True Crime with Kimbyr - Part 2: 3-Year-Old Witnessed His Mother's Murder & Helped Solve The Case

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

The investigation deepens in True Crime with Kimbyr as detectives search for the person responsible for Charlene Puffenbarger’s brutal murder. With no signs of forced entry and keys missing from the apartment, investigators suspect the killer was someone Charlene knew. But the most unsettling clue comes from her three-year-old son, who points at a police officer and claims, “He hurt my mommy.” Was it confusion—or a haunting hint about the killer’s appearance? In Part 2, True Crime with Kimbyr examines the evidence, the suspects, and the disturbing details that could reveal who ended this young mother’s life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So let's start with 28-year-old Alan. Investigators learned he was Dustin's father. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot Machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package.

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Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. And that he and Charlene had a short relationship that ended after their son was born. When things were ending with Alan, Charlene confided in her mom who she was very close with, that Alan had not been treating her very well. She needed to get out. At first, he seemed like the perfect match. But after living together for about a year or so, Alan got controlling. And that was one of the first red flags.

There was a time that Charlene went to her mom's house to get away from Alan, and he came over there banging it on her door really late at night, asking for Charlene to come out. And Phyllis was like, no, she's sleeping. You better leave. And after that, Charlene was done. She didn't care if she had to be a single mother. She wasn't going to stay in a relationship that she wasn't happy with.

Investigators then spoke to Alan and to those who knew him, including Charlene's family. And although things didn't work out between them, he was still in his son's life. He wasn't a deadbeat dad blowing off his response. He was consistently on time with his child support payments, and there were no documented blowups, no ongoing issues between him and Charlene. Nothing was noted in this investigation.

And when detectives asked when he last saw her, Alan said it was about a week before Charlene was murdered. For the night Charlene was killed, Alan claimed he had been with his girlfriend, and his girlfriend confirmed his alibi. She said they had dinner, they watched a movie together that night, and she was with him the entire. and she was with him the entire time.

Of course, detectives weren't completely convinced. An alibi is only as strong as what backs it up. And girlfriends, partners, family, they're not seen as 100% reliable. And the other day I was watching the current case in Massachusetts unfold, Brian Walsh. You know, the husband of Anna Walsh, who disappeared and her body was never found.

Well, an investigator on that case said something. It was something to the effect of, I trust, but I verify. And I like that. It's not that they go in thinking that anyone is guilty of anything. They trust their alibis. They trust that they're true. But they verify to confirm.

But nothing about Allen's history with Charlene was violent or suspicious. He didn't make it to the suspect list. He was checked off for now. And now we go to the next guy in Charlene's life, which was Willard McCarley, also 28 years old. And like Allen, Willard was the most recent ex and the father of her two-year-old Derek. Their relationship wasn't without drama. either. Because remember, at this point when she's meeting him, she had just had a baby. Dustin was only

two months old and she ends up getting pregnant. Well, Willard doesn't think it's his baby. He's not convinced. He's like, uh, we haven't been together that long. How do you know it's mine? She's like, I haven't slept with anyone except for you since months before this. But he still wasn't sure. And it was way too much for him. It was ugly. It was drawn out. The kind of situation that leaves bitterness on both sides. Charlene, however, stood firm. she knew who the father was. But their relationship, of course, fizzled. And Charlene was again a single mom until Derek was born.

Willard actually did step up and he was there for Derek's birth, just in case he was the father. But he was still living at home at this point. And his parents, especially his mom, Sarah, really pressured Charlene into getting a paternity test done to prove that the baby was his. They had just gone through something similar years ago with their son because he had a six-year-old. So now they're going through it again. Paternity test, sure, but Charlene was more interested in enjoying her newborn baby. If Willard didn't want to be part of her baby's life, fine. But over time, he turned out to be more interested in moving on with a new woman.

And yes, from time to time, he would stop by to see Derek, but he still swore the boy wasn't his. So finally, in November of 1991, Charlene got a court order for Willard to take a paternity test. This was part of the state's program for applying for benefits. and child support, something that she had already been through with Alan and his son, Dustin. It turned out, Charlene was right all along. Willard was the father of Derek, and I feel like I'm on an episode of Mori, but in all seriousness, the investigators thought Willard's refusal to be involved in Derek's life and his complaints about having to pay Charlene child support definitely moved him into more of a person of interest category, especially because it was so recent. The court had ordered the test only a couple months before

Charlene's murder. There were heated arguments back and forth. Willard had already gone through this with his ex- Kim. He was paying for a six-year-old son and he didn't want to pay more child support. It's not uncommon. However, as soon as paternity was established, Willard's mom and dad, Larry and Sarah, wanted to be part of their grandson's life. So not only did they have him over their house, but they would come over Charlene's and it seemed like everyone was doing their best to get along, but Charlene's mom said she saw her on the previous day before she was killed. She came to her house on January 19, and she seemed okay, according to Phyllis, but she mentioned her daughter was afraid of Willard. He seemed so upset because there was an upcoming court hearing on February 6th, and she even considered

dropping it. Why? Because she just didn't want to deal with the fact that Willard was making a big deal out of it. And this same sentiment was echoed by a guy that Charlene had just recently started talking to, Roger Harrington. They were together on Saturday before she was killed, and he told Investors, she was very upset because she had an argument with Willard over some kind of paternity issue, but she didn't elaborate. So investigators are digging deeper. Phyllis's close friend, Cheryl, who she worked with at a restaurant together, told investigators that Charlene came into the restaurant on Thursday, January 16th. Charlene's mom was busy, so Cheryl talked to Charlene for over an hour. She told detectives Charlene seemed distant and scared and distraught. Apparently,

for what was gathered from both Cheryl and Phyllis. Charlene wasn't just having problems with Willard. She was having problems with his father, Larry. Apparently, according to what these women told investigators, Charlene had confided in Phyllis. The Larry was over her apartment visiting with his grandson, Derek. And while he was there, he pushed Charlene up against a wall and basically started groping her.

Yeah. She was shocked. She said, you're the grandfather of my baby. What are you doing? There were also accusations. against Larry that he had inappropriately touched another relative in his family in the past. Now, no formal charges had been brought, but the pattern of rumors around him were unsettling. So this all sounded like more than just a little tension with this family. The day after Charlene's murder on January 21st, detectives paid Willard a visit.

He was living at his parents' residence, so they went there but he wasn't home. Instead, they met with his parents, Larry and Sarah. And from what investigators already gathered, they were already closely watching. not just what they said, but how they said it. And it was clear they were not fans of Charlene. Larry absolutely denied that he ever did anything inappropriate to Charlene. And a part of me understands why they probably didn't like her very much. They're trying to be on their son's side as far as like the child support is concerned.

And in these type of situations, there can be a lot of accusations about the woman. Things like, she got pregnant on purpose. We've heard it before. The whole like blaming her thing. And that she's just trying to get a handout. None of those things are very nice. It doesn't make a man less responsible, though. But what struck the investigators as odd

is that neither one of his parents seemed very upset that Charlene had literally been murdered. At least not the way you would expect from people whose son was her former partner. This was the mother of their grandson. She had been brutally killed. For regardless, if anyone had been brutally killed, there would be a reaction of some kind, right?

But instead, their focus, especially Sarah's, immediately went to Derek. Sarah was concerned about what was going on with her grandson now that Charlene was dead. There were no visible signs of grief, no questions about what happened. There wasn't any horror over the fact that their own grandson was there the night she was killed

and might have seen something. The biggest concern was the custody of Derek. She was actually interested in how she might be able to get custody of her grandson. So she was laser focused on legal control rather than emotional devastation, And that definitely raised some red flags. But on the other hand, I like to play devil's advocate.

I like to look at everything in a roundabout way. They were never close to Charlene. Their son only dated her a few months, if that. They didn't know her that long, and they broke up soon after she found out she was pregnant. They're, of course, going to be on their son's side. And it's not uncommon to be concerned about your own biological grandchild

and wondering what's going to happen to them in that moment. These investigators were the only people that she could ask at that point. So I don't find that to be that out of the ordinary. Detectives need to speak to Willard, though. And his reaction was a lot like his parents. I'm not sure what they expected when an ex was hardly even around during the pregnancy, hardly even dated Charlene very long, and he finds out she's been murdered.

But he wasn't shaken up. He just seemed pretty detached. Almost like, this is not my tragedy, it's just something that happened, and now he's just giving facts so that he can be eliminated. He was helpful, though. He said the last time he remembered seeing Charlene was about two days before she was murdered. It was a Saturday, January 18th. Charlene had called him.

She wanted to discuss the paternity paperwork. It had been sent to her apartment. So Willard said he and his girlfriend, Tara, drove over to Charlene's. They met her at the mailboxes to get the paperwork from her, and they talked for about 15 minutes about the upcoming hearing. He said he didn't even get out of his car. And in his girlfriend, Tara's words, she said it was a normal, civilized conversation. Charlene walked over, they talked for a little while, everything was normal, and there was no argument. Everything was civil. And as far as the night she was murdered, Willard said he and Tara were together

that night, and he had an alibi just like Allen did. So again, like Allen, it's his girlfriend corroborating it, right? And this would have been earlier the same day that Charlene spoke to Roger later that evening when she said she was upset over Willard. His girlfriend Tara also told investigators that Willard was at her place on Sunday. He left around 11 p.m. and he explained he was home and his dad was there and ultimately he fell asleep on the couch. His brother came in later and so does his mom. So they all saw him. And Tara told detectives the very next day,

Willard was at her work early in the morning dropping off flowers. Again though, you have a girlfriend and family members saying that you were not there on the night of a murder. So they kind of take it with a grain of assault. But now investigators want to ask people from the apartment complex whether they had seen Charleney near the mailboxes on Saturday speaking with anybody. And a couple people said they did. At least one person, a neighbor and friend of Charlene's name Joyce Harper said

that she recalled seeing Charlene standing near the apartment complex, near the mailboxes, talking to someone in a car. Then Missy Green, Charlene's best friend said, the same night Charlene told her, she was so upset that she got into argument with Willard. So we've got varying reports. Clearly more people on Charlene's side are saying there was an argument. People on Willard side is saying that everything was civil.

And also, I want to just point out, things can be interpreted by a person differently. So if things didn't go the way Charlene wanted, she could consider that an argument, even if no voices were raised, let's say, right? I'm sure this was not a comfortable experience for anyone. You've got your ex, his new girlfriend is over there, your apartment, you're talking about a very sensitive topic. You're gearing up for a court hearing, one in which you know Willard and his family are not looking forward to. So during the investigation, almost everyone was willing to sit down for a polygraph. Remember telling you that?

That everyone, almost everyone, was willing, but there were people who refused. And that was members of the McCarley family. So Willard's family, they declined. And they have every right to. Polygraphs are not mandatory. And they're not always accurate. But investigators tend to lean towards thinking, if you truly have nothing to hide, why not just take the test?

But other people feel like, I might be really nervous, and that could trigger the polygraph machine to alert deception, even though I'm not lying. So I understand both sides. But investigators usually use a polygraph in order to know what direction to go in and to kind of check someone off their list more than circling a name over and over again because there's still questions. But despite all of this, all the interviews, the evidence collection, Dustin's unsettling phrases, the careful scrutiny of Allen and Willard and the McCarley family. By February of 1992, Charlene's case was already beginning to cool down.

There were still no people they could definitely point to and say they did this. For Charlene's family, it felt like they were trapped in a nightmare, and they couldn't move forward. It was true that the boys had a new routine. Phyllis had a new role as caretaker in their life. But there was still a killer out there. Think about that. No amount of love or a new routine is going to fix the fact that there's a killer walking on the streets who did this.

And this is usually the part of a case when I start telling you about the DNA evidence. back in 1992, DNA testing was, well, becoming a little bit more reliable and powerful, but still had a long way to go. In order to get any valuable results back in that time, you needed a pretty significant sample, a large sample, in order to get a significant profile. I'm talking about blood DNA, not saliva or skin cells, because those were much less likely to yield a result. The only blood that was present in the apartment belonged to Charlene. So unless they had another DNA profile, they couldn't link, forensically anyway, any evidence to anyone. And even if they did have a profile, the only way they could test it is if they collected someone else's DNA.

Many items were swabbed, including the leather belt that was found on her neck, the soda can, different parts of the bathroom, bedroom doorknobs, things that people would normally touch, especially in a struggle. And all those swabs were preserved in the event that DNA testing advanced the future, which we know it has. But the case had stalled. Charlene's mom and dad did hold a press conference with the police. They begged the public for information and there was a $10,000 reward for any information that would lead to an arrest. And still nothing. Nothing but rumors.

In a small town, that's normal. And I mean, it's normal everywhere. But in Twinsburg, people wondered, am I working alongside a killer? They were out there somewhere. They thought, could it be my friend? Could it be a coworker, a family member? It's terrifying. And a lot of residents were coming forward with tips, right?

Because, you know, if anything looks suspicious and a killer's on the loose, you're gonna maybe see a random guy getting in his car or, I don't know, something strange at night, or this one person said a guy was getting his car fixed because he was going out of town and they were like, why? So they're questioning everything. And of course, it's the cops' job to chase down all those leads. But it was never anything concrete. Charlene's mom spoke out a lot.

She made statements about how it was so unfair that this killer was out there living their life, and they took Charlene's. Phyllis consistently spoke to reporters. She was always reaching out to investigators, always trying to figure out what was going on her daughter's case and keep it in the newspaper again and again so that no one would forget about it. Charlene's family and friends,

they would put posters all around town. They wanted to remind this community that if they knew something, they should say something. These posters were everywhere, at restaurants, at family stores, even at the Ford, factory right up there in the bulletin board. And one of them said, who murdered my daughter? And it had a beautiful picture of Charlene on it. They were hoping that someone would finally come forward. But nobody did. By May of that year, Dustin was again sitting down with Dr. Lord and having yet

another session. And because of all the questions surrounding the situation between Charlene and Willard and the fact that Dustin had said the man who came in, hit his mom and was one of her ex-boyfriend, Even though he said the guy's name was Tim, they decided to put Willard's picture in a lineup with five other men's photos. Because see, they're like, okay, if he's saying it's an ex-boyfriend, why don't we just test it? Why don't we test the theory? And since they know their retention between Charlene and Willard, they say, why not give it a shot? Also because the police officer that was wearing the Tuffy jacket had brown hair and a mustache, and so did Willard. Allen did not.

He was blonde with a clean-shaven face. So that was the other dad. They did this twice with Dustin. And both times, he actually picked Willard out of the lineup of photos. Is that shocking? To some yes. To others, no, because Willard was a familiar face. He had been around his mom.

He had been in the apartment, but he was just like another red flag. There was just something that kind of didn't sit well with this family, but it does seem a little extreme that someone would have done something like this to Charlene over child support. but others may say no, that's not extreme at all. People have killed for much less. But there wasn't any physical evidence tying anyone to this crime. So unfortunately, the case did end up going cold. And if you're wondering what happened to Charlene's children,

her older child, Dustin, did end up going to live with his father, Alan. And Derek, who was in the sole custody of Charlene before she passed away, stayed with Charlene's mom. He was already established there. He was already acclimated to his living space. And because that hearing never happened in February, custody diverted from Charlene to her mom, not Willard and his parents.

Two years go by. Now it's January of 1994. And Phyllis is still doing everything she can to keep Charlene's name in the media and keep this case alive. They have a memorial service at a church. It was the second anniversary of her murder. And Phyllis talked about what a good mom, Charlene was, how she used to take the boys camping and swimming

and having cookouts and campfires. and how her pain has not lessened over the years. She said she thought about Charlene every single day and that you never know when you lose someone like this how hard it is, but she reminded everyone that her grandsons are the ones that are suffering the most, that they were cheated, that their mother was taken from them when they were just babies, and they'll never have her.

She was still begging the public for information, and by 1998 it had been six years since Charleney, was killed and the case was still unsolved. The Akron Beacon Journal came back into town to tell the story, checking it with the family. This family had never gotten an ending. They interviewed Phyllis, who by then had been living in the strange limbo for more than half a decade. Her voice still cracked. She still cried.

And she didn't sugarcoat anything. She said, there is no new evidence, no new leads. Basically, there's nothing they can do. And imagine being a mom saying that about your child's murder case, on the record to a reporter. Not because you don't care, but because you've been told so many times over and over again, there's nothing to do in this case. It's just cold. That the case file is just gathering dust. And in that same article, Phyllis talked about what had happened to Charlene's boys as the years went on.

Dust and the oldest who was living with his father was still seeing her every other weekend. So he wasn't completely cut off from Phyllis, but his day-to-day life had shifted into a new reality with his dad. And Derek, the youngest, continued to live with her, growing up in the shadow of the story that he was too young to even understand or remember, but old enough to be shaped by. Even with the distance and the different household dynamics,

the two boys were growing up with the same hole in their lives. They don't have their mom. They were learning to navigate birthdays, holidays, school days. with the unspoken truth that their mother had been taken away from them. No one's going to talk about that, but I'm sure it was whispered about

because this whole town knew. But her family didn't just sit back and do nothing. On every anniversary of her death, year after year, they took action. They would again plaster those flyers around town, asking for information, putting her face, her name, her story into the public again,

hoping that at least maybe some guilt would finally crack someone open, that someone who stayed quiet would decide enough was a lot. But guess what? 2002 came around. A decade later, and still no answers. No calls that broke this case open.

No sudden confessions. No new evidence. From the outside, it really did look like Charlene's case was frozen in time. On paper, it was stagnant. But things were happening. They were happening in the background, and nobody could see that yet.

This was the year that something finally shifted, not because a detective family found some hidden piece of evidence locked away, but because a person did decide to talk. A man named Charles Kincaid, he walked into this story. Charles wasn't family. He wasn't a friend or even a neighbor. He was someone that worked at a local Ford factory for the past decade.

He didn't even know Charlene. But like everyone else in this town, he never forgot her story. He saw the posters. He read the articles. He even talked to coworkers who knew Charlene and he felt terrible for her family, especially her little boys. But he never knew that he would be the center of this investigation so many years later. Charles was now sitting in an interview room at the police station. He'd willingly come down saying that he believed he could have a lead in this case.

And he felt very compelled to at the least let them know just in case. And he explained. He had this coworker and they weren't close, but he had worked with him for 10 years. And this coworker had made not one, but two very weird statements. One was more recent, the other was a couple years back, but both of them were about killing someone. Wasn't even legit. He wasn't sure, but the first time it was on a road trip with two other men from work. They were engaging in small talk to pass the time while they were driving on the topic of the army came up, normal. Charles had served, and he expressed how traumatic it had been. But then this guy just piped up in the back seat and he's like, I killed someone. Never bothered me.

That first comment struck Charles is kind of odd, but he kind of forgot about it. But more recently, he ran into the same coworker this time at the shooting range. They got to talking, and Charles mentioned that in the army, they would actually use targets with real human faces on them, and they said the thinking behind it was that you would get used to shooting someone, human, someone that can look back at you with their eyes. And that's when this coworker said,

well, when I killed someone, I looked right into their eyes and I had no problem with it, you don't remember the eyes. Now this time, Charles paid more attention. This guy wasn't in the army. He wasn't in law enforcement. So why would he have a reason to look someone in the eyes and watch the life fade from them? And he said it with no remorse and no emotion.

And Charles couldn't let it go. He started to take note of any other conversations he'd ever remembered having with this guy, and that's when it hit him. Way back in 19, In 1992, when they first started working together, this guy was sitting around complaining about some girl that he had dated trying to get him on the hook for child support.

But he wasn't the father. He was adamant and he could prove it wasn't his kid. And he wasn't happy. Well, that woman was Charlene. And that guy that was spewing all of this, including the weird comments, was none other than Willard McCarley. And I'm sure you could have guessed.

And once again, Charles putting two in two to give, was like oh my god if Willard killed someone and his ex is dead could he have killed his ex it seemed way too weird to be a coincidence and that's why he went to police and for detectives this could have been huge they'd already suspected Willard from the beginning it was the kind of thing that definitely like makes your adrenaline go higher right and you're you're thinking this has been dead end after dead end for years and here's someone coming in unprompted saying you know what he told me he killed someone. He didn't even care.

But as compelling as it was, Charles' statements are not enough by themselves. You cannot put a man on trial for a murder based on a co-worker's recollection of some chilling comments that were made over the years. Especially when the defense can argue that memories will blur.

People mishear things or they exaggerate and grudges exist. Like, okay, maybe he was talking crap. But Charles' information did do something. It strengthened suspicions, it reignited focus on Willard, and it lit up a fire again in her case. At least enough for investigators to see what Willard had been up to since 1992. And they're going back, they're pulling up any records, and they find out that back on December

19th of 1995, so this was three years following Charlene's murder, there had been a domestic incident over at Willard McCarley's home. Now this is completely unrelated to anything with Charlene. But in that police report, an officer noted, Then when they came to his house to speak with him in his garage, a deputy realized there was a sheriff's jacket and a sheriff's baseball cap hanging on one of those moving dollies. Well, that's contraband. You're not supposed to be in possession of a police-issued tuffy jacket.

Unless you're obviously in law enforcement, which he wasn't. So those were confiscated. But do you see the connection? Willard was in possession of a cop's jacket and a ball cap. Why? The person that little Dustin had mentioned seeing that night hit his mom was dressed like a cop. That's crazy. It's just another connection that doesn't seem unrelated at all.

What's so frustrating is that all along, Willard, was the one person, pretty much the only person that seemed to have even the slightest motive to harm Charlene. But now, the comments, the connection, the jacket, just like the ones the cops wear in the winter is found in his home, things Dustin said he saw at just three years old. But here's what's unfortunate. Those items, they were not related to Charlene's case. They were not preserved as evidence. They were probably thrown away.

They were never tested. They couldn't even be located. This was so many years later. They were confiscated because they were in possession by Willard. Because it's unlawful. Something that's issued to police cannot be in the hands of a civilian. But it was another dead end. But at the very least, they were collecting circumstantial evidence, right?

And two years later in 2004, 2004, the world had changed in one crucial way for investigators. DNA technology had finally advanced, and the detectives working Charlene's case decided they weren't going to waste this opportunity. They pulled out all of the most critical evidence and one very haunting piece, the belt that had been wrapped around Charlene's neck. The belt had been photographed, documented, and stored, and now it was given a second life as a potential witness in this case. The attacker held it tightly. He could have transferred skin cells or sweat to the surface. Now, initial DNA testing of the belt and the pillows and the pillowcases did not produce any profiles, but this is back in 1992.

So they're resubmitted, the belt, the fingernail clippings this time, the pillows, the pillow cases, as well as the plastic bag that have been shoved in Charlene's mouth. And now they're getting new forensic testing done. They're hoping that with new technology, they can pull something, something more than the older methods have. They weren't just looking for biological material. They were looking for a DNA profile of a killer. But unfortunately, the fingernail clippings had no DNA on them besides Charlene's. The plastic bag had no DNA present.

The pillow and the pillowcases found near her body did have a partial DNA profile of three male contributors. However, these results were inconclusive. There just wasn't enough DNA on them, and most of us know that pillows and pillowcases, they aren't always cleaned very thoroughly over the years, and there could have been other males besides a killer inside Charlene's house at one point that could have sweat on them, drooled on them, transferred their DNA to those pillows.

But the belt was significant. And they get a partial male DNA profile. Now this wasn't a full profile, but at least they had something. Now all they needed was a suspect's DNA to compare it to. And that's when they obtained a warrant for Willard's DNA, a buckle swab. He had no choice. He had to comply.

And when it was compared, it was a match. But no, this is not a slam dunk if that's what you were thinking. And I'm going to get to that. Another reason why I really want to talk about this case was because of some of the angles that you can look at things from. This partial match meant that a descendant on the male side of the McCarley family had DNA present on this belt that belonged to Charlene. And this belt used to be inside the belt loops on a matching leather jacket.

that was in her closet, one that she wore during the winter months and she was killed in January. Do you see the problem here? The problem is that Derek, Charlene's son, who was only two at the time, he was Willard's biological son, which meant he carried the same male DNA profile as his father. He was one of the male descendants of the McCarley family. So even though Willard could be a match, Willard's dad could be a match, And Willard's son could be a match and Derek lived there. If you're a mom, you'll know, it's not uncommon for a two-year-old to drool on something, something that you own, to touch something that you own, with their tiny, grimy little fingers

that they just put in their mouth. So to me, unfortunately this wasn't that significant. And to Willard and his attorneys, it wouldn't be either. It was inconclusive because it was partial, and it was linked to a male that lived in that home. But nonetheless, this is a man. The DA believed they could get a conviction because of the other circumstantial evidence in this case. The tension between them, the way that Willard fought paternity, the fact that they had a hearing

coming up and he didn't want to pay child support. They dug deeper. And they found out that he had threatened his last girlfriend over the same thing. She called him threatening. Also, Willard matched the characteristics of the cop on scene that Dustin pointed to had a mustache and brown hair, just like the cop. Dustin also picked Willard twice out of a long time. line up. Do you think any of that's a coincidence? I don't. Charlene would have let Willard and his father, Larry, inside the apartment, and we'll get to him too. And most of all, they would have cared about what happened to at least two-year-old little Derek, Willard's biological son. So don't you think it would have been kind of likely that they would have taken those keys,

locked the door behind them, so little boys cannot unlock it on their own, very easily at least. And don't forget, Willard and his dad both had reasons why they would have wanted Charlene out of the picture, Larry had allegedly groped her, and he was already kind of possibly facing charges for another incident. And Willard had that hearing coming up. He was already paying for his six-year-old son and living with his parents in their basement at the time. He didn't know how he was going to be able to afford yet another child. Now that they had Willard in their crosshairs, the DA's office was asking around, trying to firm up their case. They were re-interviewing old witnesses and digging up new ones. It had been so many years later. So whether or not

this as compelling would be up to a jury, but a guy named Pasquale, he came forward. Now, he had been convicted of robbery. He served four years in prison, so you have to keep that in mind. But he told investigators he remembered being at an unemployment line back in 1992 with Willard. And he was really upset, and he was making all these comments that he would kill Charlene before ever paying her a dime. And this man wasn't the only one who now years later is claiming that Willard made a similar statement to them. Charlene's best friend Missy told investigators that Willard had gotten an argument with Charlene on January 18th near the mailboxes, but she added that Willard said to her, you will not live to see the upcoming paternity-related court date. And then Charlene's mom echoed the same

thing. She said on the evening of January 19th, when Charlene came to visit her, she told her that Willard had threatened her the night before saying that he would see her dead before he would pay her child support. But this was not something that she disclosed to police in 1992 according to reports. It doesn't mean it didn't happen. Just because a police officer doesn't write it in his notes, which he's supposed to do, though, because you're supposed to be keeping very accurate notes, especially in 1992 when I don't think we were using computers. And they don't. It usually means it didn't happen. But it's for a jury to decide, right? Even the neighbor. Remember, Remember the lady Joyce who said that she saw Charlene at the mailboxes talking to Willard that night?

Well, now she said she remembered the man grabbing Charlene's arm from inside the car. Another fact that kind of seems to be added. So were people remembering more over time? Or were these memories fabricated somehow now that more evidence had come forward from the man at the unemployment office? And now maybe they're just backing it up because they want to see justice done and put someone behind bars. Well, in 2004, while all this is being compiled, Willard McCarley was married.

He's vacationing out in Arizona. He had no idea that a grand jury was severely convening. And as he's relaxing at a resort, cops were at his door with a warrant. He was indeed indicted for Charlene's murder. And on Thursday, May 13th of 2004, 41-year-old Willard McCarley was arrested for the murder of Charlene Puffenbarger.

And the news reached Charlene's family. And you know what? even though they were happy, this was a very complex situation. There's a bunch of emotions. There's anger. There's grief. There's something that seems like hope because now someone's behind bars. But Charlene's brother, Ken, spoke to the media, and he said how deeply emotional that

day was for all of them. After so many anniversaries, so many flyers and interviews, you know, by this time, Charlene's dad had passed away, so he didn't even get to see justice. And Phyllis said, there's nothing they can do. They just have to go with the flow. But finally, a name with evidence strong enough to get to a courtroom. But they all knew that this wasn't the end of the story at all. This was just one more chapter.

They knew they would have to sit in a courtroom and listen to Charlene's death, reconstructed piece by piece over and over again, while the man accused of killing her was just feet away. The first trial, and yes, I said first trial, I'm going to go over these quickly, but you got to hear this part was January of 2005, and it was only the beginning. By then, Dustin was 16, Derek was 15. They were a lot more grown up than they were when their mother was killed. They were now, you know, not quite adults, but in their teens, and they're watching this unfold with Willard,

Derek's own father, even though was strange all those years, as the murderer, allegedly. The prosecutor's version was simple. This wasn't a random act of violence. This is a man who had been told by DNA test that he was the father and who decided that eliminating Charlene was easier than facing his financial and moral responsibility. The way the suspicion circled back to Willard again and again. And finally, the DNA on the belt, tying him physically to one of the weapons used to incapacitate her. Willard's defense team went after Dustin and all of his childhood statements and they did it aggressively.

They argued that the things Dustin as a three-year-old told his grandmother and told this Dr. Don Lord were tainted. They were not just raw, unfiltered memories. They were recollections, but they were influenced in their perspective by police, by mental health workers, and by the adults around him that were grieving and scared and desperate for answers. And they also pointed out that Dr. Lord, the child psychologist who had interviewed Dustin, had lost her license.

So that fact gave them even more ammunition to question her methods. her credibility, and by extension, everything she said that Dustin told her, and I was like, yikes, that was a really powerful blow to the prosecution. Even before the jury got to hear any of that, the judge agreed with the defense, that Dustin's early statements, those chilling phrases, the description of the man dressed like a police officer

saying, I will kill you, they were ruled inadmissible. So this one person who had actually been in that apartment when Charlene was attacked had now been silenced in the courtroom. the prosecution had to move forward without the most haunting evidence that they had. But they still had the DNA and other circumstantial evidence. And in the end, after a number of witnesses, including the ones I already told you about, unemployment office, Charlene's best friend, her mom, the neighbor,

the jury believed the prosecution. And on February 4th, Willard McCarley was found guilty. Only a few days later at sentencing, he was given life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years. It wasn't closure. It wasn't going to erase the 11 years of emptiness and uncertainty, but finally, they had a name and a face. It let them walk out of a courtroom knowing that at the very least,

Willard was responsible on paper. However, Willard had no intention of accepting that as the final word. What I gathered from him, and I don't know, just from like, no, I'm not the father and like fighting everything. I just feel like he's the type of person, this is just me perceiving all the information, Kind of like a mama's boy. Kind of reminds me of Stefan Stearns,

ew, if you're following the Madeline Soto case out of Florida. Just seems like he's always gotten his way. And that he just doesn't, he can't. He can't allow anything to be his responsibility. Like, nope, I'm gonna blame someone else and shift the blame. But he made it clear right away, I'm gonna appeal. And he did.

And guess what? He got granted a second trial in 2007. That's why I said that was the first one. And can you imagine for her family and the boys? It's just like, it's reopening everything. They had to do it all again. See all the photos here. The medical examiner described her injuries.

Listen to the defense twisting everything and minimizing what happened. And once again, the state presented its case. And once again, the narrative came down to the same points. The DNA on the belt. The motive tied to the child support, the denial of paternity, and the cruel way that Charlene had been killed. And of course, the fact that Willard remained at the center of all this. Once again, the defense did what they could to cast out.

But for the second time, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. Willard stood in that courtroom as he was found guilty again. His face barely even changed. No breakdown, no remorse. Just a man hearing again that the jury believed, he murdered the mother of his kid. And at the sentencing that year, it wasn't just the lawyers and the judges that were talking

because Charlene's youngest son, Derek, was now old enough to speak to the man who had been absent for more. most of his life and who had just been convicted twice of murdering his mom. Derek finally faced his father and told him exactly how he felt. He told Willard that he believed he was worthless. That carried a lot of weight. An entire childhood spent without a mom of watching his family drag themselves through

courtroom of knowing this man had been fighting harder for his own freedom than he even fought for his own son. That's pretty big. The legal outcome, however, was that Willard was sentenced to life in prison again. And for many families, that would have been the end of the court battles. You survive one trial, maybe two, and then as painful it is, you settle into life. And the legal side is finished. Charlene's family did not get that luxury because Willard, I feel like we need to be like

Willard, where there's a Willard, there's a way. Because in this man's world, he wasn't done. Third time's a charm, right? It wouldn't be until 2014, and the appeal was granted again. More than 20 years after Charlene's death. And the people that loved her the most were being told, you're going back to court for the third damn time. It happened in 2017.

Think about that for a second. Most cases never even see a courtroom once. Charlene's murder was retried three separate times, more than 25 years after she was killed. And Dustin finally spoke. He was now 28 years old. He was no longer a three-year-old little boy with the words that were ruled too tainted, too unreliable.

This time, he took the stand. And he told the court what he remembered. And according to his testimony, there were two men in that apartment that night. He described one as very tall, and another one is short. For context, Willard was only 5 foot 5, which is short for a man,

so he was most likely the shorter guy there that night. Dustin told the jury, he remembered hearing screams coming from the living room. He watched as one of the men threatened him while the other one smothered his mother. But Willard's defense team did what defense teams do. They tried to dismantle it. They pushed Dustin.

What are the specific details of the crime? And he could not recall. They question how much a three-year-old could truly remember, how memories change over time, how things you're told later can blend with what you actually saw. And they also went after the DNA evidence again. The prosecution treated the DNA on the belt as a very strong indicator that Willard had had his hands on it and that

he murdered Charlene. But the defense tried to make it sound much less certain. They argued the DNA profile was not a one in a billion match. It was far more common. According to them, one in 82 people can share the same DNA sequence. In other words, they claim the DNA could have come from any male in the McCarley family, which I told you, including Derek, Charlene's own son. Their goal was clear not to prove who committed the murder, but to convince the jury, they couldn't be sure if it was Willard. That was the heart, reasonable doubt, not building your own story, but breaking down the prosecution's side. But the jury had heard enough. After deliberation, the verdict came back, guilty again for the third

time. A jury listened to the facts. They found Willer McCarley guilty of the murder of Charlie and Puffenbarger. He was sentenced one more time to life in prison. And by sense, As you can imagine, Charlene's family is exhausted. Phyllis said she was grateful that justice had finally been appelled again, but she also spoke openly about how devastating it was to have to keep reliving the trial over and over again, every appeal, back in the courtroom again, back in that living room in Pinewood Gardens. Back to the moment she learned her daughter was gone.

She addressed Willard. She told him she was relieved that he was relieved that he was he would not be able to hurt anyone else the way he had hurt her daughter. But then something happened than no one even expected. I was kind of like, whoa, Dustin, who had finally been able to testify, as I told you, also spoke to Willard. He's not the biological son, that's Derek. But this is Dustin, the one who witnessed his mom's murder.

Can you imagine? Well, you would think maybe he would scream. He would curse at this man. He would wish the worst on him. But instead, he does something incredibly compassionate, but very complicated. He said that in Willard's position, he would have probably pursued every possible appeal as well. He understood why Willard kept fighting all the verdicts, even if he hated what those appeals had put his family through. And then, Dustin did something that stunned this entire courtroom.

He asked the judge if he could give Willard a hug. It was a gesture that went way beyond anger and forgiveness. It was just one of those moments where you can just see this lifetime of pain and confusion. And it's just wrapped up in this one simple human request. And for a second, it looked like it was going to happen, but the judge was like, uh, no. The rules, the setting, the security concerns, whatever the reasoning, no is no. Dustin was not allowed to hug the man convicted three times of killing his mom.

I'm kind of glad because man doesn't deserve a hug in my opinion. If Dustin was the embodiment of grace and empathy in that moment, Charlene's brother Ken was the opposite. Anger. He didn't hold back. He looked at Willard and he told him, you deserve to be there. I hope you die there in prison.

Has he run out of ways to appeal, you might ask? Well, he did it again in 2019. And in May of 2024, just last year, his fourth appeal was denied. But you know, if you know me, I do like to be fair when I talk about these cases, which means if there is something that I see that I question, I'm going to say something about it.

And even though I believe there is a lot of compelling circumstantial evidence against Willard, by all means enough to convict someone three times, I do also think there's a lot of questions in this case. And maybe you'll disagree, and that's okay. For me personally, if I was a juror, I would need more. For someone to spend the rest of their life in prison, it doesn't mean he didn't do it. Remember, just because I say something like that,

it just means the prosecution would have needed to give me more concrete evidence. And it doesn't appear that there has been anything new discovered. And I find that really hard to believe. I wondered, of the 150 items collected, wasn't there anything else? Well, it was winter. So maybe the killer wore gloves. Maybe that's why there was no fingerprints or DNA left behind.

And since this wasn't an essay case, and no one else was in her orbit that any problems with her other than Willard, all signs really do point directly to him. As for whether or not his dad was involved, because remember I said I was going to circle back to him, It seems kind of obvious that if anyone was going to help him, it would be his dad. And like I said, he had a reason to want Charlene to maybe be silenced as well, and none of them wanted to take a polygraph.

In the end, we will not know 100%, but Willard seemed to have the most to gain from Charlene being dead. Not only that, he had the cop's jacket and hat, which Dustin spoke about on his little fake telephone. He fought the paternity and the child support. and people have killed for less. Some question whether it was right for Charlene to file for child support. Maybe they blame her. I don't.

That's a person's right and responsibility. Willard was still the dad. And if he had gone to court and had that hearing, a judge would have decided what was fair. Charlene was doing the best that she could. She wasn't just sitting around. She was working. She was watching other people's children for extra money.

There's not many jobs that a single mom two young children under the age of five can do, especially when they can't afford childcare on their own. It's really unfortunate how hard it is to get help sometimes, and it's really hard. It's a situation that I've personally been in. Charlene shouldn't have been in any danger by simply holding Willard to his part of helping

with his biological child. But this case isn't really about DNA on a belt, or how many times a jury said the word guilty? To me, it's about a young mother whose life was taken in a moment of, absolute cruelty that will never match her eagerness to give her sons the best life possible. Think about it. All she was doing was attempting to get extra support.

Doesn't match. You don't kill someone over that. Two boys lost so much that night. They didn't just lose their mother. They lost all the future things they were supposed to have with their mother. Every birthday, every achievement, every hard day. That you just need your mom's voice. It makes me, seriously, makes me sad and tear up.

that was all stolen from them because of someone's selfish choice. And yet, they showed up in court again and again. They said their mom's name. They told the world who she was to them, even though they only knew her when they were two and three years old. If there's one thing Charlene's story drives home, is that we need to listen. We need to listen to someone who says they're scared.

And even to children, maybe they don't have the right words, but they're trying desperately to tell us something that they've seen. That's bravery. We owe it to families like Charlene's to keep paying attention long after the cameras move on because we need to fight for justice. It's one of those stories that really sticks with me. And I thank you so much for being here for Charlene's story. I'm really eager to see your thoughts on this one, even if they're different from mine. That's totally okay. And I'll see you in my very next video. Bye.