True Crime with Kimbyr - A Flat Tire. A Missing Girl. A Mysterious Freezer With Horrifying Secrets Inside: Part 2

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

In Part 2 of True Crime with Kimbyr, Kimbyrleigha uncovers the disturbing twist that finally brought answers in the Denise Huber case. Years after Denise vanished, a shocking discovery inside a locked freezer revealed a horrifying secret. Who was responsible—and how did he manage to hide in plain sight? As the investigation crosses state lines, chilling details emerge about the man behind Denise’s fate. Join True Crime with Kimbyr as we piece together the clues that led to justice in one of California’s most haunting cases. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But Steve was adamant. She would not have gotten into a car with a stranger, not willingly, not at night, not on the side of a highway. He said, I just know there's foul play involved. And no one disagreed with him. By that point, law enforcement had searched that stretch of freeway three separate times. They issued multiple police bulletins and there were no new leads. Nothing to go on. Nothing that pointed anywhere.

Desperate to do more, Denise's family even offered a reward $10,000, hoping that that might be motivated. someone to come forward with tips. They distributed 15,000 flyers with Denise's pitcher on it. They handed them out at shopping mall, swap meets, and even outside of an Angel's baseball game on Friday night passing them to strangers and asking them for help. And after news of Denise's disappearance began to spread even further, it didn't take long to shake up all of her friends at her former job, her co-workers, from the old spaghetti factory where she used to work were now terrified to drive alone on the the freeway. It hit too close to home for them. One of the waitresses, 24-year-old Kathy

Ransley, told a reporter, you never think something like this could happen to someone you know. She had actually moved to California from Vermont, and she didn't know many people when she arrived, and she said that Denise was so friendly, the friendliest person at that restaurant, and she helped her feel at home. Kathy said, things like this, they're not supposed to happen to people like Denise. By the end of June, things had started to take a really grim routine with the family. I own, Denise's mom, had stopped leaving the house. Not because she was grieving, I mean, she was grieving, but it was because she couldn't risk missing a phone call because it could be Denise or worse. It could be the police. But back at their Upper Newport Bay home, Denise's father

had stopped working. He devoted all of his time to finding his daughter. He was coordinating the search like a military operation. He was tracking tips. He was fielding calls. He was organizing flyer distribution, and he told reporters that staying busy was the only thing keeping them going. There was no shortage of people wanting to help either. Some of their friends that they hadn't spoken to in years, they would just pick up the phone and they would ask, what can I do? How can I help you find Denise? But even with all that support, the emotional toll was unbearable.

Dennis said they had cycled through every possible feeling. terror, confusion, hopelessness, and now they were slipping towards despair. But the one thing they refused to do was give up. They had even considered every possibility, even the worst-case scenarios, but they weren't ready to accept that Denise would never be found.

Her dad told the reporters, I just have a gut feeling that she's still alive and we just don't want to give up. The case was featured on America's Most Wanted, Inside Edition, any show that could keep the story alive. and her parents were at that point trying to get the attention of unsolved mysteries. And I was thinking to myself, can you imagine you're trying to pitch your daughter's case to a show so that they might take interest in it enough to get the word out there?

It's really sad. But they figured they had to use any resource they had available. Denise's parents even put up this giant banner across an apartment building that was right near where her car was found. It was like, so from the freeway there is an apartment building. And they plastered this banner and it said, have you seen Denise Huber? And they also had a telephone number to call. The banner was 30 feet long and six feet high and Stephen Robb climbed up there and put it up. Dennis turned his own car into a mobile billboard.

He plastered it with photos of his daughter and phone numbers to call. He said, every time I see a girl with long brown hair, I have to see her face. And he said, hope is cruel like that. It makes you keep looking, even when everything around you, tells you to stop. But I don't think I would ever stop. He even talked to some psychics, but Dennis said that he didn't put much stock

in that kind of thing, but he did refer them to the police station because you never know. He even took the family dog Sam to the area where Denise disappeared and he walked him along the shoulder of the highway and that steep embankment below and what was crazy,

this isn't a trained canine. This is their family black Labrador. The dog looked like he was following a scent. He led Dennis all the way to the Marriott Courtyard hotels right below the freeway. And Dennis didn't think that this was a fluke. So he took the dog back there the second time the next day, and once again, Sam took him to the exact same spot,

and I don't think that's a coincidence. And Dennis really believed that he had a lead, and he told the police right away. They said they checked it out, that they interviewed people at that hotel, but they found nothing. Doesn't mean she wasn't there, though. By October, they decided to hire a private investigator

named Logan Clark from Clark International Investigations based out of Lake Arrowhead. Now, he went back to the scene, he checked with the businesses again, he recanvassed the area, and he had a theory about what happened, and it wasn't looking good. From the headline alone in the newspaper,

it raised a lot of questions. It said, Denise Hubert is probably dead, investigator says. Yeah. So he wasn't holding out hope like her family. Logan seemed confident that he knew what happened, kind of too, confident. And right out the gate, he said something very interesting, that there was a lot of pieces of the puzzle that still needed to be put together, but that he had some ideas. And I was thinking,

well, I hope you have ideas because you're the private investigator hired by the family to figure out what happened. I have some ideas kind of feels like the bare minimum for someone taking on a massive case like this. But still, Logan didn't believe that Denise had simply broken down and then vanished. He told reporters that he didn't think this was some range of and a act of opportunity. His theory was that she was killed somewhere else. Basically, he thought the scene was a setup. And if it was true, it meant that the police were looking

in the totally wrong place. And they might never solve this case because they were chasing the wrong trail right from the beginning. But then came the part that raised a few eyebrows. Logan said he was 80% sure Denise was dead. But there was no context, no forensics, just throwing out a percentage,

And not to be rude because I respect investigators, but where exactly was he pulling these numbers from? Because it sounded like a gut feeling that wasn't evidence-based. The official police investigation remained grounded, though. Detective Ron Smith, that was the lead investigator in Denise's case with the Coast of Mesa Police Department, told the reporters that he welcomed any help, including Logan Clarks, but he wasn't interested in chasing speculation.

He said, I don't follow theories. I concentrate on the facts. But still, he admitted it was hard to watch a huge, suffer. They're really good people. He said, no one deserves this. Smith told the reporters that he was staying open to all possibilities, but he wasn't going to make guesses, not in the public, and not to the press. Logan Clark and his team of eight investigators were focused on narrowing the timeline, specifically the nearly three-hour gap between when Denise dropped Robert off at 205 a.m. and when her car was first reported on the freeway at 5.30 a.m., according to

drivers who said they saw it. He said that he interviewed five different drivers, drivers who told them they drove past that area and did not see her car between 215.30 a.m. So Logan claimed that based on everything they knew, it seemed unlikely that her car had been there the whole time. And if this is confusing to you, he believed that somebody drove her car to that area closer to dawn, abandoned it, and made it look like Denise had broken down there. So people only started seeing it at 5.30 a.m. Nobody else saw it. So, we was concluding, oh no, she didn't drive there after Rob's house. Between Rob's house, something happened.

And whatever happened, a person staged the scene. And if he was right, then not only was Denise missing, but so was the real crime scene. I mean, it's not a bad theory at all, except I told you, someone had seen something. They just didn't come forward because they figured someone else would. How many times we heard that? Oh, I thought someone else would call 911.

Well, that person is Cynthia Brown. She delivered newspapers for the Orange County Register, and they were doing a story on Denise's case because they're a local newspaper. And she had been following it since day one. Cynthia got up early every morning to head out and pick up her papers. And one morning, she saw an article

about that private investigator who said that no one saw Denise's car until 5.30 a.m. But she knew that was wrong because she saw it. She knew she saw it from the time the story broke. She just assumed. The police would figure it out without her help. She knew what she needed to do now, though. She called the Costa Mesa Police Department to clear things up.

Cynthia spoke to an officer. She explained she left her house like she did every morning, around 2.14 a.m. to get to the newspaper warehouse in time. She routinely arrived at 2.30 a.m. And she takes the 405 to the 73 freeway, which is the road that Denise's car was on. She passed the exit every single morning, and she had on June 3rd as well.

And she said as soon as she was getting on the 73, she saw a car in the right shoulder with its lights flashing. So she slowed down a little bit. And as she passed, she could tell it was a Honda. She didn't see anyone near the car. And she couldn't even tell there was a flat tire. She thought she was going probably 45 miles per hour at that point. And when asked what time that she thought it was, she confidently told the officer it had to be 2.25 a.m. She even made sure to check both sides of the road as she was.

was driving past just to see if she saw anyone that needed help. And there were no other cars stopped either. So now Logan Clark's theory was out the door. Denise stopped on that freeway on her way home from Rob's sometime before 2.25. And by that time, she was already gone. So whatever happened happened fast. But then slowly, everything stopped. There were no new tips, no new leads, no new sightings. and Denise's case went cold. But then in March of 1992, nearly a year after Denise vanished, a body was discovered in an orange grove east of Irvine.

It was found by farmhands. They were working on the land, and the woman was found fully clothed, and estimated to be between 18 and 24 years old, so right around Denise's age, the woman that was found, was wearing a short-sleeved white t-shirt, baggy blue floral print pants with a drawstring,

and a pair of navy blue shoes. She stood about 5 feet, 5 inches and weighed roughly 110 pounds, and for a brief moment, there was hope that this might be a break in Denise's case, not what they wanted to hear, but at least a huge break. But there were problems with the match, starting with the clothing. As I'm sure you know, it didn't align with what Denise was seen wearing last. Remember, she was wearing a fitted black dress, black jacket, and heels, and then physically, the woman was several inches shorter than Denise.

But still, investigators took it very seriously, and they began the process of comparing records. But ultimately, the deputy coroner made a visual determination based on the woman's facial features loan. This was not Denise Huber. So this was another dead end. And by the one-year anniversary of Denise's disappearance, police were no closer to figuring out what happened to her.

There were no suspects, no witnesses, and no real leads. And at the Huber home in Newport Beach, the message on their answer machine hadn't changed, not since the first day that Denise went missing, it said, we will accept a collect call from Denise Huber. A simple message because they were desperate hoping that a call would come in, but it never did. Her dad Dennis told reporters, they still had hope that something, someone out there knew something and they would be able to help and that she was still alive. But I own her mother was more realistic. She said that while she still

hoped in her heart that her daughter was alive, she knew that the odds weren't looking good. And by November of that year, the Hubert family was dealt with another low. As if having their daughter missing without a trace for nearly a year wasn't enough, Ione was diagnosed with breast cancer. At just 49 years old, she had to undergo a mastectomy to remove a malignant tumor. First, her daughter vanished. Then she had to fight for her own life, all within the same devastating year. But Ione didn't want to sugarcoat it.

And she didn't want pity, but she said, whatever's going to happen to me is going to happen. The cancer, in comparison to what they were going through, was no major thing to her. But it didn't make it easier either. She said she wished Denise was there because she would be a good support system. For the past year, Ione had been deeply depressed

as I'm sure anyone would be going through this. She was in a constant state of dread and longing for answers. And now with the holidays approaching, she would have to face them without her daughter while battling a disease. That's not just grief. That's emotional and physical devastation happening at the exact same time.

So I truly felt for this family. And as a mom, these stories are so hard. The Hubert family, they still remained strong. And they were united in their message. They said, someone out there knows something. Even if it's anonymous, they were begging someone to come forward because they just missed their daughter. And as Dennis put it, nothing fills the void. He even added, and it was interesting because I got a visual.

of this, and it's usually hard for me to visualize things, but he said there's this hole in him. And the outside is starting to harden, almost like crust from a wound that's healing. But the inside, it's just tender and raw, and nothing is getting easier, and that will never be filled. And I could feel that pain as he was explaining it. Years were going by. And all the while, There was another couple, actually pretty similar to Dennis and Ione, who were living 400 miles away in Phoenix, Arizona. They were Jack and Elaine Court. They were empty nesters, grandparents, too, and they'd retired from their careers, and they were enjoying the thrill of rummaging through booths at swap meets all across the state and scooping up all kinds of items that they could flip for profit. And after a few years, they landed in a niche.

Paint. Yes, paint and everything related to paint. They had collected so much paint they actually opened not one, but two stores, now selling and manufacturing paint and painting tools and materials. In 1994, so three years after Denise went missing, the courts were doing what they loved. In the summer, they traveled 100 miles out to the small town of Prescott or Prescott, Arizona. Depends on how you pronounce it. I've heard both. Let me know in the comments. This was a getaway because it was too hot in Phoenix to sit out in the sun at Swat Meats.

But little did they know. that one of those trips would lead to Denise's case being cracked wide open. Elaine and Jack were at their store in Phoenix, Arizona on July 13th of 1994 when they were alerted that an officer from Costa Mesa Police Department wanted to speak with them. And Elaine didn't know why in the world they would want to speak to her and her husband. But to understand the context, let's go back to May of 1994. so just a month earlier, when this couple first started making their trips out to Prescott. It was the summer, and they were at a swap meet, and Elaine couldn't help but notice another

booth set up with painting supplies. They were usually the only ones there, and everyone knew them. So she kind of wanted to scope out the competition. The man behind the table was friendly. He laughed when Elaine said, oh, look, you here, we got some competition. The guy was probably in his 40s. He wore glasses. He was thin. He was average-looking, and he liked paint. So we had, he was probably in his 40s. He wore in, he was average looking, and he liked paint. So it was easy to engage in some small talk and some casual banter about swap meets and their business. His name was John, and he explained that he just moved to the area about six months ago to be closer to his mom and his brother and his dad who was in the hospital. He had worked as a contractor previously, but apparently he'd been

unable to gain enough new contacts in the area because he was new that wanted paint, and he had all of this paint that he acquired, so he was selling it off. Prescott, Arizona was a town where people still waved on the front porches, where local coffee shops remember your order, and where the biggest scandal might have been someone's mailbox getting knocked over by a teenager on their dirt bike. It's nestled in the mountains of Central Arizona. It's got that classic Western field, the old saloons, the historic courthouses, a downtown square with American flags fluttering from every corner. There's a rodeo in the summer, a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the winter, and life, there just feels untouched by the chaos of the outside world. People there know their neighbors. They know their mail carrier.

But it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So it's no surprise to Jack and Elaine that this guy, this contractor, of course he's not getting business. Of course, it's not going well. There's not a lot of homes to redo in that area. But they were hoping that they could use that to their advantage. This man had paint to sell. And Jack and Elaine had a booming business back home.

home, so they kept coming to the swap meet on the weekends that summer, and they started to ask John what else he had. He would bring all of his supplies in his paint in his white van, and he would park it there at the swap meet, and there were stacks and stacks of buckets of paint, and they started buying whatever they could from John. And then on Saturday, July 9th, they struck up a conversation with him again. And this time, John told him there was way more paint where that came from. He actually told them he had 3 to 4,000 quarts of paint back in his house, including something called colorant. Now, I had no clue what that was, but I looked it up. It's a substance that's added to bases to create specific colors, and it's apparently in high demand or it was back then.

So Jack was very interested in getting his hands on it for cheap. John told him they could meet him over at his house. It was in the Prescott Country Club, and that's a really affluent area in Dewey County, and it was a really affluent area in Dewey County. and it wasn't a far drive. So the couple agreed. And when it was time to leave, Jack, Elaine, and their 10-year-old grandson who came with them that weekend,

got in their pickup truck, and followed closely behind John in his van. And as they passed, all these multimillion-dollar homes and golf courts, they were awestruck. No wonder this guy could afford so much paint. He had to be loaded. But what he may have had in paint,

he definitely lacked impatience and compassion, it seemed. On the drive, as most 10-year-olds, too, the court's grandson told them he had to use the bathroom. He couldn't hold it any longer. Elaine, thinking that they formed somewhat of a friendship with his John guy, figured that surely he would let the youngster use one of his bathrooms. They pulled up to the corner house at 685 Cochee's Drive, and John parked in the front driveway, and then he walked to the side of his house

where there was another carport. It had vehicles parked on it, so Jack parked in front of them and waited. John went through a wooden fence to his backyard, and he began bringing paint buckets up to Jack's pickup truck. And as the guys were doing that, Elaine walked her grandson up to the fence and politely asked John if they could use his facilities. But to her surprise, John's demeanor shifted. He said no. And before she could respond, he went on to explain, it wasn't possible. His water didn't work. It was shut off. There was no running water for the toilet. So nobody could use it. And that seemed so odd. In a neighborhood like this one, it sounded like an excuse.

Maybe John just didn't like kids and thought that the grandson would break something expensive in his upscale home. But it was enough to make Elaine roll her eyes. But Elaine thought they wouldn't be too much longer and they would just stop at a gas station or something. But then, John snapped at the little boy. He was merely playing with a little cap gun. I don't know if you remember these. They were from the 80s and the 90s. They were really popular.

There were little plastic fake guns and when you pull the trigger, it would pop. Well, John told him to stop doing that. He told Elaine, this was a nice, quiet neighborhood. And it wasn't nice to make so much noise. It was in the middle of the day. So it seemed really odd that he would blow things out of proportion like he was. Why didn't he want attention drawn to him? Was he operating maybe an illegal paint business?

Did he steal these paints? Were they even his? Did he even live here? I mean, anyone could walk into that backyard. walk into that backyard. He didn't drive a nice car or wear fancy clothing. So Elaine started to question everything. Even the way his so-called extra paint was organized. Or I should say unorganized, because when Elaine peered past the wooden fence into the backyard, it was chaos. There were paint cans stacked on pallets, a bunch of tools, ladders, planks and planks of wood and building materials,

and a bunch of overgrown grass everywhere. It was a mess. It was not smart to store all of that in the blazing Arizona sun, so sure. Maybe his intention was to sell it off quickly, but then Elaine noticed something else. Something even weirder. It was this long orange industrial extension cord

that came from over the neighbor's fence into John's backyard, and then as she followed it, she saw that it snaked up into this big yellow, rider truck, a 24-foot rental truck that was sitting on that carport. And I'm sure you know the kind of trucks I'm talking about. They're kind of like U-Haul trucks. You can rent them for a price to move things, like the entire contents of a house or business. But why would someone, why would John need electricity in a moving van? And if he did move six months ago, presumably with this van, why would it still be parked in his driveway, backed into the parking space up near the fence?

Elaine, like I said, was questioning everything. She and Jack had recently had someone scam them, essentially they were stolen from, and she was vigilant making sure that they were not participating in any kind of illegal criminal activity. So she stayed quiet. She took her grandson back to the pickup truck, and she waited until Jack was finished loading up the paint supplies and paying John. When Jack jumped back in the driver's seat, Elaine didn't hesitate to tell him how she felt, that John was rude and seemed like he wanted them out of there quickly.

But that's not all. She pointed to the rider truck and she explained what she had seen, a long extension cord coming out of the back. And Jack agreed it was odd, especially because grass was growing around the tires, which meant it had definitely been there a while. Jack told Elaine he thought that John kept the truck overtime, you know, like more than the car. a lot of time you should have had it, essentially stealing it. Well, Elaine perked up. She and Jack

had a regular customer at their store that was a detective for the Phoenix Police Department, Detective Stephen Gregory, and he specifically dealt with stolen vehicles. So Elaine felt compelled to write down the license plate number, which happened to be from Maine, which she thought was weird, and she also wrote down the serial number of the truck, which was on the top of it. And then she thought, I'll give it to Steve, and I'll tell him to call Ryder because they're probably looking for it. She just felt like it was the right thing to do. So she discreetly took out a little notepad and quickly jotted the info down as they pulled away. And John was still standing in the driveway, just waving goodbye to them.

The very next day was July 11th of 1994. Remember, this is three years after Denise had gone missing. And Detective Gregory came into the paint store, and the court did. told them all about the rider truck. Now Detective Gregory told them, I'll look into it and I'll get back to you. But it didn't take him long. When he plugged in the license plate number, he didn't really see anything odd, except it wasn't for a rider truck.

So he decided to go further. And he looked into the serial number. And that's when he realized that the truck was indeed reported as stolen six months earlier in January out of a rider store in California. At this point, he notified the local police department where John resided and they sent a deputy out there on Wednesday, July 13th to make contact with John and inquire about this truck. But when he got to the house and saw the rider truck, the plate was from Maine and not from Massachusetts, like the one registered to the

rider company. So it was on the wrong vehicle and it was confusing. But one check of the van, and he confirmed this was the stolen truck. So the plates had been changed, which is even more suspicious. And right away the fact that this was in a really nice neighborhood with lots of random clutter in the backyard of this home, it didn't look like any of the other houses. It was unkept. And the extension court. The deputy felt that this was some kind of breaking bad type of thing. And if you know, you know, it just screamed mobile meth lab. And that was very prevalent at the time. The hallmarks were there. John could probably be using the paint business as a front and maybe purchasing chemicals in relation to that business, but then using them for a different operation.

So the deputy called in narcotics to come check it out. And they got there that afternoon, and since the truck was stolen, they had probable cause to look around. They couldn't go into the house, of course not, but they looked around in the backyard. And they didn't really see anything that stood out. Nothing that seemed illegal and no real chemicals as far as anything beyond paint. but when they followed the extension cord, it was really strange. It came out of the truck and it led over the fence and then into a neighbor's backyard and plugged into a neighbor's outlet on the side of their home. So it seemed like John not only was stealing a truck, but he was stealing electricity from someone.

And maybe it's true. Maybe his house didn't have running water or even electricity. Because was it even his house? because they knocked. And John didn't answer. But no one did. Then they took a closer look at the truck and they wondered if all the chemicals and the tools to make the substances could be inside the back, where the power was being supplied.

They tried to open it, but it was secured with a lock. However, they were allowed by law to break it open due to the fact the truck was stolen. So they called a locksmith. And it didn't take long before they were inside the cargo area of the rider truck. It was full of sealed white buckets that looked like they were chemicals. But then looking to the left, they finally figured out where the mysterious extension cord led to a large, white, six by three feet deep freezer. This thing was big.

And not only did it have a padlock on it, but strips of tape securing the top shut. Now, I have actual pictures from the police search and a video as well, but they figured this was it. They were going to bust the sky for illegal substances. But to be careful, the detective had to put on protective gear, a mask, gloves, a full CSI jumpsuit before the locksmith could remove the lock and open the freezer. By this time another detective, Scott Masher, was on the scene holding the video camera as they opened this ice chest. And right away, they see a large, black, plastic wrapped object.

Then came the smell. And then came the sight of what looked at the look at the look at the same. would look to be blood frozen at the bottom of this freezer. Lots of people hunt in this area, so surely it would turn out to be an animal. Maybe it was a deer or something. The detective reached in and grabbed a hold of whatever was inside that bag, and instantly he knew it wasn't a deer.

He actually thought he had just grabbed a human shoulder, an arm, a body. And I was just thinking, can you imagine the shock and the horror? They went in there thinking, meth, and they realized, this is something way more sinister. They began cutting the bag open, and the very first thing Detective Masher noticed were two arms, handcuffed together. The long, manicured fingernails,

and the ring stood out right away. It appeared that they had just discovered the deceased, unclothed, and frozen body of a woman. She was in the kneeling position. Her hands were bound behind her back, and her head was covered in white plastic bags. In that moment, this wasn't a stolen. vehicle case anymore. This was a crime scene. A sealed tomb on wheels. The moment they opened that freezer,

everything changed. Someone wanted this body hidden. But who was she? And what happened to her? Well, they thought the best person to ask would be John, but he was nowhere to be found. And meanwhile, they realized, as soon as they were to unplug that freezer to transport the body to the medical examiner's office, it would begin to thaw, and that wouldn't be good. It would decompose at a very rapid rate, so they called the medical examiner to come down there and direct them on what to do next to preserve the body for identification.

And the medical examiner was forensic pathologist, Dr. Amy Buckelts, and right away, she told them to drive the entire truck over to the coroner's office. She had never dealt with a case like this before, but was very concerned about the degradation of the deceased fingers. If the body thawed too fast, the skin would wrinkle so much that it would be nearly impossible to take fingerprints.

And once that happened, there was no going back. Once transported, the entire freezer was then taken off this truck. And once the body was carefully removed, the doctor could tell that this woman was wrapped in three layers of black plastic trash bags. Each one bound tightly, sealed and what almost felt like some kind of ritual. It wasn't done in a haphazard fashion. The person that did this took their time. Dr. Buckholz couldn't even remove the handcuffs at first. She actually had to use bolt cutters because they were so tight.

She couldn't even slide one of her fingers underneath. That's how hard they were clamped down. Like someone didn't want this poor victim to ever move it at. There was no ID in the freezer, no name tag, no wallet, just a body of what they could now observe was a young woman, possibly in her 20s. But now came the time to remove the three white plastic garbage bags that were over her head. And they were secured with gray duct tape.

And the tape was also wound from her mouth to the top of her eyelids. And that told investigators something very deeply intentional. This killer didn't want her to talk and didn't want her to see them. And then the pathologist noticed something else. As the tape was removed, a wad of cloth fell out of her mouth. It had been stuffed deeply inside, shoved inside to silence her even before the tape. It was evident that her skull was shattered. Her mouth bruised, her face was swollen, and when the plastic bags were cut away, brain matter was visible through the open fractures in her head.

It was clear this was a homicide. And there were no defensive wounds. They knew they needed to call into forensic anthropologist because the skull would need to be to be reconstructed in order to tell how many times it was struck and what weapon was used. But before the body was thawed, Dr. Buckholtz instinctually knew she needed to take swabs to test for male DNA because in this case it could have been sexually motivated because she was unclothed. She wasted no time. She used the back of a scapull on its handle to lightly scrape the area to get some of the frozen pieces of ice into containers. And she was hoping that she could test them later and there would be DNA present, that that DNA would be preserved through the freezing process.

Next, the doctor literally used a hair dryer to very slowly defrost the victim's hands, and I could tell that this process was so delicate. I saw pictures, I saw these professionals take their job so seriously, and I'm so thankful that they do. She would look periodically to make sure that the hands weren't defrosting too rapidly. She needed them to just get to the point of seeing those fingerprint ridges right in the skin on the tips of each finger. And then she had her ink pad and her cards ready to make fingerprints. And she rolled each finger one by one and then put them into the missing person's database. And they began the slow process of examining the body carefully and methodically. An earring was found in her hair, a necklace with a heart charm still

around her neck, and on her left pinky finger, a dolphin ring. She had wounds all over her head and face, one large laceration on the scalp above her left eye, one on her forehead, another on the left side of her hairline. Too many to count all over her head. But they were going to need a specialist, like I said, to come in to reconstruct the skull. So now they waited. And meanwhile, Detective Steve Gregory, remember, that's a detective friend of Jack He was back at their store, retrieving his order from them when he got a page, yes, a page,

and it was an urgent page from his boss. He asked Elaine if you could use the phone, and this is where we left off when I introduced you to Jack and Elaine. An officer on the line wanted to speak to her. It was Detective Masher from Arizona, and she's like, why would someone want to speak to me? She was stunned what was going on. Well, Masher wanted to know her connection to John. Of course, she was hardly connected to him, and she explained how she came to know him at the swap meet and how she reported the truck.

And that was that. She really didn't have much information to give them. And then at 5.30 p.m., back at John's house, a red Jeep Cherokee pulled up and inside was John and his mother Anne. Officers surround the vehicle, and both of the occupants were instructed to get out of the car. Now, John was promptly arrested for the theft of the rider truck. He was put in a patrol car, and brought to the police station, and his mother was pulled aside for questioning. It turned out it was her house that the extension cord was plugged into,

and she was informed that they were getting search warrants for both of the properties, and she was not happy about that. She told detectives she knew nothing about an extension cord or a truck. She had just assumed John still had it because her neighbors complained about the mess in the backyard, and she thought he was planning to pack everything up

in that truck and haul it out of there. She admitted that John was somewhat of a recluse, and he worked way too much to socialize. He didn't have any friends. But he came back to Arizona because his ailing father was in the hospital. What she was more concerned about was the idea of her house being invaded. And even worse, she couldn't be there, and they wouldn't give her an amount of time they needed to search it. She didn't like that, not at all. They did, however, tell her that they would put her up in a hotel room.

but from that minute forward, Anne decided to get a lawn chair and post up right in front of the houses to watch everything that the authorities were up to. We will get back to Anne because, let's just say she's a very interesting woman to say the least, but now let's turn our attention to her 37-year-old son John. He didn't have much to say when he was taken away. He was cooperative, but indifferent. Now, we did tell them that he just didn't have a chance to return the child,

that's all. And Detective Mashir told him, well, we had to take possession of the truck. You can't keep a rental truck just because it's not convenient for you to return it. His name is John Femolero, by the way, and we know that there's much more to the story. John never mentioned anything about a freezer because, of course, he didn't. But once in the interview room, John was not as cooperative, and as soon as he was asked about that freezer, he wanted an attorney. But Detective Mashar didn't need John to say anything. admitting that he was the one in possession of the truck was enough because it was on his property and the freezer was plugged into his mother's house all under his control.

It was enough to book him for murder in addition to the theft charge. Now it was true. The power was shut off for 24 hours on July 11th, so right before the cops went out there. Long story that I'm not going to get into, but apparently John's sister Marion and her now ex-husband used to live in that house next to their mother. And when they got divorced, the husband let John live there for about two years. He said, apparently, the ex-husband turned off the power to send the message that he wasn't happy that he wasn't purchasing it because that was supposed to be the plan. His mom tried to explain that that must have been the reason that he plugged in the freezer at her house.

But she had the power turned back on afterward. But I'm thinking, does she not realize it's weird to have something in the back of your truck, a freezer in the back of your truck with a dead body in it? So yeah, it's probably not the only reason he had it plugged in there. And the license plate switch. Well, what happened was this. John took the license plate off of one of his work vans, and he put it on the rider truck. And that was pretty smart.

That was clever, right? Because if someone drove by and ran the plates, it wouldn't look stolen. And John's mother made a bunch of excuses for him, even saying that she was stunned about a woman's body being found in the freezer because she couldn't think of anything. woman it could be. She said it was sad. Her son had never been married before because all the girls he'd ever been with had just broken his heart and that he was a real good boy. She said they were

good people. They were good conservative Christian people in her words. Well, what they found kind of contradicted a lot of that. As the search began, they actually videotaped it. And John's place This was a hoarder's paradise. Boxes and boxes of random stuff, clutter, messy, unorganized, everywhere you can think of or untidy. That was this place. There were guns, several guns, one under his mattress, a shotgun leaning up against a wall, a revolver on the floor,

a rubber hammer and a knife nearby. What was John so afraid of? Or prepared for? Or who?