Who Killed Jennifer Judd? - Ep.1: Renée

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

In November 1993, a veteran discovers the body of a woman on a little road near Interstate-10 in Mobile, Alabama. She’s nude, drained of blood, and decapitated. But despite the horrific nature of the murder, it garners little sympathy in the press and, worse, detectives fail to understand the fundamentals of what they’re dealing with. Can a new approach to the case potentially uncover the person responsible for this gruesome beheading?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nature is a dangerous place. On I Was Prey, the podcast, listen to the life-or-death experiences of people who have survived animal attacks, natural disasters, and deadly parasites alike. Featuring audio from Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Animal Planet. From hit shows like This Came Out of Me,

Nature's Deadliest, Still Alive, and Monsters Inside Me. There are countless organisms that make a living off of us. Listen to I Was Prey wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast contains explicit language and graphic descriptions of violence. Please be advised. It is November 14th, 1993, a Sunday, when George Martin hears a knock on his front door.

Opening it, he sees his neighbor Jerry, who looks rattled, as if he's seen a ghost. Came over to my house and he said, I want you to go somewhere with me. He said, I think I've seen a mannequin up on the bank next to the fence, down on the dirt road. George drives with Jerry down a red dirt road

running parallel to Interstate 10. It's on the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama, near a small town called Theodore. It is the very definition of middle of nowhere. The day is gray and misting heavily, just shy of real rain. The kind of day George would rather spend inside watching football. But he's here, driving along this red dirt road. The highway to his left, blur of green and brown to his right. Jerry points to a silhouette up in the distance, up in a grassy cove.

It's the mannequin he saw. George pulls up and stops the car, but Jerry refuses to leave the passenger seat. So George steps out alone. He's a Korean War veteran. He's seen the worst of the worst. But as he climbs the gentle slope to the bushes, he sees it. Sees her. And sure enough, it wasn't a mannequin.

It was a body. And I walked up to it. And it... I hate to tell you, it had no head and it was laying on its stomach and the body had been cleaned out, had no fluids, which was strange to me. They wanted that body found, I think, because of the way it was put, you know. This road wasn't traveled much. What George sees is the nude body of a woman, prone, that is facing down.

Her arms reach out ahead. Her body is empty of blood, And she is decapitated. Her head is nowhere to be seen in this crude resting place. And when I seen the body, I said, well, you know, I'm going to have to get out of here and go call the cops. Hours later, the remote dirt road is crawling with police cruisers. Yellow tape strung from the trees. A few locals gather round as the medical examiner signs off

on the removal of the body. The victim's head has still not been located. The next day, cadaver dogs will locate the woman's head a full hundred yards away, on the other side of the road, in the bushes right alongside I-10. But even before they find the head, a fingerprint record search will identify the woman George found that day as Maria Martinez. For the next 29 years, her murder will remain unsolved.

From ID and Arc Media, I'm Sarah Kalin, and this is Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom. Everything about the I-10 service road is different today than it was on that Sunday in 1993 when George Martin discovered the body. I'm not sure exactly where it is since they paved the road. You know, when this happened, it was a dirt road. Back in 1993, the service road was only red dirt and gravel. Today, it is paved for at least half a mile. Back then, houses were scarce. Today, a dozen or so pepper the mile-long stretch,

as does a new truck depot and a Waffle House. Back then, on the day George found the body, it was gray but still warm. Today, the sun is shining, but it is bitterly cold. Still, George returns to the service road, a road he maybe has driven only a few times since. This time, at the request of Amanda Campos, the daughter of the woman whose body he found. Hi. Hi. I'm Amanda. Amanda. Amanda was only 10 years old when her grandpa sat her down in their living room.

And he said, we got a phone call about your mom. And they found her body. She went to heaven. And I remember saying, no, she didn't. You're lying. You're lying. And then after that, I remember crying and then asking how, what happened? What happened? And they're like, we don't and then asking how, what happened? What happened?

And they're like, we don't know yet. We don't know yet. We don't know yet. The morning of her mom's funeral, Amanda spots a newspaper on the kitchen table. It is open to a story on her mom's murder. She reads only one word. Beheaded. And like, my mom was beheaded?

Is that what happened? And I ran away and I went in the other room and cried until my grandma came in there. But it was a closed coffin. In the nearly three decades since her mom's death, Amanda has avoided this stretch of road in Mobile. She lives less than two hours away in New Orleans, but she won't take the interstate through Mobile if she can help it. In fact, she's visited this particular spot only once. That is until today with George. I wish I hadn't seen it. I know, I wish you didn't, but I am so thankful that you did and that you called the cops. Yeah. I just can't even imagine that sight. And, you know, it's personal to me, but even as a person, you know, as a human,

like you said, Sunday, I just went watching football, and then this gets thrown at you, and it's, like, so traumatic. And even 26 years later, you can remember the details. And I want you to know that that does give me peace, that she wasn't forgotten by somebody. Even though they don't express it, you know, I've talked to people probably a year or so after that,

and it's fresh in their mind what they thought about it. They knew something had happened. Nobody had solved it. I don't guess it ever got solved, did it? Not yet. Okay. I hope you can solved it. I don't guess it ever got solved yet. Not yet. Okay. I hope you can do it. On my 24th birthday, I began my training at a federal police academy.

Before that, I was a thespian. A serious one. I played Ophelia in Hamlet, Abigail in The Crucible, Kate in Taming of the Shrew. Difficult women, sometimes dead women. But at the age of 24, I gave all of that up to become a cop. For almost a decade, I worked patrol,

mostly third shift, middle of the night. Gun runs, bar fights, domestics, domestics, domestics. I taught at the academy. I enjoyed it all. But every so often, I got pulled into the Bureau to work on special investigations into sex crimes. And the more I saw of that, the more I

knew my time in a uniform and a cruiser was going to come to an end. I needed to go back to school and study what really drew me to law enforcement in the first place. You see, I grew up in Gainesville, Florida. I was 15 the summer Danny Rowling terrorized and brutalized college students in my hometown. He remains one of the most vicious serial killers on record,

raping, dismembering, and mutilating his victims. He's known in the true crime world as the Gainesville Ripper, but we locals recoil at that name. We hate it. We don't refer to him at all when discussing the case. We simply say the student murders. He doesn't deserve to be glorified with some splashy nickname. It's all too real to us.

My family stashed pepper spray strategically around the house, just in case. My cousin had a class with one of his victims. Before Rowling, we lived in the shadow of Ted Bundy. He was just 20 minutes away at Rayford Prison, a facility he nearly escaped twice. These serial killers loomed over my childhood and teen years, seemingly ever-present. And that shaped me. For years, I informally consumed anything and everything on the subject. I read all the FBI profiler memoirs like Mindhunter and Whoever Fights Monsters. I dove even deeper, buying and

studying textbooks on forensic psychology. I paid out of pocket to attend training seminars on the subject. But I wanted to formalize that knowledge, put it to use in more practical ways. I wanted to understand the mind of the serial predator. And more importantly, I wanted to devote the rest of my career to tracking down and stopping that very specific breed of monster. But leaving law enforcement to become a criminal behaviorist meant that I was now a civilian.

I didn't have access to active cases the way I had in my cop days, so I was relegated to the role of expert consultant. I worked with families, I worked with journalists and authors, and I even eventually worked with lawyers, including ones with the Innocence Project. I examined cases. Sometimes I even got to help solve them.

But always from the outside. But then, in 2017, it crossed paths with a detective from Alabama. His name was Captain Paul Birch. He was, still is, the head of major crimes for the Mobile County Sheriff's Office. There's a long family history of law enforcement in the city of Mobile, and there's

been a birch on the police department since the city's been in existence. So I always knew that's what I wanted to do. I met Paul while working on a case possibly connected to serial killer Jeremy Jones. Jones is regarded by forensic psychologists as one of history's most unrepentantly evil killers. Paul is the guy who managed to capture Jones following a brutal 2004 murder in Mobile County. This is after Jones dodged police and FBI agents for years across a whole swath of the Deep South. Paul is the one to whom Jones finally chose to confess his crimes.

So Paul is kind of a big deal. At the Mobile County Sheriff's Office, Paul is a commanding figure. When he says jump, the response is always, how high? But he's also gentle, friendly, and thoughtful.

The kind of man open to doing things a different way than they have always been done. Paul, Captain Birch, has spearheaded a number of groundbreaking programs and initiatives at the Mobile County Sheriff's Office. Years before there was a national spotlight on the problem of rape kit backlog, Paul made sure that all of them in Mobile County were tested and processed. Right is right, wrong, wrong.

That is why Paul invited me, a civilian, down to Mobile to look at the agency's list of cold cases, to bring a new perspective, an outside perspective, and see if maybe I could help. I cannot stress enough how rare it is for a sheriff's office to do this, to invite an outsider

like me into the fold. But Paul did it. So in 2019, I travel down to Mobile and sit in Paul's office. It's a windowless yet spacious room, tastefully decorated.

Framed awards and honors hang on the walls. A large L-shaped dark wood desk takes up most of the room. Sitting on the desk is a collection of photos, a proud father with his family. I sit down opposite Paul at his desk. He hands me a list of Mobile's unsolved cases, going back to the 70s.

The list is about 20 pages in total, stapled together, listing out case numbers, each with a short description, no more than a dozen words. I have some idea of what I'm looking for. I know I'm not going to be of much use in a gang-related shooting, or a hit-and-run fatality,

or an arson for profit. The cases I can actually be a real benefit to, the cases that I specialize in, well, they all have a look that sets them apart, even at a glance. And one case on that list had that look. Maria Martinez, 27, black female, prostitute. Let's see.

I Google her name. A handful of short articles from 1993 and 1994 turn up. They describe the gruesome scene, the remote location, a reminder that anyone with information should contact authorities. Nothing indicating that this is a major case or that there might be much available for me to start with. Also, although the description of this case identifies the victim as Black,

all of the news stories show a victim who is white. Huh. I ask Paul, does he know anything about this case? I remember when it happened, you know, when there's a crime such as a beheading, that spreads throughout the law enforcement community, city, county, smaller agencies, because it's unusual. And through the years, I kind of poked into it just because I was intrigued about the case, and it remained unsolved, primarily, because I just don't like having unsolved cases. So Paul and I decide to print out whatever digital files are available

on the Maria Martinez case. I expect no more than a dozen pages, at most. As the files begin to load, the printer hums. We are shocked to see the number of pending pages climbing and climbing. 50, 100, 200, 500, 800. As the file hits 1,000 pages, the screen goes black and the printer stops.

The whole system has crashed. What the hell did we just find? Nature is a dangerous place. On I Was Prey, the podcast, listen to the life-or-death experiences of people who have survived animal attacks, natural disasters, and deadly parasites alike. Featuring audio from Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and deadly parasites alike. Featuring audio from Discovery

Channel, Science Channel, and Animal Planet. From hit shows like This Came Out of Me, Nature's Deadliest, Still Alive, and Monsters Inside Me. There are countless organisms that make a living off of us. Listen to I Was Prey wherever you get your podcasts. I sit in my hotel room that night surrounded by boxes filled with papers, photos, and cassette tape interviews. This is the entire Maria Martinez case. The actual files from the records room

from way back in 1993. Paul and I had given up on the idea of printing it out once it became clear there wasn't enough paper or ink in the building. As I slowly sift through these files, I begin to piece together what some of the first steps of the original investigation looked like. After George Martin, the man who discovered the body, called the cops, a deputy checked out the location with him. Seeing the body and the state it was in, the deputy called for more officers, detectives too. And then he called for the medical examiner. The officers who arrived began taking crime scene photos.

By that point, the mist had turned to rain, the red dirt road clumping into clay. The crime scene photos show the woman's body as it had been found, nude, prone, exsanguinated, that is, drained of blood, and decapitated. She was partially obscured by the tall grass and some overgrown bushes, but not hidden, not covered. No care was given by the killer to preserve the victim's dignity. Given that there was no blood in the body or anywhere at the scene,

it was clear that the victim had been killed somewhere else and then taken to this spot. Police wrapped the victim's hands in paper bags after fingerprinting her for identification. They wrapped her ankles too, hoping to preserve any possible fingerprints from a perpetrator. Someone had clearly dragged her to this spot in the brush, probably by her ankles. Photos of drag marks from the road through the grass

seem to further evidence that. Yeah, this one was pretty hideous. We're really dating ourselves now with polar roots. This is Dr. Tim Hughes. Today, he's the sheriff's surgeon of the Mobile County Sheriff's Office. But back in 1993, Dr. Hughes was a third-year medical student and an intern at the forensics lab. As I was looking through the file, I was actually working that Sunday evening that her body was brought to the lab. Though he was not at the crime scene,

Dr. Hughes received the victim's body when it came into the lab, and he drafted the initial autopsy report. As most people in public safety will tell you, there are cases that you really never forget. This one is one that, clearly remember, this is not a kind of, fortunately not a type of case that you see very frequently, at least in our community.

So what was the nature of those injuries, the brutality that the victim went through? It's important that you know. I do not believe in sharing these facts gratuitously or in any more detail than is absolutely necessary. However, to fully understand this crime, the mind of the criminal who could commit it, and how I plan to go about trying to find that person, sharing some description of these injuries is necessary. First was the injuries to the neck, which involved, number one, decapitation. There were also a number of incised wounds about her body, most notably around the upper spine of the cervical spine or neck. Then there were a number of sharp force injuries to the abdomen.

Most notably was a very wide, gaping, incised wound to the abdomen that extended fairly deep into her abdominal tissues. Also described in the report were a number of blunt force injuries. So she had a number of these types of injuries around the shoulders, the majority of her arms and her hands, her legs, particularly her thighs, around the posterior aspect of her torso or her back, and there was also a large contusion on her right buttock. Those all were consistent with her sustaining a pretty good beating. Initial discovery at the scene revealed that the victim had been decapitated,

her head fully removed. She was naked and laying down, but once the detectives turned her over, they saw that she had been cut several inches deep and at a slight angle from her navel to her pubis, that is roughly from her belly button down to her labia. And she had extensive smaller cuts, bruises and abrasions all over her body,

including what looks like a bite mark. The wounds and bruises tell us this was not a sneak attack. She was not restrained. She fought, perhaps even viciously, to save her life. Once they performed a medical examination on her, more injuries were discovered. Dr. Hughes says it looks like her vagina was penetrated and raped with an object, specifically the blade of a knife, but that there was no evidence of penile rape. But there is another odd detail.

She had been exsanguinated. When she was found, there was no blood in her body, and she looked like she'd been cleaned. She almost certainly had to have been at least hosed down, if not fully washed by someone before placing her there. When her head was located the next day, it was discovered that her face had also been mutilated, cut from each corner of her mouth across the cheeks, extending to each ear. The autopsy would reveal significant

contusions on her head, but the medical examiner ruled that the decapitation itself had been the most likely cause of her death. This, the wound and the manner in which this perpetrator did this decapitation, at least to me, appears to be somewhat amateurist in that it was done in a very inefficient manner. The incised wound was not straight. It had a lot of angulation to it, and for lack of a better description, took some work. It just appeared to be a very tedious piece of work from a physical standpoint. Her injuries can tell us a lot

about the kind of person who killed her. As in with a lot of these wounds and injuries, they're just indicative of someone who is in a state of rage, just trying to do as much damage as they possibly could, however they possibly could, focusing on certain areas of the body. So the goal clearly was to kill this woman, physically abusing her probably after she was already unconscious. The fact that she was found unclothed tends to direct you towards a perpetrator that either consensually or non-consensually

was intimate with this person. When Dr. Hughes received this body on Sunday, November 14th, 1993, she was identified as Maria Martinez. This was according to fingerprint records collected by the sheriff's office. So he proceeded to draft the report under the assumption that that was her name. He continued to meticulously document not just the injuries to her body, but also all of the little details that could help a loved one identify her.

Like her tattoos. A colorful butterfly in the web between her left thumb and index finger. A small, broken heart just above her left ankle. Unknown to him, those details would be key to helping the victim's loved ones identify her. And in fact, days later, when her body was checked out of the facility to go to a funeral home, she left under a different name.

Renee Michelle Bergeron. They didn't even get her name right in the case file. Her name! How could that possibly happen? It's as if they set off on a journey with the wrong map. How could they expect to get to their destination? This makes up my mind. I want to take what was done, what did exist in those files,

and draw a whole new map. And maybe this time we might end up in the right place at the journey's end. But there is something I need to do before I can officially accept the case. I want to find out if Rene Bergeron has any family still living.

I want their permission before I tear into something that might open wounds they'd prefer to keep closed. Among the victim's personal belongings in the case file are quite a few photographs of the same little girl at different ages through the years. In one, the child is perched on the woman's lap, wrapped up in her arms, both of them beaming at the camera. It looks like it was taken shortly before Renee died,

and the little girl seems to be probably nine or ten years old. It takes a few hours of online searching. I have little to go on. Just a name, Mandy, scribbled on the border of a Polaroid. I find a woman named Amanda in her mid to late 30s in the right part of the country who might be a match. I pull up her Facebook page and send her a message. I explain who I am, tell her that I hope I have the right person and what I want to do for her mother's case. I expect the message might end up in a request folder. I might not get a reply for weeks, if ever.

But within minutes, I see those little bouncing dots telling me someone is responding. I assume such a quick reply means that I've either messaged the wrong person or that she is going to tell me to go away. But her reply pops up. Thank you very much. I have waited my entire life for this. The last time I tried to reach out, no one was available.

Renee Bergeron. That is the name of the woman found on that Sunday in November 1993. Not Maria Martinez. Renee Bergeron of New Orleans. Over the next few months, I pour over anything of Rene's I can get my hands on, trying to piece together the life of a woman who led, well, many different lives. The case file has photocopies of her personal papers. She kept a date book, appointments listed meticulously, her dog's vet appointment, scheduled maintenance on her car,

names, addresses, phone numbers, all annotated with important details. Next to a name, she might make a smiley face or write a cute nickname. Some people had less, uh, approving notes. She wrote CHEAP in all caps, underlined with exclamation points next to one name. ASSHOLE, she wrote next to another. She was careful with her money. Finances fastidiously tracked.

Receipts for bills, checklists for holiday savings, money put aside for her daughter Amanda's Christmas gifts. But papers can only take me so far. In order to really know Renee, I need to speak with those who knew her, those who still love her to this day. Nature is a dangerous place. On I Was Prey, the podcast,

listen to the life-or-death experiences of people who have survived animal attacks, natural disasters, and deadly parasites alike. Featuring audio from Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Animal Planet. From hit shows like This Came Out of Me, Nature's Deadliest, Still Alive, and Monsters Inside Me. There are countless organisms that make a living off of us.

Listen to I Was Prey wherever you get your podcasts. That's our birds. We have two cockatiels. We recently got a new one, Allie and Willie. This is Amanda, Renee's daughter. Today, she is almost 40 years old. But back in 1993, she was just 10 when she lost her mom. I meet with her at her home outside of New Orleans. It's full of life. There's a pair of cockatiels, aquariums filled with fish,

and a little dog. I asked Amanda to tell me a bit about her mom. She was fun. She was loving. She lit up a room. Whenever she walked in, everybody knew she was here. You know, just because her presence, she had such a big personality and life of the party kind of person and wanted everybody to be happy. She was just that happy-go-lucky person. Renee was 26 years old when she died. She had big, blue, deep-set eyes. She was fair-skinned, tall, with naturally auburn curly hair, which she dyed and styled in a hundred different ways. That was her.

All the jewelry, the bright pink, pink lipstick, smiling, curly hair. She had it shaved on the side. She would stand out today. Even today, she would stand out. We look through family photos. Yeah, so that's me and my mom, nice and 1980s hairstyle. Let's see, I think, it doesn't say how old I was on the back,

but I'm assuming I was probably about two or three. A little sundress on. My mom loved going to take pictures at Sears, as you can tell. She would go get her picture taken all the time. I like Sears or JC Penney's and get her picture taken. Just her. And then she would bring it to my grandma and give it to us. And then she'd have, like, I have a mug with her picture on it.

I have a plate with her picture on it. You know, like a button pen with her picture on it. She always had pictures of herself, always. Amanda has a folder full of handwritten letters Renee sent to those she loved. We read through them. In one letter addressed to her childhood best friend Leanne, she wrote,

Hey girl, what's up? I'm in Dallas, Texas. Thanks for accepting my call. I had to catch a plane early that morning to go to Myrtle Beach. As soon as I get a decent car, I'm coming home. I miss it exceptionally. I'm getting older and Mandy is growing up. Anyway, let me know when the wedding is. I want to be there.

Love you, girlfriend. In another, to a boyfriend, she wrote, when you are away, it feels like a part of me is missing, like my leg or an arm and my heart for sure. And of course, she wrote to to her daughter Amanda. So every holiday my mom would send cards and I when I say every holiday I mean like Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween, my birthday, you know of course my birthday like the big things but every little holiday she would send Easter like who really sends

Easter cards you know that kind of thing. A Valentine's wish right from the heart because that's where all good wishes start. Happiness always. Love and miss you, Mommy. February, 1989. I love you and miss you. You're Mommy. 1987 Christmas. Be good for your granny.

Hope your Easter is colored with more fun than you can imagine. With love, Mommy. Another Valentine's Day card. Hope your Easter is colored with more fun than you can imagine. With love, Mommy. Another Valentine's Day card. For a sweet daughter with love. You're a darling little daughter and a perfect Valentine. Happy Valentine's Day.

I love you, Mommy. 1990. A window into the life of Renee Bergeron is beginning to open. By speaking with her family and studying her belongings, I feel like I am slowly piecing together the story of who Renee really was with all its ups and downs. According to Amanda, Renee was young when she had her, still a teenager.

The story I get from her family is this. She fell in love with an older boy from Mobile, Alabama, but tragically and unexpectedly, he died from a brain aneurysm shortly after Amanda was born. Young, effectively widowed, overwhelmed, Renee struggled to keep up with the demands of a young baby, so she turned to her parents for help. They agreed to take care of her baby, of Amanda. And I'm sure if my dad wouldn't have got sick and passed away, it would have been a different life. My mom said that too, because they really did love each other,

and it would have been completely different. But when he passed away, my mom, at 16 years old, you have a child, you get married, and then he passes away in six months. What is she supposed to do? You know, and as a parent, I can't imagine what she went through. I can't imagine having to make that decision. And she was a young parent.

She was 16 when she had me. To fully say, you know, I can't do this. I need help. She just knew she couldn't be a full-time mom. From that point on, Amanda lived full-time with her grandparents. Over the years, Renee regularly sent letters home and visited when she could. Amanda cherished these moments. And I remember, like, whenever she would come in, she made time to make sure I was felt special. We would go ride bikes, just the two of us.

We would talk in my room. She would do my hair. We'd take showers and just talk all night. We'd stay up all night just talking, telling me about everything that she did. I'd tell her about everything at school that I was scared to tell my grandma. That kind of thing. We watched all kinds of movies. She was into thrillers and stuff, just like I am.

We would watch Unsolved Mysteries. And Steel McNoy is one of our favorite movies to watch. Fried Green Tomatoes, kind of thing like that. You know, everything, really. Just anything to spend time together. Amanda also shares letters Renee wrote to her parents over the years. Unlike the cheerful holiday cards she sent to her daughter, these letters are honest and raw, always expressing gratitude for the care her parents took in raising

Amanda. And I found this letter, well, my grandma gave it to me a while back, but it's from December 1985. So she says, parents, how are you all? Especially fine hope and pray i'm very confused at this holiday time lonely is my biggest feeling i was gonna call but i decided to write because i just never get to say what i want to say on the phone i want to first of all thank you all for loving my baby girl as if she was yours it means a lot to me even when i never show it i'm sorry for the terrible pain i put you both through. I know Mandy doesn't understand too much now, but all I want for her to really know is that her mom does love her very much. I'm starting to get the sense that Renee struggled in many more ways than one.

And this prevented her from being able to be a full-time parent to her daughter, despite their close and loving relationship. I've been through different emotions with the whole situation. As a kid, you know, of course, I idolized my mom, and I didn't understand why my grandma was upset or why she was mad at her for certain things, or, you know, I didn't get it. But then when I had my son, I became very mad at my mom. Very mad.

Like, I couldn't be away from my son. I wouldn't even let them take him in the nursery or in the hospital. So for her to give me up at 11 months, it was unconceivable to me. I didn't understand that. For years, I was just very mad at her because of that, because I didn't understand. And then, I don't know what it was, but it was just kind of like, my son got older, I just started looking at him and you truly do want the best for your kid. And it's hard to understand that for people from the outside to understand and say, oh, she gave you up. But she gave me up for a better

life. She knew she couldn't give me what she wanted to give me. It's the most unselfish thing that you could possibly do. All that travel, all those postcards, as I continue to look through her date book, it's starting to become clear to me that Renee spent her early 20s living two different lives. One as Amanda's mom. the other as Maria Martinez. As Maria, she worked as a high-end escort and exotic dancer traveling around the U.S. She had contacts from Chicago to Houston, from Wheeling, West Virginia, to Jackson, Mississippi.

Between her travels, she went home to a little house outside Mobile, Alabama that, in the last years of her life, she shared with her boyfriend, Maurice. She had a little sports car, a bright blue Datsun 280Z, a dog named Blackie. She attended cosmetology classes, and she regularly commuted to New Orleans to spend time with her daughter, Amanda. However, after Renee's murder, media coverage harped on only certain parts of her life. Yeah, so like, this is just the weirdest things that they put. Like, Renee Michelle Bergeron of Marrero, wild, rebellious, and hell-bent for trouble

since she was 12, didn't seem to consider the possible consequences of her lifestyle, her parents said last week. Like, I'm sure my grandma didn't say that. You know, like, I'm sure they said, yeah, she was troubled. She was wild. But, you know. Yes, Renee was a sex worker. That was no secret, not even to her family.

But why is that the singular focus of her entire story? And this made Amanda feel like she couldn't talk about her mom or what had happened to her. In another conversation, she shared with me what that was like. It was very kind of hush-hush, I guess, because it was a rough situation to talk about and things weren't talked about back then. I feel like she was left out because of the circumstances of what happened, you know, because it was a murder. It was a brutal murder. And it was hard for anybody to even talk about it.

You know, I remember trying to go to the counselor at school and she didn't even know what to say. She didn't think much of it until another classmate's mom died in a car crash, and the school held a special mass and fundraiser in support of that classmate's family. It made Amanda wonder, why didn't anybody do this for my mom? And, you know, going to a Catholic school, I'm sure, had something to do with her lifestyle. You know, what she was involved in and what people thought she was involved in. And they didn't want to memorialize that.

Why can't we talk about what happened to my mom? We are all aware of the ways in which murder is covered in the media. There are certain templates and stock formats. There's the misanthropic bad guy, the hero cops who catch him. There's also, of course, the tragic victim. Sometimes young women, fresh-faced and virginal, stolen in their prime.

Other times, the victims are mothers, saintly caregivers ripped apart from their families. You probably recognize their names. Shanann Watts, Jennifer Dulos, Susan Powell, Lacey Peterson. I believe the blame lies within the Madonna whore complex, the way we are all trained to see women as only one or the other. And stories about people of color, stories about indigenous people, stories about poor people or drug users or sex workers rarely get the same coverage.

What happens next is a feedback loop in which the media prioritizes these stories of murdered suburban white moms. So, under community pressure, the police prioritize those murders too, pursuing them to the ends of the earth, while other cases, the far more likely murder cases, get abandoned when the momentum slows or the leads dry up. A leading criminologist named Dr. Stephen Eggers actually coined a term to refer to these marginalized victims. The less dead. I believe Renée Bergeron is one of the many less dead. Judging from these news stories following her death,

Renée's sex work and assumed, quote, lifestyle, was what a lot of people focused on. I believe that this influenced how the original investigation saw Renee. Like, for instance, instead of the most recent photo of Renee, the one with Amanda on her lap, the initial investigators canvassed the community with a mugshot of Renee from years earlier.

Not only was it an old photo of a woman who often changed up her look, but it signaled to everyone that this person was at one point a criminal. Sex workers tend to be forgotten victims and are also often victim-blamed. Renee engaging in sex work shouldn't mean that she isn't deserving of a fair investigation. She is a victim, a victim of a terrible, vicious murder. She was also a mom, a daughter, and a friend

with people around her who loved her and who deserve answers. She was someone, her own person. That alone makes her worthy of justice. And at the end of the day, the reason people like me investigate cases like

this is to give some answers to those who lost their loved ones. In everything I learn about Renee and her personal belongings, everything Amanda shares with me, I see a woman fiercely devoted to her child's well-being, fiercely loyal to her friends and family, fiercely in love when the time was right. And she was a mom. She was Amanda's mom. So why can't I find the articles, the local news pieces, the public outcry at this case so long unsolved? Why has this case sat cold, untouched for years, the victim misidentified in a records room, surrounded by hundreds of other cases, completely unremarkable or unremarked upon.

I call Captain Paul Birch, my friend at the Mobile County Sheriff's Office. I tell him that I have reviewed the files, spoken with the family, and received their blessing. I want to look more into this case, see what I can find out. Paul then does something that totally surprises me. He says, yes, go ahead. But not just that. He names me the lead investigator as a civilian. This means that I will be the one driving the investigation, interviewing

old witnesses and suspects, compiling evidence, even drafting search warrants and affidavits. And he instructs the other detectives in major crimes that they will be working with me. What's more, Paul gives me permission to record the entire process,

to share our investigation as it happens. Every new lead, every new suspect interview, every new piece of evidence. You will hear it all. As the lead investigator, there are so many questions that I want to ask, like who was Maria Martinez and why did police confuse her for Renee? How did Renee begin doing sex work? What was her life like on the road?

What was her life like in Mobile? Who knew her best? And most importantly, who killed her? And why did they do it? This season on Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom. She says, well, Mom, she says it's at this point. If I don't leave him, either he's going to kill me or I'm going to end up killing him. She says, I can't take it anymore.

Do you have any knowledge of how Maria came to be dead? No, sir. I sure don't. I'll take a lie detector test or whatever. There are a variety of indicators that you have a sexual homicide here. I think the public needs to know how long the surveillance goes, how much that the offender gets out of stalking, silently stalking his victim.

I hope y'all aren't seriously thinking he had anything to do with this. I don't know. I don't know who he is. God, no. No. I would bet my life on that he wouldn't. All I can remember is him making a gesture towards his neck,

you know, like cut, and he says, and I remember those words cut their head off. Really? I swear to God, yes, I remember that those words cut their head off. Really? I swear to God, yes, I remember that. Nobody in this world has ever seen me touch my finger on Renee's finger. Nobody in this world. Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom is produced by Arc Media for i-D. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts.

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