, yeah. I don't know how, how studious, you know, how tense you saw, you know, you couldn't like park in a parking lot or something and watch. So Nelson believes that the man went to Darlene's house with plans to sexually assault her, but that the interaction turned too violent and then he panicked. So I would think he's like, oh my god, I don't think she's breathing. All right, I gotta get rid of her. She's no longer a target of sex.

Nelson didn't know if Darlene was still alive when she was pulled from the house and placed in the man's car. If she was alive but unconscious, that would likely still cause her attacker to panic and flee. Investigators think because of those skid marks that they saw at the end of the driveway, the ones that I mentioned all the way back in episode one,

that Darlene's abductor put her in his car, backed out of the driveway, the ones that I mentioned all the way back in episode one, that Darlene's abductor put her in his car, backed out of the driveway, and then drove east, away from the highway. So that's the way Nelson drove Emily. So you can see why, instead of going back to that road, you'd think he would go this way. I would. So this is the route you think the killer drove? Yes. With Darlene? Yes. And he would have, if he's local, he's local.

He would have known, he would have known that this was going to be his escape route. So where does this take us? It'll take us to 110. 110 is really the county line road between Marshall and Fulton. So, you know, no houses on here. So that would be another reason why I would think he would be comfortable about going. This would be his escape route. think he would be comfortable about going. This would be his escape route.

Nelson thinks that the man drove the back roads in a square from the Hulse house to avoid getting back onto the highway. But he would have come to a highway and had to cross it in order to head west toward the dirt road where he ended up leaving her body. Okay, we're looking at for Olive. Olive trail, right?

Yeah. Now Olive trail, you know, goes, I think, throughout, through the county, but right here is going to be disjointed. This is not unusual. Olive Trail is just a few miles straight west of Darlene's house. And today it's still a dirt road, but it's a lot more open now, with a cornfield on one side and some woods on the other. Back in the 80s, it was woods on both sides, and the road was much more hidden than it is today. Just up there.

I mean, I'm reconstructing it myself, so, but I'm fairly certain. It's still these woods. If you looked like I said, some of the crime scene you know somebody was taking old-fashioned photos and it was like a tunnel almost because this was all those trees touching. Yeah. It's in here. It's in here. And you know, it's so, uh, we can get out. Where precisely? I do not know. So you think the temper buyer finding her is a total coincidence? Yes. You don't? No, I, I just ask her questions. Yeah. Yeah. I,

I'm feeling it was divine intervention actually. Really, yeah, I... I'm feeling it was divine intervention, actually. Really? I have to say, yeah. Saying, help them out, go there. Nelson definitely opened up a little during this ride along. I'm not sure if it was getting him out of his stuffy office, or maybe he came around to the idea of this podcast actually helping rather than hurting the investigation. But it helped to have him share his thoughts about the case while literally looking at

the crime scene. He thinks whoever killed Darlene knew exactly where he was going to take her the whole time, that he planned it. If he was worried about the daughters having escaped to go get help, he was probably thinking like, oh, the police are about to be on their way. Yes, but I think about, you know, levels of communication, radio or otherwise,

you know, telephone. You know, they would have converged on the scene. They would not necessarily be, look, you know, telephone. You know, they would have converged on the scene. They would not necessarily be looking, you know, nowhere to be. He was going. Right. But that would be another reason to go that way rather than back this way. But you notice that there wasn't a house on that thing other than that one we saw. But that didn't exist then.

And he had to know that. If he was going to have sex and then kill, I don't, that didn't exist then. He had to know that. If he was gonna have sex and then kill, that might've always been his end place. If you're keeping up with Nelson's riddles, it's apparent that he thinks the killer has strong ties to the exact spot he left Darlene. But anytime Emily brings that up, he deflects or changes the subject pretty quickly.

So, do you know anything else about the people who owned that land back in the day or? I can pull out, because I know I have them in there somewhere. You know, an old plat map that gave us the name. When the landowner was questioned? somewhere, you know, an old plat map that gave us a name. When the landowner was questioned. That I don't recall any specific thing, you know, he was just, you know, they were not thinking of him.

They must've talked to him. Right. Just to even ask, you know, to, Yeah, do you know? pulses, I would think. What is this? Fire truck? Nelson either got distracted by a fire truck driving by or he was trying to change the subject. But before he took Emily back to her car, he said,

I'll show you one more place. It's this property that belongs to a longtime local family who used to bury cars in their yard. And there's still a buried bus there today. Back there is where the buried bus. Oh, back here? Yeah. Down this drive? Yeah, back behind that house. You're not gonna get a very good photo.

So it's creepy. Major creepy. Emily wasn't totally sure why this place warranted a stop. The rumor about the buried bus wasn't new to us, but we hadn't seen any records that tied that property or the family necessarily to Darlene's case yet. I mean, other than like the obvious assumption any armchair detective could make,

which is that bearing a vehicle that everyone is on the lookout for is one way to make sure that it never gets found. Ten years ago, I had dreams of finding the head of the fireplace poker in the- In the bus. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, how would you explain that, please?

It's not exactly wild speculation to think that something like that could happen because that is very unusual. What, the buried bus? Yeah. That's not very far away. But then, Nelson said, but you know, the family who lived there was never suspected in the Hulse murder. They were sort of looked at for Brandy Peltz's murder. And this is where things get really fuzzy.

Because Nelson couldn't remember for sure, but he said he thought police even dug through that yard looking for evidence in the Peltz case, but that they didn't find anything. And you can tell that Nelson is still suspicious of the people who lived there, because he keeps mentioning this small geographic triangle. There's a triangle. Peltz, Holtz, buried bus.

If you draw a line from Darlene's house to Brandy's house to the buried bus property back to Darlene's house, it makes a little triangle. So Nelson keeps pointing that out, but then he'll say that the buried bus has nothing to do with Darlene as far as he knows. Sometimes talking to Nelson is like trying to swim through mud. On one hand, it was great to get more bits and pieces of info about Darlene's case, but sometimes we came away from him more confused than ever. And right now was one of those times.

We just had this weird puzzle piece that we weren't even sure fit the puzzle we were working on. But we held onto it anyways. And in a few episodes, you'll be glad you held onto it too. As Nelson was driving Emily back to her car, he comes as close as ever to hinting at who his main suspect is. Do you think the person who killed Darnley went on to commit more violent crime? Or do you think that they've gone pretty much undetected all of these years or both?

I think there was another assault after that. I think there might have been some deviant stuff, you know, like maybe exposure or something. Keeping Tom type? Yeah. And, um, I think he paid for one of them, and paid in the sense of a conviction for one of them, and, uh, might have learned to stay back, you know, to suppress it. I cannot believe the system rehabilitated him.

I just don't believe he'd still have the urges, whether he acted out on him or not. That's pure conjecture. Deviant stuff, exposure, he paid for that. That was sounding a lot like one man, Kenneth McCune Jr. If you remember from episode seven, we knew Kenneth McKeown Jr. was at least questioned about Darlene back in the 80s after he was arrested for the break-in and attempted rape of Pam. But up to this point, we had no idea if he was still being looked at

in relation to Darlene's case. Prosecutor Nelson won't confirm on record that Kenneth McKeown Jr. is an official suspect or even person of interest. But that ride along left me and Emily with a lot of questions, specifically about Kenneth. And we had a really clear idea of what we needed to do next. Not to beat this puzzle analogy into the ground, but it seemed to us like everyone kept trying to make the puzzle work with the same couple of pieces, smashing them together over and over for three decades. But we had this sneaking suspicion that the picture might be a lot bigger than anyone ever knew.

So Emily left that ride along with Nelson and went straight to the Marshall County courthouse to dig up some records on Kenneth McCune Jr. In Indiana, court records searches have to be done in person at most courthouses. And you have to be armed with enough information, like a suspect's full name, date of birth, and case number to even get access

to criminal case files. And sometimes it's even trickier than that. A court clerk might take your request and tell you to come back in two days once they have time to locate the records. Or sometimes they'll find the records right away, but make you name specific documents that you wanna see. Which is such a catch-22,

because it's impossible to name the exact document until you have access to the old dockets, unless you just ask to see the PC affidavit, but that's often just the tip of the iceberg. In the McCune case, we got a helpful clerk who went to the basement and dug up his files from the 80s. But then she spent like an hour going through the folders with a supervisor and pulling out information

that they thought should be redacted. After that, Emily was allowed to thumb through the files and pay for copies of the ones she wanted. But it was worth the trouble, because that record search was the key that unlocked so much information for us. Names, dates, interview transcripts, even witness lists. Included in those names was Kenneth McKeown's previous victim, who we've been calling Pam to protect her identity. Pam had never spoken publicly about her attack as far as we could find. And we knew that if we were really going to understand what happened to her and determine if there were any similarities between her attack and other cases, we couldn't go off a short one-page report or blurbs in old newspapers

We needed to talk to the woman who lived it So Emily reached out to her and to our surprise. She was willing to tell her story Do you remember what you were doing that day? Yeah, I was sleeping. It was very early morning and the phone rang and the person on the other end of the phone asked if my husband was home. And I said, no, he won't be home till night after work. And so like, okay. And then hung up, went back to bed.

About 30 minutes later, Pam woke up to a loud noise, like a crashing sound coming from the front of her house. Her dog started barking its head off, so Pam got up to investigate. I just thought, oh my gosh, what fell? And so I jumped out of bed, and by the time I took just one step to the doorway, he was already running down the hall to me,

about maybe 20 feet away. It was dark in Pam's house because all the shades were drawn. So Pam said really all she could see was this big figure running toward her. What was going through your mind right then? Just panic, I guess. Just shock. Like there was nothing going through my mind other than disbelief, I guess. At what point did reality set in? I took, as he approached, I took a step backwards.

And of course it was small room, so I was right there at the bed. And he had grabbed my arms and pushed me back onto the bed. And I was screaming by that point. And he said, shut up or I'll... What I thought was, stick you, is what I thought I heard. And then when I realized he had a hold of both of my arms, I realized he didn't have a knife or something in his hands. So then I fought harder.

Pam said when she realized he wasn't holding a weapon, she thought, I'm not just going to lay here and take this. I'm going to fight. I was angry then. Self-defense mode, angry. What happened after that? Whatever gave him the change of mind or heart. He just got up and took off and ran back down the hall and to the front door. How long do you feel like you were struggling with him. I would say maybe 30 seconds to a minute is all that that whole incident took. As I got up after he left or got up,

I grabbed a drinking glass that I had full of water on the nightstand and chased down the hall. And I actually threw it at him at the front door as he left. Kudos to Pam for throwing a glass at that motherfucker's head. Unfortunately, the glass just missed him and hit the door instead. But the intruder didn't leave unscathed.

He cut his hand on the doorway as he was running out, leaving his blood at the scene of the crime. Pam didn't follow him outside. Instead, she ran to the bay window in her house and peered out to see what kind of car he was in. It was one that she'd never seen before. I could tell it was a truck with a camper on the back, because the sun was starting to come up a little bit by then.

And I thought, well, that must have been who it was because there's nobody else that has gone by. You know, no other cars were around. Pam immediately called police after that. They responded to her house and once she told them what had happened, officers decided that Pam was likely being stalked by this man. Not just because of the phone call right before he broke in, but because of the other phone calls that she had gotten as well. The summer prior, I had received obscene phone calls, and I had gone to the sheriff's department

and filed a complaint and put what they could as far as a tracer on the phone. But then, of course, there weren't any more calls until that morning. So the police immediately, pretty immediately said that he was there to hurt me. Because I just couldn't imagine, I thought well maybe it was just a break in. And of course they're like okay with the phone call and all of that. It was more premeditated and he was here to do something to you.

In the first two calls Pam had gotten, the man called her by her long-time nickname, which made her wonder if the guy knew her. But Pam didn't recognize his voice. All of the calls were sexual. He would tell her what he wanted to do to her. Pam never responded and would just hang up. She said based on his voice alone, she couldn't tell if the man who attacked her was the same man who'd been calling,

but police thought it was very likely. Just 20 months later, when Darlene's body was found so close to Pam's house, she wondered if the same man was back. That's not my job to prove or disprove, but there's a lot of links and similarities. I didn't know at the time before my attack that he had bailed Hay right around behind us. I didn't know that till after the investigation began with him. And then of

course when they found Darlene's body, it was immediately behind our house. And so the helicopters ascended, all of the police ascended, and I got in my car. Well, we could watch it all from our yard. And I got in my car and I went down to the officers who had the road blocked off. And I said, you know, I said, I wasn't killed, but I was attacked and my home was broken into. So I feel like it's similar enough and this is close enough to where this happened, to where Darlene lived, that it warrants investigation. They seemed to take her seriously, but as far as she could tell, they didn't really

dig deeper into any potential connection at the time. So as an investigation into Darlene's case got underway, Pam was just left to wonder if her attacker was still out there, and if he might come back. It was living hell, and a lot to come to terms with as a young woman. So different measures, we took different measures, put up a fence, got an outside dog. People stayed with me for probably a good six months. When Pam's attacker was finally caught

in the winter of 1987, the name Kenneth McCune Jr. barely rang a bell. She didn't know him personally. She just said that she knew his little sister because they'd gone to high school together in Culver. But that was it. And at the time of his arrest in 87 and the sentencing in 88, Darlene's case was already cold.

And the only thing even remotely linking Kenneth McCune Jr. to Darlene was a bunch of weird coincidences. We talked in terms of coincidence. I can't prove a case on coincidence, but man, there's a lot of coincidence. We find even more coincidences in episode 10. Look at the deeds. You can listen to that right now. Everyone from the current prosecutor to the FBI back in 87 say the same thing.

Look at where her body was found. Her killer knew the area, knew where he was going to take her. If that's true, we decided to see what the land would tell us. So we pulled the deed records for the lot where Darlene was found, and we looked at parcels around it. And sure enough, right up the road is McCune Farms, LLC. We talked in terms of coincidence. I can't prove a case on coincidence, but there's a lot of coincidence.

This is episode 10. Look at the deeds. Mccune Farms has changed hands a few times in the last several decades, and there are different plots around Marshall County that are also listed as McCune Farms. So it's hard to say which plots were whose back in the 80s, because we know that both Kenneth's dad and his uncle were farmers, and they all lived close to each other. So let's unpack this. According to property records, the actual land where Darlene's body was found was

owned by this Chicago man named George Piascoui. And some locals have told us that George leased the land to local farmers or timber buyers, but we checked with the Marshall County Assessor's Office and they have no record of who leased the land in 1984. They said it was common back then, and actually still is today, for landowners to lease their properties for agricultural uses via a handshake deal. So no documents. But the land just north of where Darlene's body was found belonged to Kenneth's uncle,

Jim. Kenneth McCune's uncle, who owned that farm near where the body was found, what did he have to say in an interview? I don't know. Was he interviewed? I think they might have made contact with him. You know, even for permission to go on there, I think, I know nothing of significance coming from that. We found an old supplemental report where an officer did in fact interview Jim McCune

and he's right. It was just a general door knocking, seeing if he'd seen anything or if anything weird had happened in the area recently. Nothing about the report stands out, and there's no mention of Darlene's body being found on his land. So although the prosecutor seems to be aware of the close proximity now, I'm not sure anyone was back in 1984. Now, just because Kenneth's family owned the property near where she was found doesn't mean he himself would just

inherently be familiar with it. But if you remember, the court records we got from the 80s detailed McCune's jobs back then. He worked as a bus driver for the Culver School District, a salesman at a used car dealership, and as a farmhand at McCune Farms. On Kenneth's marriage certificate, he listed his job as dairy farmer.

And speaking of jobs, according to various documents from back then, Kenneth worked at M&M Auto, a used car dealership, where he had access to a number of cars. The question was, were any of them the car? If police had more thoroughly investigated Pam's case back in 1982, Kenneth McKeown Jr.

would have already been on their radar for Darlene's abduction in 1984, and they could have just rolled over to M&M Auto, where he worked and looked to see if the car was there. But now... So there's no way to tell what kind of car he may have had access to. We were aware that he took a vehicle to Florida. I don't want to go into that.

Nelson wouldn't talk more about Florida, but he would talk about how, hypothetically, you could hide a car if you had the right resources. What little I know about that business is, things are, you know, they would just as soon sell it. They would just as soon get a used car, clean it up, add a couple hundred bucks more than they they bought it for and sell it within a couple days. That's what what little I know about that line of work and that the way they do that is they clean it out now or they sell it wholesale somewhere else to another used car. You know, and it was those temporary plates

that they tried to trail without any luck, paper plates back in those days. Police believe that the car had metal Indiana plates on it. So what I think Nelson was trying to say is if the killer owned a car dealership or worked at one, he could have taken it there right after, swapped the plates out, cleaned it out, maybe even painted it and sold it out of state. Now personally, I think this idea of the car being painted is really interesting because one of the consistent descriptions about the green suspect car was how bad the paint job was. Witnesses who saw the car described it as chalky, bad, not normal, a homemade paint

job. But is there any proof Kenneth Jr. did any of this? No. There is no proof that he owned a green car, painted one, sold one, none of it. In fact, there's a report from 1988 where police interviewed a man who bought a car from Kenneth Jr. in July of 1984. This man was Kenneth's cousin, and he told police that he traded a white Plymouth Valiant for Kenneth Jr.'s GMC Jimmie. That GMC was actually the car Kenneth was driving the day he attacked Pam. The cousin said the Jimmie was two-toned,

maroon and gray, but he had since painted it and it was mostly silver now. Police took some photos of the Jimmie and got the license plate number, and that's the end of the report. So all that tells us is that Kenneth wasn't still driving a GMC Jimmie in August of 1984. So the ties to the land were interesting.

The access to cars was interesting. But they were still just more coincidences. If Kenneth McCune Jr. was at all tied to Darlene's murder, there was nothing concrete to prove it. But we still had questions about him. So one cold November day, Emily and I went directly to the source to ask our burning questions. Hi, are you…

Hi, I am. I'm Emily and this is Ashley. Hi. We're covering some old cases over in Argon. Yeah, y'all might as well just leave. We would love to get your side of the story. My side of the story is that David Yoclet is a crooked cop. I gotta tell you guys, we weren't sure how this would go down when we knocked on his door.

We were fully expecting him not to be home or someone else to answer the door, but it was him. And despite telling us that we might as well leave, he talked to us for about 20 minutes through his doorway, us on his porch, him standing inside. This is not true. So are you saying? With no proof of anything. I mean, obviously I would know if there was proof or not because I would know.

Kenneth was defensive from the get-go. Before we even said what case we were covering, I tried to clarify, thinking maybe he was upset that we were talking about Pam's case, which he'd been tried for and served his time. So are you talking about the d***? No, I'm talking about another one. Darlene Hulse. Yeah. Yeah. time. Most of Kenneth's anger seems to lie with Dave Yoclet, still today.

He basically said he doesn't appreciate being a suspect in Darlene's case because nobody has ever physically tied him to it. this hanging over me, how would you feel? Somebody said, Oh, I think you might have, you know, because you did stupid shit when you were young. You know what I'm saying? Dave, I got to be careful with him because he's a little bit loony. I mean, this guy drugged me out of a jail cell years ago and started accusing me of stuff after I would had already been prosecutor for that other deal. And next thing I know, he's running for sheriff, he's going to solve this, he's going to solve that. And he has no reason to even ask me any questions about that.

There's just none. So I don't know. I think it had to do with the location. Are you recording any of this? Yeah. You should have told me. That was the moment we thought he was going to slam the door in our faces. But he didn't.

Yeah, it's sad. It's sad that I have to deal with it now because I paid my debt to society and having something else come up that doesn't have a frickin... it just... it doesn't have nothing. Me of all people knows better than anybody, correct? Well, if that's the case, I mean, it's... I... I agree that it's like the unfortunate circumstance of just kind of how similar, how close in proximity. Well, we were farmers.

I mean, we lived in that area. I mean, the whole Culver, Argus, the whole area, my uncle's a huge farmer over there. Uh, proximity? Hell, I lived there my whole life. What's proximity? Do you know of anyone who would have been familiar with your uncle's farm?

Because that's what we're trying to get to. We're not trying to just go with whoever people are pointing the finger at. We're working with Darlene's daughters and we really want to find out who did this. No, not a clue. Not a clue, other than my uncle and his hired hand. Who's that?

Do you know? Yeah, I'm not gonna put anybody else into this situation after all these years. Yeah, every time this comes up, I get to spend the next few months just being bummed out and stressed out and worrying about whether it's gonna make my family sad. You know, I mean, I already did my time for what I did wrong.

Doesn't mean you automatically did everything else wrong. You know what I'm saying? Would you talk to us? Just sitting down? I mean... I'm sorry, I've already talked too much. There's no reason for me to have to talk to anybody about something that has nothing to do with me.

There really isn't. So you are saying you didn't have anything to do with the Charlene Hulst case? Yeah, I think, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm sorry. It's just, it's sad. It's sad that I have to deal with this. Well, and I hope that not much longer.

I mean, they have DNA now. Good, good. That looks awesome. That is awesome. Yeah, they might actually solve it. Good. Kenneth went back to talking about Dave right after we brought up the DNA. And he said that Dave has it out for him because he initially lied about breaking into Pam's

house. I felt terrible about what I did. I wasn't in the, you know, like I said, I got counseling and stuff after I came home and, uh. That case, why did you go to her house in the first place? I wish I could tell you. It was just like that spurred like that morning. Because you had been calling her, right? And so you just picked her kind of out of...

Yeah, I kind of... We kind of knew. All right, I kind of knew them. Mm-hmm. And, uh, obviously nothing happened other than being stupid enough to break into a house. And, uh And it just, an addictive personality got me caught up. Kenneth seemed fine talking about what he did at Pam's house,

but anytime we steered him back to Darlene, he said not only did he not want to talk about it, but he didn't even want to hear anything about what's going on with the case. Do you have, have you ever heard any other like, ideas on who could have been on with the case. Do you have ever heard any other, like, ideas on who could have been involved with the other? No, and I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear, and people keep trying to tell me things,

and I don't want to hear them. I don't want to know. Like who? Just in general, listening to different things or having people call me and say, and this stuff's been on a podcast. I don't need to know. But right before we were about to leave, Kenneth did seem interested in the fact that we mentioned

there might be new DNA in the case. What the hell takes so long with the DNA? What kind of crap's that? I think new technology, they've been able to pick up some new stuff. So if they came, would you give them your DNA to just rule you out? They have it.

They took it from me years ago. If they didn't still have it and they needed a new sample, would you be cool with it? No, I'm not going to work with them at all. They have my DNA. I went in to a hospital and all that stuff was taken off of me. If they were dumb enough not to keep it

and not to check it all those years ago, that's on them. I'm sorry. I have no reason to even associate myself with any of that anymore. I'm not going to. Just to eliminate yourself and then it would be over. I don't need you. I don't have to. I know. I know. I know. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about that I was capable of doing the stupid shit I did when I was young. But it was, my life was different than drugs and alcohol,

stupidity running around like an idiot. I just wish they'd catch whoever it is and be done with it. But I got my doubts after all these fricking years, they're just going to keep blaming me. You said you really hope they catch who did it. Please. Yes. Did you ever meet darling or why do you do? why do you feel like that? No, never felt. Because of this right here. Why else?

Then people stopped showing up at your door. Well, this is the first time somebody's ever showed up at my door. There was one more question I had burning at the back of my brain ever since Emily interviewed Pam. And she said that after Kenneth was arrested, but before he was sentenced in her case, he showed up at her house and her husband ran him off. Kenneth's answer to my question surprised me. So she was wondering what you were going to say to her, why you came to her house.

When was that? After. I was going to apologize to her. For being an idiot. I'm really sorry that that ever happened, I really am, and I would love to tell her that. I really wouldn't. I would apologize tomorrow, if I could, but I don't want her to be afraid or offended or,

you know what I'm saying, that I would even think about trying to approach anybody. Because I don't think that would be fair either, if you know what I'm saying. Sure. But yeah, I screwed her life up. Right? I mean, I'm sure she lived on edge for all that time when that

shit was going on. So, sad. I don't know Kenneth. So I don't know when he's being sincere or if the apology will mean anything to Pam all these years later, knowing that it took a podcaster and a reporter to go track it down. When we left Kenneth's house, we didn't know what to think. I mean, the thing about everything he said is that you can view it any way you want. If someone had a bias toward believing he was involved in Darlene's murder, then him not wanting to give his DNA is suspicious.

But if he is presumed innocent, which is how our legal system is supposed to work, you can understand his frustration. They took every sample they ever needed. And in Kenneth's own words, if they were dumb enough to not keep it and not check it all those years ago, that's on them. I get that. Something I didn't totally get is why he was so unwilling to even discuss Darlene's case, not just with us, but according to him, with anyone. He said people would try and talk to him about it

or tell him things and he doesn't wanna hear them. It reminded me of a specific part of the behavior profile that the FBI did for Darlene's killer. That part of the post-offense behavior section reads, quote, he would probably have followed the progress of the investigation through the media and by overhearing others in the community. However, the offender would not be likely

to engage in conversation about the crime, end quote. Like everything else, that might just be a weird coincidence. I'm not here to point a finger at Kenneth. In fact, I don't want you walking away from this episode or this series thinking he's guilty because there has been nothing to date to prove that he is. There is only enough circumstantial evidence to warrant him being crossed off the list through DNA testing, which I don't think is a huge ask.

I could tell Kenneth was scared about what we might say. He wouldn't even take Emily's card. He said he didn't want to know our names or anything else. I think he just wanted us and this to go away. Not for his sake, he said, but for his family's. But you know, just remember one thing. If you don't know, you don't know. And to drag me through a media thing, and it's not me that

you're hurting anymore. I hurt myself years ago, and it's going to be my family, my wife that's stuck with me through all this. And every time it comes up, it turns open wounds. You know what I'm saying? I've been a practicing Catholic for years, and I was fire chief here for 11 years. This community's accepted me for who I am. And I worked for the state of Indiana for 27 years. You know, I mean, if I was the one that was the problem, my DNA would have caught me a long time ago, because they have it.

They do have it. Unfortunately, they don't. Nelson has confirmed they don't. And it's a shame because I agree that DNA should have been kept and tested a long-ass time ago. If it was and it didn't match Kenneth McCune Jr., I probably wouldn't be talking about him today. But I am. Not to ruin this guy's life, but for Darlene. For Marie and Melissa and Kristen. Prosecutor Nelson seemed as worried as Kenneth about us naming people in our podcast, even if we were abundantly clear that they have not been charged with anything in relation

to Darlene's homicide. Nelson kept referencing another case in his county where a man who'd done nothing wrong was dragged through the mud and it did ruin his life. But there was a big difference between that guy and some of the people that we're talking about on this show, including Kenneth. And I pointed that out to Nelson in one of our meetings

when he brought it up again. The people that we're talking about, every one of them is on our list because they've done something heinous in their past. Yeah. Do you think it's different to, ethically to talk about them? Because again, you didn't just walk on the wrong street.

You tried to rape a woman. Nelson didn't have much to say to that. Listen, I hope Kenneth is telling the truth for his sake and his family's. I hope that he served his time, got counseling, was rehabilitated, and went on to be a good husband, father, and grandfather who gave back to his community. But even if that is true, it doesn't erase what happened to Pam. That will always be there, because unfortunately, there are some choices, even ones made when we're young

and dumb, as Kenneth would say, that can't be erased. And it's Pam's case that keeps uncovering coincidence after coincidence in Darlene's murder, even still. You see, two weeks after we knocked on Kenneth's door, some more records from Pam's case came in. We'd requested dozens of different documents from when Kenneth was tried for the indecent exposure and for Pam's attack, including witness lists, dockets, testimony, transcripts,

letters, and exhibits. It was actually a request we placed pretty early on in our reporting, but sometimes things are slow. When we finally got it all, it was hundreds of pages of stuff that took forever to go through. Emily thumbed through them first, and there was a lot of the same stuff we already knew. But deep in the exhibits was a gem. Emily ran to my office and slapped a few pages of paper against the glass door.

It was a medical report. If you remember from last episode, when Pam's attacker fled, he cut his hand on the way out. Well, once they had a name for Pam's attacker, authorities requested Kenneth's medical records. They showed that he went to the doctor after Pam's attack and got treatment, but lied about how he'd been injured. December 28th, 1982.

Patient lacerated palm of left hand getting caught between a metal object and a cow's hoof. He is able to move all fingers and does not notice any numbness in the fingers. Doesn't feel as if he has a broken bone. Laceration 2.5 inches. I'm guessing this was gonna be used as an exhibit if Pam's case would have gone to trial.

After Kenneth took a plea, they didn't need to use them. But it's not that part of the report that was jaw-dropping. It's what came next. The medical reports continued into 1984, and there are detailed reports about Kenneth's doctor visits right before and right after Darling Hulse's murder. The first one we found interesting was from roughly two months before the murder. Now the reason for the visit was super mundane. I don't want to discuss health information not relevant to the case.

But there was one line that caused Emily to run to my office. June 11th, 1984. Patient is here mainly related to stress. Also having some breathing difficulty and doesn't feel well when he spray paints cars, which is a new line of business for him. Emily and I audibly gasped when we read this. Kenneth was in the business of spray painting cars the summer of Darlene's murder? We hadn't seen this information mentioned anywhere else, so we're unsure if law enforcement even knows, or if they know what we found next.

There was another visit in the files from five weeks after Darlene's murder. September 22nd, 1984. Feeling very nervous, under a great deal of stress at times, working 18-hour days, normal exam, tender left upper quadrant, probable stress overwork, recommended change in lifestyle. From the medical records included in the court exhibit that spanned from June 1975

to March 1988, there wasn't a single other instance of Kenneth McHughen Jr. visiting his doctor for nervousness. So one might wonder what was going on in Kenneth's life back in September 1984 for him to be feeling very nervous, so nervous that he went to the doctor. In a psych eval that was also part of our records request, a doctor wrote that when Kenneth committed crimes, it was when his wife was pregnant. They wrote quote, in 1982, he got in trouble allegedly for indecent exposure. He and his wife were having their ups and downs. His wife was pregnant with their second child, and Kenny and his wife were not sexually appealing to each other at that time, end quote.

Well, you want to know what's interesting? Kenneth's wife was pregnant again in August of 1984. If you'll recall the FBI profile again, they theorized, quote, The brutality of the crime scene reflects anger resulting from short or long-term stressors in the offender's life experiences. Our research and experiences reflect that these participating stressors can be the result of conflict with a significant female in the offender's life,

employment pressures, death of a significant person, et cetera, end quote. Emily got a hold of employment records from the Culver School District, and those showed that Kenneth resigned as a bus driver on June 28th, 1984, just weeks before Darlene was murdered. This could mean nothing, but it also could show that around the time of Darlene's murder, there were some big changes happening in Kenneth's life. To quote Nelson,

man, there are a lot of coincidences. But then, there are also a lot of coincidences when you take a look at another crime committed by someone else just months before Darlene's murder. So John Paul Clark is the first time this name's been brought up. I mean, where did you get that? That's next in episode 11, Bad Seed.

You can listen to that right now. In any good investigation, you're running down multiple leads at once. It's not just a time efficiency thing, It's what helps you avoid getting tunnel vision. So one of the times we met with Nelson, it wasn't just Kenneth McKeown Jr.'s name that we brought up. We also asked him about another name. We said, hey, what do you know about John Paul Clark? Did your office ever seriously look at him? So John Paul Clark is the first time this name's been brought up? I mean, where did you get that? I'll take that as a no.

And I'm not just guessing. It was actually one of the very few things the original investigator, David Yoclet, would talk to us about. He'd never heard the name John Paul Clark. But what we had to say about him was interesting enough to make David scribble down his name on a pad of paper that he brought with him. But John Clark's name was there, in Darlene's file, all the way back in August of 1984. This is episode 11, Bad Seed. Five days after Darlene was taken from her home, an anonymous letter was written to the sheriff's office. Dear Sheriff, John P. Clark of Park County, Indiana allegedly assaulted and stabbed a

woman at Rockville. He since has escaped from the Park County jail last seen near LaDoga. The Hulse murder sounds like the Rockville incident where John posed as needing to use the phone. The dark streaked hair could be dyed as John has dark hair. I have met John twice. A check with Park County could get you a picture and fingerprints.

Yours truly, just a frame. It's hard to tell what work investigators did back in 84 after they got this tip about a violent fugitive on the run from Rockville, Indiana. They would have received this letter when they were hot on Danny Bender's trail, so maybe it got overlooked. But it piqued our interest enough

to at least Google the guy. If he escaped in Rockville before Darlene's murder and was spotted near La Doge, it meant he was heading northeast out of Rockville. It's not a straight shot northeast from Rockville to Argus, but La Dooga is on the way. Ish. If you take your time and aren't bothered by taking the scenic route. So who is this guy? What came of him? Where is he now?

John Paul Clark. The top search result about John Paul Clark was a newspaper article written about him from 2007. The Herald Bulletin headline reads, Redeemed, Man Explores His Life in Prison and Beyond. The article does a poor job of explaining the crime that got John sent to prison. It mostly talks about how he found God while behind bars and how he's lived a life dedicated to youth ministry ever since he was freed.

But when we read the article, some things weren't adding up. The Herald Bulletin reported that prior to the time John stabbed a woman at her house in either 1983 or 1984, he hadn't committed any other violent crimes. But we had already found some old newspaper archives online that said otherwise. The article also didn't mention anything about him escaping from jail, or his motive, or his victim, or really anything about the crime or the charges he faced. Essentially, it was a puff piece that totally ignored his victims, which we weren't into. So Emily got a case number from the Indiana Department of Corrections and headed to Rockville,

which is like two and a half hours south of Argus. Since John had been convicted, we knew there would be some court documents that might clear up what exactly he did and where exactly he was in August 1984. Emily's first stop was the Park County courthouse. This is what I have. So we're looking for this calls number, which is what you gave me. And then John Paul Clark. There he is.

Attempted murder. That's it. All right, let's go take this upstairs. Let's see. And what was it you were looking for? Pretty much anything I can find. Um, just let her look through it. All right, there you go.

There were hundreds of pages to thumb through, but we were basically searching for context about John's stabbing arrest, his subsequent escape, and any information about his whereabouts when he was on the run. We figured if John had any ties to Argus or Marshall County, they might be mentioned in records from his previous crimes. And here's what we figured out.

John Paul Clark was arrested for attempted murder and attempted rape in April 1984 after he went to a woman's house in Rockville and stabbed her multiple times, almost killing her. He was arrested for that crime the same night it happened and got booked into the Park County jail in Rockville. He stayed behind bars awaiting trial for the next five months or so, until August 5th, 1984, when John escaped. According to police reports, John saw a door wide open in the jail and just left. Then he walked to his parents' house nearby, went inside, stole some loose change, and

then took their car, a 1974 green Dodge Colt station wagon. And that was the first kind of, oh shit moment that we had. When you're talking in coincidences, a man accused of attempted murder being on the run in a green car 12 days before Darlene was killed, that's an interesting coincidence. But one small thing stuck out. None of the car descriptions in the Hulse case say the suspect's car was a station wagon. Just that it was a rusty, 1970s old greenish car with a quote-unquote big trunk.

So could a station wagon look like a big trunk? Some of the descriptions we'd come across had been muddy before, so we figured we should just keep digging. And to be honest, if John had escaped and fled in a red car, we might have stopped right there. But there was something else that made us keep digging. just stopped right there. But there was something else that made us keep digging. Because of an eyewitness account,

police believed that 21-year-old John took his parents' car and drove north from Rockville. And in the documents Emily got, police wrote that they had reason to believe he had connections, quote unquote, up north because of a prior stint in juvie for a different crime that John committed in 1981. The sheriff at the time was quoted in the Park County Sentinel saying John probably knew how to

go into hiding thanks to his quote-unquote connections and that he was very street smart. The sheriff also told area newspapers back then that he had reason to believe that John might be meeting up with an old buddy and swapping his parents' car for a motorcycle. The documents stated that John was on the run and missing from August 5th to August 27th, 1984. And that's when a tip led to him being apprehended on a motorcycle in Oklahoma. So that confirmed that he was in fact out of jail and still on the run when Darlene was killed on August 17. But the old reports didn't say anything about how long John hung around Indiana before heading

out to Oklahoma. Now because John was a juvenile for the first crime he committed, we weren't able to obtain those records. So we couldn't see if it was a similar crime or what slash who in that case could give him ties to Northern Indiana. But, Emily was able to look up the old investigators on both of the cases to see if they remembered John ever being in Marshall County or near Argus

while he was on the lam, or if they knew who he'd gotten the motorcycle from. But unfortunately, we didn't get anywhere there because the former sheriff and ISP detective who worked the case are both deceased. So if we couldn't talk to the people who investigated John, then there are two other people we felt could give us the information we were looking for. John himself and the woman he attacked. Using the court documents we'd obtained,

we looked that woman up on Facebook and sent her a DM. While we waited, we also called and emailed John Paul Clark. We were hopeful at first that this redeemed man of God would be willing to talk with us, you know, since he'd opened up to a reporter before. But it wasn't quite that easy. His landline was disconnected, to talk with us, you know, since he opened up to a reporter before. But it wasn't quite that easy. His landline was disconnected

and we didn't get a reply via email. But we did get a call back from the woman he nearly killed in 1984, Sherry Dodson Lasser, and she was eager to talk. It said in the paper that he had stabbed me one time, which was a lie, stabbing 18 times. In spring of 1984, Sherry was in her early 30s and newly divorced with two sons.

On the night of April 28th, Sherry had been at a girlfriend's house and got home at around 10.30 or 11. She poured herself a glass of wine and fell asleep in her recliner in the living room. I got home probably around 1030, 11, something like that. And I poured myself a glass of wine and I sat down on my recliner

and just sat there crying and thinking, you know, about my mom. And I fell asleep. It was raining and storming out really bad that night. And the next thing you know, I woke up to this pounding on my sliding glass door. And I looked out the door. I pulled my curtains back and I looked out the door. And there was this kid there and he said, you know Can I use your phone? And I said, I'm sorry, you know, and he said well he said and he says please it's raining outside my car broke down and

I just need to call my uncle. So I let him in to use my phone. So He tried using the phone and it would, he said it was busy. So we sat down at my dining room table and we had a cigarette and he tried it again. He said, oh, it's still busy. And I said, well, what's the number? Let me try it for you.

And so when I did, it said this number is out of service. I said, this number is out of service. I said, it's probably because it's the storm. And I said, let me get you a garbage bag to put over your head. I said, it's not that far. And so I got him the garbage bag and I gave it to him and I was walking to the door to Open it up for him and he grabbed me And he turned me around. He says you make a move or a sound and I will kill both your kids

And I said, oh, please. I said my kids are sleeping. I'll do anything you want, right? So I can't remember. The first thing I said though was, Oh please, because the first thing he said to me was, You make a mover sound and I'll kill you. And I said, Oh please, my mom's dying, I can't take this. Please don't do this. That's what it was. And he said, You either listen to me or I'm gonna kill both of you.

That's what it was. And so I looked him in the eyes and there were just the red, all kinds of... He looked like a monster. He doesn't look like the person that's walking out there right now. And so I just thought, you know what? He's a kid. I'll faint and he'll run, right? So I acted like I fainted.

And when I did that, he started cutting my clothes off. So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna get raped. Maybe once that happens, he'll run. So when I did that, he started cutting my breasts. So you can't lay there when you're getting cut. So I came up with my knee and I caught him in the crotch and I shoved him and I jumped up and I almost got out the door and he grabbed me

and I grabbed, I can remember I grabbed the curtains and as he pulled me back, I pulled the curtains down. And he said, you try that again, and your boys are dead. And I said, oh, please, let's go somewhere. I don't want my boys to see this. Let's just go somewhere else. I promise you, I won't do anything if you'll just let let's just go somewhere.

So he said, OK. And I'm shocked. So we get out by my car, and we're on the back of my car, and I don't remember how blood got on my car. So I can remember there's spots of blood on my car. And I took off running. I broke loose and took off running.

Well, the neighbor's yard, it was raining so bad and muddy and the neighbor's yard goes up a hill and I slipped and fell. And when I did, he just started stabbing me. And I rolled up in a ball like this and my little dog got out of the house and was biting him. And between the dog barking and I had actually, I saw the light. I saw I was gone. And it was beautiful. I didn't want to come back. And I heard my neighbor yelling, what's going on out there? And they said that my knees shot out,

and I shoved him all the way off of me. He took off running. I remember there was an ambulance, and I could just remember shaking, like, so I was cold, but I guess I was in shock. And I said, just get me to the hospital. So as we're going to the hospital, and we're—36 has these winding roads,

and they're discussing, like, should we take her to Terre Haute? The other one said, do you think she'll make it that far? She did make it, and John Paul Clark was apprehended before the son even came up. A police officer testified that he went to John's parents' house right after Sherry's attack and found him in his childhood bedroom still covered in Sherry's blood.

He was arrested that night and was locked away until he escaped the Park County jail a few months later. Sherry moved to a different town when she was released from the hospital, and when police called her a few months later to tell her John escaped, she was so shocked that she actually passed out. She thought he was coming to finish her off, and she lived in absolute fear for her safety and the safety of her kids until he was arrested three weeks later in Oklahoma. John was clearly a violent man. And just like in Darlene's case,

it seemed like he used a ruse to get into Sherry's home. But there weren't many other standout connections between the crime he committed against Sherry and what had been done to Darlene. But then, Sherry told us something that made our heads spin. Sherry eventually learned more about John Paul Clark. An Indiana state trooper said that he had been stalking her home since he got out on probation for his prior crime.

Now on probation for what is the natural question? Now like I said, those 1981 juvie records are sealed. The only info we can see is that he was charged with attempted rape, but took a plea deal for battery and was sentenced on a sea felony for battery. But the memory of that sealed record was still fresh in the trooper's mind when he talked to Sherry.

He said that in 1981, John was arrested for beating and sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl with a fireplace poker. You understand why our jaws dropped, right? This was the first we had ever heard of John using the same type of weapon Darlene was killed with. But the problem was we needed proof. We couldn't responsibly report this if all we had was the word of a trooper who told Sherry some 38 years ago. So we went back through everything we had to see if we could verify it.

And sure enough, we found it. The very day Darlene's body was found, August 18, 1984, police in Marshall County got this fax from former Park County Sheriff's Deputy, Jack Shannon. For your information only, our department is looking for a John Paul Clark. Hair is punk-style short around ears and long in the back, possibly driving a 72 green Colt wagon, and is believed to be in the Westfield Indianapolis area. This subject, in 1980, raped and beat a woman with a fireplace poker.

If you have any questions, contact our department." Clearly, other law enforcement officers who were familiar with John Paul Clark were making the connection once they heard that Darlene had been killed with the same weapon that their newly escaped inmate was known to use. But even with this fax and the anonymous letter signed from Just Afraid, I'm not sure law enforcement in Argus were seeing the same thing. I don't know if these just slipped through the cracks or if they were ignored,

but we can't find any documentation that John Clark was looked into at any point. Even today, when we asked prosecutor Chipman and retired Sergeant David Yoclet if they'd ever looked into him, they didn't even know his name. There was one more tip in the Hulse case that we found regarding John Clark. And it was from the ISP trooper who had worked his case, a guy named Dan Clevenger.

He called police in Marshall County on August 20, 1984, to advise them, quote, subject escaped from Park County jail two weeks ago, was there for attempted rape, stabbed victim 18 times, end quote. The end of the handwritten tip said Clevenger would check to see if John has any connections to Argus. So either he checked and there wasn't any documentation of his findings

or there wasn't anything worth following up about. Sherry doesn't know where John went or what he did while he was a fugitive for those three weeks. So we tried calling the former prosecutor and John's attorney from back in the 80s, who are surprisingly both still practicing law today. His former defense attorney, Jim Bruner remembered representing John and remembered him escaping jail. And he represented him when he was extradited back to Indiana. You don't remember him saying where he went during those two or three weeks?

I don't remember that. I have no recollection of that at all. Former Park County prosecutor Jim Hanner is the one that sent John to prison, and he feels he deserved hard time. Wherever John was, it seems only John knows. There isn't anything we've been able to find yet that places him in Argus, but we did find a possible connection,

albeit a very loose connection to the town. John served time in the same juvenile facility as a man named Bill Swyhart, whose grandma was a longtime Argus local. When we dug even deeper, we actually found a few leads in the Hulse case involving Bill and his grandma. Someone must have known Bill had a violent history.

The tip says Bill, quote, did time at youth center for cutting someone up, end quote. And guess what? The tip also says Bill's grandma had an old green car. Emily called Bill and left him a few voicemails along with one of his relatives, but we never heard back. We even tried getting the Indiana DOC to tell us if John and Bill had been cellmates in Plainfield, but no luck. So, so far, that is the only potential tie we could find that John might have had to Marshall County.

Something I keep coming back to, though, is the car. John might have had to Marshall County. Something I keep coming back to though is the car. Even today, Marie is certain that the suspect's car was not a station wagon. Could John have met up with his old buddy Bill at his grandma's in Argus and taken her green car and then swapped it out for a motorcycle that he was found with in Oklahoma? You have to preface this with a lot of what-ifs and maybes and could-have-been-possibles to get A and B to connect. But then, just when it feels like a stretch,

we find things like this. It's an anonymous letter written to Marshall County Police on October 11th, 1984. -"Dear sir, this probably isn't anything, but I thought I would mention if in some way it might bring a clue to your murder case. On Saturday, about nine o'clock, don't know the date, but it would have been

Saturday morning after you brought the guys back from Colorado. A station wagon passed me at a great speed. There was a woman driving and two men in the front seat. I noticed their license plates was at estate plates. I could not see the state, but the plates were a dark color. Dark blue, I think. It went south and turned onto 19th Road.

What seemed so funny was that it turned into a lane that goes back into a cornfield right to the east of Clarence Ault's house and disappeared over the hill. It didn't bother me too much at the time because I thought it was someone that Aults knew, yet I wondered why they didn't go into the drive to their house. There about half an hour later, I saw a man on a small motorcycle going north on Fur Road. The morning was cloudy and no sun. The morning was cloudy and no sun. This man had on a helmet, dark sunglasses, and a jacket. I don't know if any of this has anything to do with your case or not, but it seemed a little strange.

Not wanting to be involved, I can't sign my name. The fact that John Clark swapped a green station wagon for a motorcycle in northern Indiana before fleeing the state. And the fact that this witness thinks they saw a suspect coming in a station wagon and leaving on a motorcycle could be a total coincidence. There have been a lot of those, right? So we got to the point where the only thing left to do was to ask John where he was on August 17, 1984.

After not receiving any response to two emails last fall, Emily tried calling the church John was affiliated with, but she got no answer there either. So she grabbed our photographer Jake and set out to see if they could track this guy down. He still lives in Indiana. Now nobody was at his church, and the HR department at the university that he used to work for

said that the last time John was on the payroll was over a decade ago. But they did have an address on file. So Emily and Jake headed there. If no one answers, I'm going to slip my card and my note in the mailbox. Hi. Yeah, are you John? My name's Emily. I'm a journalist. I'm proud of you. You're just not alone. You need to read the police reports. Look, I got nothing to do with anything else.

You need to leave people alone. I just want to know. I want to cross you off the list. I have a long list. You're one of many people. Read the police reports. They'll tell you everything you need to know. I have a long list. You're one of many people. I'm gonna get police reports. They'll tell you everything you need to know. I have all of that. I wasn't there, sorry. I just wanna know where you were between those days. You don't need to know anything. Leave me alone.

Do you remember where you went after Park County? If you bother me, I will call the police on you. And if you don't cease and desist, you'll get a letter from an attorney. So leave me alone. Thank you. I got nothing to do with anything. I don't even know why you got my name, why you came to my house, my address.

You're like stalking me. I want to know how you got my information, how you found out everything where I live at. How you got my email address. The internet. You're stalking me. I'm not. Your name is in the police reports and you're one of the many people that I'm reaching out to. Look, there's no way I didn't know where you were at or where this thing happened at or

anything. And the police know where I was at. So you need to leave people alone. So you were never in Argus? I didn't even know where that's at. Okay, thank you. John was angry. And I understand being mad about a reporter showing up at your door bringing up your criminal history from the mid-80s, but two emails and a door knock being stalking? So he'd obviously gotten the emails and knew exactly

why Emily was there, but he did not want to talk about it. We were truly hoping he could just recall the route that he traveled after his jailbreak so we could move on. But then he said something that sort of had the opposite effect. Look, I'll say this to you so you get this right. I left on the 5th of August. That's a Sunday night.

Within three hours, my car was parked in the northern part of Indiana. You know where it was at. I don't. It was in northern Indiana and I never moved until my dad got it. So if this car was supposed to be involved in some crime, why in the fuck did they let my parents go pick it up? Why in the fuck would the cops let anybody do that shit? Where did he pick it up?

Leave me the fuck alone! Jake was watching this interaction from the car, per Emily's request. She figured it was better to have a driver at the ready, but Jake said that John's body language was aggressive. He was close to interjecting when Emily hurried back to the car. Did you hear him? He's angry.

He looked very angry. Let's get out of angry. He looked very angry. Let's get out of here. He says his car. He left the car in northern Indiana. That's what he was yelling at you? He told me to leave him the fuck alone. Yeah, I kind of gathered that too. Okay?

Yeah. Better than him slamming the door in my face. You got something. Yeah. Sometimes, we're the scapegoats in these situations. We're out looking for the truth for Darlene and her family. And when we go looking for answers that police should have tried to track down decades ago, we're the ones that get cussed at.

So that was obviously all we were going to get out of John. After his release in 2002, John has never been convicted of another violent crime, as far as we know. John emailed us a few weeks after Emily's visit threatening to sue. So I'll say this. We don't know if John had anything to do with Darlene's murder, and police never looked into him, so he's never been named a suspect or even a person of interest. But based on our very pleasant conversation with the maybe ex-pastor whose life was once labeled redeemed, we were unable to mark him off our list because he couldn't or wouldn't say where he was on August 17, 1984.

If anyone is listening who knows more about where John's car was in northern Indiana or what he was up to the day Darlene died, we would love to hear from you. We'd also love to talk to the young woman who survived John's 1981 attack, if that's something she'd be comfortable with. But until then, there's someone else

that we have to consider. He cannot be ruled out as a suspect. When you look at means, motive, and method and opportunity, he's the guy who stands up above everyone else. That's next in episode 12, PI's Best Lead. You can listen to that right now. About a year before we got involved with Darlene's case, her family worked with a private investigator, Patrick Zerpoli, who goes by Zip to those who know him.

Zip spent his career with the Pennsylvania State Police. He retired in 2015 as a corporal and the unit supervisor of the Criminal Investigation Assessment Unit. One of his specialties is cold case homicide investigations, and after retirement, he's gone on to consult in cold cases. Zip had the opportunity to review Darlene's case file, and he honed in on a particular person of interest.

He cannot be ruled out as a suspect. When you look at means, motive, and method and opportunity, he's Best Lead. We're not using the real name of Zip's POI for legal reasons, so I'm going to call him Darryl Lemon. Darryl first came on the radar for police back in January 1985 via a tip from a woman named Dolores who worked at Young Door. That's the same manufacturing company in Plymouth where Ron Hulse worked. Dolores told police that during the summer of 1984, Darryl had been in Argus under quote-unquote peculiar circumstances and he had been in Argus under quote unquote peculiar circumstances. And he had been staying at a home on 15B Road,

just northeast of the Holse home. This was on the edge of Argus, and he was staying with a couple named Larry and Bonnie Berger. He'd been staying with them for a couple of months before taking off in either October or November, and then moving to Arizona. There isn't much follow-up on this tip.

Just a note that I can find about Darryl having brown hair, not blonde like the suspect, so maybe that's how they determined that this tip didn't warrant any further action. But almost a year later, in December 1985, Marshall County dispatchers got a call saying that a detective needed to contact Ron Hulse ASAP. Sergeant Yockelet called Ron right away, and Ron said that he had just gotten a call from his brother Randy, who had gotten a call from another woman saying that she had information about Darlene's murder. Now, the woman said that she knew a man who was in a motorcycle gang and that he killed Darlene. The woman told Randy that she was afraid to report the information directly to law enforcement because she was scared of the gang.

The woman said that she even knew where the murder weapon or the suspect car could be found. So at this point, we're talking almost a year and a half after Darlene's murder. This was a pretty exciting potential lead at the time, when all other leads had dried up. But it was born out of a confusing game of telephone. By the time it got to police, it was like four sources removed. Now Ron's brother Randy knew the name of the woman who called him, but he didn't want to share her name because she was scared, but also because she claimed she wasn't the direct informant, because she had actually heard this information from a friend of hers.

So now we're like five people removed. So Sergeant Yoclet contacted Randy Hulse directly to cut out at least one middle person. And Randy had enough information to get them going. He told them that the guy everyone is talking about is a man named Darryl Lemon, and the people that he was staying with, the ones who started this chain of information, were Larry and Bonnie Berger. Maybe because the case had stalled out, or maybe because of how the information reached Sergeant Yoclet, this time there was documented follow-up of him sitting down with the burgers. Larry Berger told Sergeant Yoclet that yes, his former friend, Darryl Lemon, had been a house guest of theirs in Argus during the summer of 1984,

specifically from July to early October. Larry described Darryl as slim, tall, with blue eyes and brown hair. When Sergeant Yoclet asked Larry and his wife if they could recall what Darryl was up to on August 17, 1984, they couldn't account for all of his movements that day because Larry said that he'd been at work until the evening and Bonnie had been running errands in the critical window of time when Darlene was attacked. Specifically, Bonnie Berger said that she went to Rochester, around 9 that morning to shop and then she got back at around 10.30. But she remembered so clearly, even a year and a half later, because on her way home she was driving north

toward Argus and she saw all of the police activity on State Road 110. She said at the time, she had been driving their four-door light green 1970s Plymouth satellite, a car that closely matches the suspect car police had still yet to locate. Apparently, Darryl had borrowed that car quite a bit while he was staying with the Burgers, but Bonnie was certain she was the one that had the green car the morning of the homicide.

And Bonnie was also certain that Darryl was at their house when she returned home that morning at 1030. Before the interview wrapped up, Sergeant Yoclet asked the Burgers if they thought Darryl would have been capable of murder. And they both said, yes. But Sergeant Yoclet was already pretty convinced Darryl didn't have anything to do with Darlene's murder, mostly because Bonnie said that he didn't have the green car that day. And that was that.

Until about a month later, in January 1986, when Larry Burgerger called Sergeant Yoclet. And he said he had some more information to provide now. You see, Larry and Bonnie had since moved to Chicago. So Sergeant Yoclet and another officer drove up to interview them immediately. The Bergers told police that they had known Darryl Lemon for years because he was originally from Indiana. They said that Darryl was for years because he was originally from Indiana. They said that Darryl was a member of a motorcycle gang from Arizona and that in October 1984, Larry had tried to kick Darryl out of their house because he was trying to manipulate

them. Larry said during that summer, Darryl was trying to drive a wedge between him and his wife Bonnie, and he was trying to convince them to move to Arizona with him. They were all getting high a lot, and apparently Daryl gained so much control over the couple that they signed over their bank accounts to him so he had free access to their money. Bonnie also came clean about her suspicions from the day Darlene was abducted. She said that her story before about going to the store in Rochester was mostly true, but her timeline was off. And this time around, her story got a lot more detailed.

Bonnie said when she left that morning, Larry was already at work, and she's pretty sure Darryl was asleep in his sleeping bag on the floor, but she can't say for sure. She said that when she left that morning, which she puts at around 8 a.m., well before Darlene's attack, she remembered looking at the Holst's house when she passed by it. She doesn't say she saw anything,

just makes it a point to say that the house drew her attention and she looked at it, even though it, quote, had no significance to her at the time, end quote. On her way back from Rochester in the green car, Bonnie said she saw the police near the Hull's home, but she didn't go straight home. In this version of her story, she says instead she went to her mom's realty office in Argus and told her mom that she was worried Darryl had done something bad. She didn't get back to her house until 3.30 that afternoon.

And that's when she saw Darryl was there. Now, here's where the burger story gets really weird. They told Yoclet that Darryl always carried a Bible with him and would quote from it. But they said that he wasn't a church-going guy. And they said Darryl kept telling Bonnie about a quote unquote black market for babies that he had connections to.

And he kept saying that they could sell Larry and Bonnie's blonde-headed blue-eyed children and make a huge profit. Larry said when Darryl was in Indiana, he would make a point to dress like a clean-cut businessman because he was paranoid of police. Larry said one time after the Hulse murder, he and Darryl were driving around southern

Marshall County and Darryl became very nervous when they got close to the intersection where the Hulse home was. Oh, and by the way, they said there was this other weird thing. During the months that he was staying with them, Darryl would act weird at night, and he would ask them to drive him around the back roads. Like no particular destination in mind, just aimlessly drive off the beaten path. For like hours at a time, we're talking 11pm till the wee hours of the morning. At one point in October of 1984,

Daryl tried to get Bonnie to leave Larry and move with him to Arizona, which was the last straw for Larry. And that's when he kicked Daryl out. The Burgers said that before, they had been scared to reveal all of this information about Daryl because they were scared of him. But after thinking about it for a while,

they definitely thought Daryl had been involved in Darlene's murder. This was a bombshell. But could they prove it? Not exactly. Though they did say all of his actions after the murder seemed like that of a guilty man. Like, they said he started growing a mustache and beard after the homicide, which seemed sus. And Bonnie said all of a sudden a pair of his pants

went missing because they weren't cycling through their laundry anymore. Darryl also became violent and even physically hurt their children a few times after Darlene's death. And they said he wouldn't go out during the day, only at night. Larry said he became so certain that they had a killer living with them that at one point he even went out and searched behind their house for the missing fireplace poker.

He and a friend dug up a 55 gallon drum in the woods behind his house looking for it. And yeah, same reaction as you. The cops were like, why the hell did you have a 55 gallon drum buried behind your house? But Larry said, oh no, it doesn't matter. That's just where we kept marijuana and we didn't find any weapon anyway. Before the officers left Chicago, the Burgers said they also believed that Darrell stole their motorcycle and they had filed a report with the local police about it.

The Burgers also let them look at their old green car, which they still had, but a cursory glance didn't reveal any blood stains or anything else suspicious. So it seems like the police didn't take the vehicle with them or do any formal testing. On the ride back to Indiana, the officers discussed what they'd learned about Darryl Lemon from the burgers, and they agreed that the couple didn't seem trustworthy. It seemed like Bonnie was still hiding something from them,

and to them, it was more likely that the Burkers just wanted revenge on Darryl for possibly stealing their motorcycle. So that's where the Darryl Lemon leads seem to stop. And if Darryl was involved in trafficking children, wouldn't his motive to go to the Holtholme have been the girls rather than Darlene? From the record searches we conducted, Darryl also doesn't appear to have any type

of criminal history outside of some drug-related crimes. But Zip wasn't put off by the same things we were. He told us this guy had all the behavioral characteristics of a murder suspect. I'll let him explain. After looking at everything, looking at the motive of the crime, how the crime was committed, his post-crime behavior, he's the guy that you have to deal with before you can move forward.

Either it's him or it's not him, but they have to make that decision. Before the incident occurs, he's doing a lot of strange things. Like, I always look for those people who are roaming around at night. He's having the people he's living with drive him around at night. He acts very suspicious there. Plus he has access to a vehicle that's that is almost described exactly as the vehicle that's there. And it's interesting when you read the report, there's there's different people who are

saying he has that vehicle that day of the incident occurring. And there's some confusion to that, but I think he has a lot of control, again, power and control and being manipulative, over the people that he's living with, over these burgers. Zip thinks Darryl could have wanted to cruise the back roads at night to stake out houses in different areas. You know, with someone from the area, this is not your wandering psychopath who just

is wandering through the area, it's someone from the area. And like I always tell people, like when you, again, bigger picture here, whoever did this knew the area. It's not like they knew where to then, here's a remote and place to dump her body. And what to me is very interesting is that the female Berger makes a comment that she drove past the whole residence the morning of this happening with the vehicle that matches the description The vehicle that was in the driveway. Well, why are you putting yourself there? Why are you even making that comment and that's to a third party? It's not even to the police

You know I'm saying and then you know, his kind of manipulative power and control behavior fits the crime scene. It fits the person who committed the crime. And then afterwards, that's even amplified even more, where he starts taking more control over the burgers and more control of their finances. He's having them ship stuff to Arizona because he wants them to come down there and live.

It's reported that he changes his appearance, which is a big piece of this, that, you know, why all of a sudden change your appearance? And, you know, and after this crime is committed, again, you know, it's another red flag that you see there. Zip also thinks that even though robbery wasn't explicitly stated as a motive and even though Ron said nothing was taken from the house, it's clear by the suspects police did have early on that police's

theory was a robbery gone wrong. And Zip really believed that if they wouldn't have chased that motive from the get-go, that this could have been solved a long time ago. This is not a multiple-person crime. Like, if two people did this, like one drove and one went in there and did this, this would have been solved because one of them would have talked. You know, this is that one person crime.

I think the problem is they missed the motive from the beginning. They missed the why from the beginning. And when you miss that, it leads you in the wrong direction. And now you're trying to play catch up so many years later to. And again, and again, people are deceased now, time is,

you're never gonna get that back again. So now it's try to figure out how to solve the case, using new technology that we have today. Zip's theory of motive actually fits what most people agree on today, that the crime was sexually motivated, but it didn't go as planned. The consensus now is that Darlene's murder

wasn't premeditated. If the killer would speak, he'd probably tell you she wasn't supposed to die. Do you think that the person who killed Darlene went on to commit other violent crimes? Because of why he did it, it might not be violent homicide, it could be you know domestic violence being abusive, it's that power and control piece. I think the homicide came out of anger because he couldn't control the victim and he tried

to control her but he went too far and killed her. I think you're gonna have some of those power and control behaviors and power and control crimes might not be homicide. And sometimes, you know, if like a lot of people, like this is how we get our serial killers and sexual status, who get excited from that homicide. If he's a person who's like, I didn't want that to happen, he might never see anything again, you know? And in this case, I think it was just trying to control her and he ended up hitting her,

not realizing that he killed her until he gets her to where her body's dumped. And he's like, she's dead and just kind of dumps her and goes on from there. We tried reaching Darryl for comment. We found a few numbers for him in Arizona It just kind of dumps her and goes on from there. We tried reaching Darryl for comment. We found a few numbers for him in Arizona, and we messaged him on Facebook but never heard back.

We also tried a dozen different numbers trying to track down Larry and Bonnie. Most of them were disconnected or we were told that we had the wrong number. A few of them went to voicemail, so we left messages. Now, we didn't get any calls back, but one of the numbers did text us back saying, quote, "'Hi, Emily, I believe you have received the wrong number.

"'I am in no relation to Larry Berger, "'but after doing some research, "'I learned that Mr. Berger had unfortunately passed "'on the 17th of May, 2022. "'But if you don't mind me asking, "'what case are you working on? End quote. Emily dodged that question about the case

and just asked if they knew that their number was on several different websites as being associated with Larry Berger. But whoever was on the other end just said that they didn't know and that was the end of that. Now there is an O-bit for a Larry Berger from May, 2022, but it's just one sentence, so it doesn't help us confirm if it's the same guy.

Bonnie, on the other hand, she has a new last name now, and we found four numbers for her, but they were all dead ends. So Bonnie, if you're listening, call us back. When we asked prosecutor Nelson Shipman about Darryl Lemon, he said that it made him uncomfortable talking about him in case he's innocent. We asked him if he was ever interviewed by police in the Hulls case, and he gave a weird answer. I think one of them was, but nothing came out of it.

One of them? Nelson wouldn't go into more detail about what he meant by one of them. Did he mean Larry and Daryl? Someone else connected to Daryl? From the context of the rest of our conversation, the best we can piece together is that he maybe meant a family member of Daryl's, but he wouldn't give a name. And then he moved on, making mention of how close Daryl's family lived to Darlene, which again made us scratch our heads because Daryl Lemon didn't live anywhere near Darlene. He was staying with the Burgers, who lived nearby, but the location of where Nelson was

pointing to was in the opposite direction of where the Burgers lived. Specifically, Nelson was pointing to a property west of Darlene's house. It was that same property that he had pointed out to Emily on their ride along the very first time they met. That same property with the lore of the buried bus in the yard. The bus where Nelson said he had dreams about finding the fireplace poker. Now we knew about the buried 55-gallon drum behind the burger's place, but surely that's not what everyone is confusing with a bus. Nothing was adding up. So to try and make sense of all of it, we are sitting down with Nelson in his conference

room back in November, and so we bring up Darryl again. And Nelson says something about him being dead. And we knew Darryl was still alive and living in Arizona, so we pressed, and Nelson walks over to this whiteboard, where there's this huge piece of white paper covering something up. Well, I don't know. It's behind the paper up there. Can you keep behind the paper?

Nelson takes off his mic, lifts up the paper, and there's something that looks like a family tree. Maybe with some photos and initials written in little boxes. And that's when he's like, yeah, Darryl died. And he puts the paper back down. Do you think there's some kind of connection? I don't have any idea. Okay. Any idea. You know, I despise that expression. I don't have any idea. Okay. Any idea? You know, I despise that expression. I don't have any idea. You have some idea.

Well, as far as **** goes, not really. He's a lot harder to research because he doesn't have much of a criminal history. He has a little bit, but there's not... Seems like most of it criminal history. He has a little bit, but there's not, it seems like most of it was after. If there is a connection, no one's brought it together to even, you know, even go to the next sentence about, oh yeah, there's something to look at here. We tried to get Nelson to let us take a closer look under the paper on the whiteboard before we left, but another meeting was about to start in the conference room and we were being told to leave.

But I just couldn't let it go. I was certain from the little bit I'd seen that it wasn't Darryl Lemmon's family on that board. And I was right. Some internet sleuthing using the names and initials that I was able to see led me to a completely different family, one that I'll call the Parsons. So between that meeting and meeting back up with Emily for lunch, I am frantically looking up what I can about this family, specifically these four

brothers who grew up in Argus and would have been in their 20s at the time of Darlene's murder. And listen, you guys, I was literally shaking. 99% from excitement for what I was finding and 1% because I thought Emily might kill me when I tell her, hey, we've been working on this for a year and everything was going in kind of one direction, but we got a pivot. But she's as deep in as I am, and she was just as excited about this new possibility. Because for us, it's not about proving a theory, it's about finding the truth. And speaking of truth, Emily and I were left with one giant question after we debriefed. Had Nelson been lying to us?

I mean, the more innocent explanation is that maybe he's confused. A few of the sons in the Parsons family have the same names as members of the Lemon family, so maybe that was the mix-up? But to me, that's more than an innocent mix-up because it wasn't just one slip of the tongue. He didn't confuse the names once in passing. We had talked over and over about the Lemons. And again, that very first meeting Emily had with Nelson, where he offered to give her a ride along around town, it was him who pointed out what he said was the Lemon property. So was the guy in charge really that turned around, or was he intentionally trying to throw us off? At that point, I was kind of done taking his word for things. So I had Emily look up the property records for this mythical bus property in Nelson's infamous triangle.

And sure enough, the buried bus property that Nelson was pointing to? It's the Parsons. When we started digging into this new lead, we found more than just a buried bus. We track Nelson down again for an explanation and investigate brand new people, next in episode 13, Untangling Misinformation. You can listen to that right now.