Who Killed Jennifer Judd? - Ep.10: Back to Mobile

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Sarah Cailean heads back to Mobile, Alabama, to investigate a new suspect who she thinks might finally help solve the question of who killed Amanda’s mom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Nature's Deadliest, Still Alive, and Monsters Inside Me. There are countless organisms that make a living off of us. Listen to I Was Preycapitated in your home. I always thought my father was involved. Where's she been living with that ace slaver? You ever hear of him? Ace slaver? Ace? Ace slaver? One week, and my whole life could have been different.

In one week. From ID and ARC Media, I'm Sarah Kalin, and this is Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom. I feel like this is also not completely correct. We're going to take another left up here. I'm in the car with our researcher, Jen Leahy, and our producer. We're back in Alabama, and we're trying to find the house where Renee Bergeron lived in the final months of her life, the house where blood was found on the porch,

but no formal search was ever conducted. I don't know if this search really matters. Maybe it matters only because I want everything about her to be as real as possible, to feel just a little closer to her, to stay focused on the real person at the heart of all this. The address is 5801 Theodore Dawes Road in Theodore, Alabama, which is about 15 minutes from Mobile.

Unfortunately, when we tried to find the house before, the address didn't seem to exist. It's smack dab in the middle of a county water department compound. We've always figured the house was torn down to build the compound. But Jen, forensic researcher extraordinaire, has discovered that a segment of the road, a main artery through the county, was just picked up and moved. What we're on right now, my understanding is back in 93, this road was Theodore Taz. We find what we think is the house.

There's something about it, too, that strikes me as like, that's exactly how I pictured the house. I don't know. I don't know what value that has, but. Like the question of the house, so many things remain black boxes in this story. These black boxes are what brought me back to Mobile in January, 2024. After our attempt to find the house,

I call Matt to talk about the biggest of the black boxes. The woman who sent an anonymous tip to the website and later called me to say she thinks her dad killed Renee. I will say, **** is a struggling human being. It is very clear that this life, that growing up with this man and in these circumstances has caught up with her. But I think you and I have interviewed a lot of people together and I can usually tell whose up with her but i think you and i have interviewed a lot of people together and i can usually tell whose story you buy and whose story you don't and i think you will also believe that she is incredibly incredible and so i think we should interview her and then make a game plan for interviewing him i know that she's saying some things that not too many people should know. Right. But if we can credit any of her statements or her timeline of events,

then that just adds more fuel to the fire to believe her. Yeah. I know she's got some substance abuse problems and whatnot, but in this day and age, there's not too many people that don't. So that doesn't mean we just automatically discredit someone like that, right? Yeah. So we'll listen to what she's got to say and kind of proceed from there. When I first spoke with the tipster,

she explained why she decided to come forward now. She told me that this was not an ordinary event, even in her chaotic childhood. Eventually, her family started telling her that the murder was solved and someone had been charged. But some part of her mind seems to have never believed that. The tipster says she thought of Renee often throughout the years. This is evident in a series of diary entries that she shared with me

In those entries, I noticed one of the most striking things about the tipster's story isn't something that necessarily points us to a definitive answer on the killer Rather, it's something that lends tremendous weight to her credibility as a witness That is, just how intensely Renee's death has impacted her own mental state The tipster was only 10 or 11 years old when Renee, who she knew at the time by her alias Maria Martinez, was killed. She remembers her well and speaks of Renee as warm and friendly. At different times in her life, for reasons even she herself can't explain,

she chose to write to Renee in her journals. To protect the tipster's anonymity, we've asked a voice actor to read one of these entries. Maria, for some reason I have many moments today. Drift of thoughts I wish I could make sense. It's all so crazy. Maybe finding out on the web? At least hearing the stuff I've been hearing from different people,

the last few months is true. Throughout her diary, her suspicions are right there. She doesn't seem to believe that this case was ever solved. A kid today would be able to get on a smartphone or a computer and look up the case. All the tipster could do was wonder. Maybe all of this can get to a place where I can make myself finally understand why I always think of you. I don't know why you have stayed with me the way you have. Come on, help me help you, chick. Though something obviously felt off to her through the years,

her suspicions began to solidify in 2021, thanks in part to our investigation. Tonight, investigators are hunting down a killer and a 27-year-old Mobile County murder mystery. A 27-year-old cold case murder. As we started investigating, one of our witnesses laura morris started writing facebook posts about the case the tipster saw that her own mother was liking many of the posts her mother and father are just recently divorced remember her mother had told her a year after

renee's death that someone had been caught and the case was solved. So why would her mom be following an investigation now? There are several people of interest in this case who are still alive today. She asked her mom to explain, and her mom reiterated that the case had been solved. Her mom refused to talk about it any further. And yet the tipster says her mom had been telling other people it remains unsolved. The tipster concluded that her mom has been lying to her

all these years. It's striking that during a childhood she describes as being rife with trauma and abuse, something about Renee's death still stands out from the rest. I don't expect that she has hidden memories or any such nonsense, but I do believe she knows her father well

and has perhaps suspected him all along. Only now is she able to frame it in a way she can present to the authorities. Anytime someone comes forward after years of silence, it's difficult to parse out why now. In this situation, perhaps it's partly to parse out why now. In this situation, perhaps it's partly to do with the fact that her parents recently divorced. She feels her mother is safer now.

Her siblings live far away. It also seems to be a part of the process of shedding a past shaped by this terrifying figure. Was the female caller, or anonymous caller, was she abused in any way? Yes. Yes.

So the mother actually had finally divorced only in the last couple of years. There has been throughout a significant history of domestic and sexual abuse within the home. The mother was hospitalized in a coma at one point for like a month because of a beating, apparently with a phone, an old style phone receiver. There's a lot to be said about the dangers of domestic violence, enough to fill a thousand podcasts. Obviously, there's tremendous danger for the immediate victims, but domestic violence is also frequently a harbinger of wider violence to come. As a precursor behavior seen in every category of multiple murder offenses, serial, spree, or mass, just knowing there's an extensive history of escalatory abuse within the home is enough to justify looking more closely at a possible suspect.

Without serious intervention and treatment, domestic abusers will re-offend over and over, sometimes exclusively within the family structure, but often branching out to the wider public. There are three other kids in the family, and she has asked her siblings to speak to us, and they have all said, absolutely not. They're still terrified of him to this day.

She has stated that she is not. I mean, I think that she probably is, but she has stated that carrying this around, she has believed for some time that he really was responsible for this. Does she remember who the father was telling that he had killed Renee? Obviously, she wasn't for these conversations. Who was he telling that to? His immediate family, I guess, like his brother and then some other like cousins who are around the house.

This is apparently just been a thing that the family talked about for quite a while. But everybody is kind of afraid of him. And I think there's probably an element of maybe it's bullshit. You know, maybe it's just somebody saying something. I don't know. Usually when things are reported like that, family members will talk about those things. Maybe just in-house or in their close family circle. But those things do get out,

hence the reason ****** is called. ****** did say that he has a brother who she believes would also speak to us, who has been present for these conversations since day one. So there does seem to be that there's sort of a crack in the facade now where more people are willing to talk about him. In Mobile, I try again to get her to sit down and talk formally, but she's gotten a bit skittish recently. Her statements are extremely important,

and there could come a time we need to work out a way to get her on the record officially while keeping her safe. But we're not quite deep enough into this new theory for that yet. For now, we'll rely on what she's told me so far. In January 2023, the tipster told me that her father had told people that Renee was pregnant and that's why he killed her. We know she was scrambling for money in her final days. Matt and I think it's possible she said this to Jimmy

hoping he'd offer money for an abortion. But we also wonder if it's more complicated than that. I see the theory with the abortion and possibly being pregnant, and it's good, but I think the aspect of the drug trafficking and sex working and that if ****** was a participant in all of those, you know, was he pimping her out or was he helping with the drug transactions? Did she owe him money?

We know from multiple witness statements that she was panicked and had recently had her arm broken coming back from Texas and was scared of people and was panicked, begging for money. So that usually only means you owe someone money if you're begging for money from other people. It just adds to all of the other tips, you know. Which ones do you believe and which ones are somewhat credible? Matt and I are talking through possible theories and potential motives. Motive can be blurry in sexual homicide,

but it's important to determine if there's anything tangible there, because there will always be bullshit tips and straight-up lies. In season one, a retired sheriff's deputy revealed something we'd never known about Renee. She was an informant for me.

Are you serious? Yeah. She called me two days before that about setting somebody up. That's Richard Caton. No, she didn't get much, but I was in narcotics at the time. And she was just, I don't know, flaky. Yeah. I knew she was a prostitute.

Yeah. She was more of a high-end prostitute, though. David essentially confirmed this for us as well. If you drag some dope dealers, you're going to get killed. Other people told us she'd been an informant and it got her killed. Just word on the street style. Matt and I didn't really give it much credence because we've both heard that a thousand times in other cases.

But now I'm wondering, could Renee have been ratting on Jimmy? We need to find someone who can help us untangle this. It's hard because so many of the people Renee knew in Mobile have died or moved away. But there is one woman we can try. We heard about her a few months ago when someone called to tell us a woman was apparently telling people in the area that she'd done escort work with Renee back in the day. And what's more, she's acting as a sort of confidant to David Young right now. I try calling her. We're sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or... Damn.

Yeah, you get more of that than you don't. That's all right, I'll poke around. We'll see if we can find something else. We try another number and get a voicemail. I don't leave one because I want to pique her curiosity. So all I can do is hope this woman calls me back. In the meantime, I add this to my list of questions for Jimmy. At this point, there are several reasons we want to talk to him. There's the obvious.

We consider him a suspect. The second has to do with our other suspect, David Young. We've always believed there was a world in which David knew what happened, but wasn't directly responsible. If they knew each other, Jimmy could help us confirm or eliminate David Young as a suspect. Matt and I both think it's really important to explore that possibility. 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. As we started looking into a connection between David and Jimmy, we realized these two men ran with the same very tightly knit groups and subgroups operating in the drug world of 1980s and 90s Mobile County. That means they were likely answering to the same people at the top. But it doesn't mean they knew each other. At least, I'm not willing to say they did until I can find a direct connection.

Sometimes the connection we're looking for might be as simple as a name, the same boss, the same ex-girlfriend. Sometimes it might be a location, the same floor in an apartment building, time spent together in jail even. And we are looking for those connections. One afternoon in Mobile, I spread the case files across a large table in a conference room at the sheriff's office. I look over statements from the tipster about crimes her father got away with, specifically. And suddenly, it becomes crystal clear. What connects Jimmy and David is not a name or a place. It's a very niche kind of crime.

The tipster described to me how her dad, and always one or two other guys, would target the home of someone, often someone else in the criminal world, and hit them with a blitz-style home invasion robbery for drugs, money, guns, whatever goods were in there. In one robbery, the tipster told me her dad shot someone in the home. The person survived but took seriously the threats to keep his mouth shut or get a repeat visit.

David Young's record reflects one similar robbery in the 80s. And there's one more person who matches up with this history. We tried to connect the dots between David and this new tip. Yeah, that's Ace Saker is the dot. Like, Ace seems to be literally like in the chain. He's the link between the two. And, you know, we know for a fact he's connected to David. David talks about him all the time.

We don't know beyond a shadow of a doubt he's connected to ***, but there's pretty solid circumstantial evidence. They've got a lot of overlap in their circles and in their criminal history. Robin Ace-a-Sager. Ace. The man David says introduced him to Renee. Not only was Ace involved in these home invasion robberies at the same time, he actually killed someone during one. And so he was charged with murder, but it was never prosecuted. So this, it does seem

like David and s***, there's some link there that would help make something. So we've been trying to run down Ace Sager this week. After more than a year of searching, we finally know Ace's full name, and now I know why he really matters. Now it's time to see if he's willing to come in for a nice little chat with me and Matt.

Let's try this first number. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. *** is not available. Let's try the landline. We're sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected. Oh, this is a fun game. The phone numbers aren't working, and we can't seem to find an address. People are squirrely with addresses,

especially people who want it to be a challenge to find them. We can firmly place the Sager family in the same neighborhoods as the Williamses. And in some spots, David Young seems to live between the two. But this is just more circumstantial evidence, something we're absolutely drowning in with this case. That is ex-wife.

She's still, I think, alive. Yeah, let's see if we can find her. She might at least know what the connection is with David. I mean, hopefully this is the right person. It's the only one whose name matches, you know? Yeah, yeah. Please leave your message for 7-5. Hi, this message is for Sharon.

My name is Sarah Kalin. I'm a special investigator. She'll either call me back right away or never. She definitely sent me straight to voicemail. I hope she calls back. If she ever knew anything about it, it's unlikely she could have forgotten. Hello?

Hey, is Ace there? Who? Ace Sager. Ace Sager? Yeah, is that the wrong number? Uh, I don't know. Who are you looking for? Somebody named Ace Sager.

Ace Sager? Yeah. Like Robin Ace Sager, who goes by the nickname Ace? I'm sorry. Could you tell me, I mean, do you mind telling me when he passed? It's been a while. I don't really remember when he passed. Okay. I'm sorry. So my name's Sarah Kalin.

I'm a special investigator with the Mobile County Sheriff's Office. Yes, ma'am. So it's definitely a surprise to me because it hadn't come up in any of our records that he was deceased. Can I ask your connection to him? He's my uncle. He's your uncle. Okay. Well, you know, I mean, obviously, firstly, I would say I'm sorry for your loss. I didn't mean to surprise you with this information. So, okay. Well, I, you know, I apologize for the intrusion and I appreciate that. I'll see if we can, you know, figure out what went wrong in the records on our end.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. I am at a complete loss for words here. I hope they're wrong. I hope this guy's wrong. I just don't understand why. I mean... Even if he's passed, it doesn't mean I have other names

from contemporary, you know, family that might be useful. It's not the same. I know. It's just weird that he doesn't come up as deceased in this report. Now, this report's a year old, but when the nephew said, it's been a while, I don't feel like he meant six months ago because it feels like he would have said that.

But of course, you never know. Yeah, it's possible. But he's also living a fairly like on the grid life, at least up until 2018 with all these records and stuff. He's got a regular bank account and stuff. You can't pull off playing dead if you're going to the bank with a paycheck every couple of weeks or something. There's just something that's not right about all of this. Yeah, I really am very, very curious. I really, it did not feel like a pre-programmed, don't tell people where Ace is, phone call. It just was too like, huh?

And most people are not good actors. The nephew certainly seemed pretty surprised by the call, but there's no death record for Robin Ace Asager anywhere. His social security number is still active. His driver's license is still active. His driver's license is still active. We found one more number to try. Hello? Hi, I'm trying to reach Ace Sager.

Who? Ace Sager. Is that, this is a number that I was given for him. Is that not correct? I don't know who that is. Okay, all right. I must have been given a wrong number. I can't give up on the idea of finding Ace until I have some kind of proof he's dead. I feel like I'm getting closer to understanding the links between David and Jimmy,

and I'm determined to solve this element. I'd like to know more before speaking with Jimmy directly. So there's one more person I know I need to talk to. Your storage room? Yeah. Hey, come on in. Elizabeth, a woman who knew David Young well during childhood and was in touch with him enough in recent years

that he called her the day we went to pick him up for our third interview. I asked her to come into the sheriff's office to speak with me again because she's my best hope of untangling the complicated web of Jimmy, Ace, and David. The problem with this case is, you know, I mean, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, is that Renee lived in kind of a wild world at that time when she died. And part of the reason I wanted to talk to you one do you are you in touch with David all right after I talked to y'all I think he called me and he was at the hospital okay and I think after that I blocked him and then I figured he died. I just had this feeling. So then I re-found his number, and I called him back.

It ain't been that long, I don't think. When she called him, he told her to listen to the podcast. He wanted me to listen to it, so I did. But when I listened to it, it just kind of, like, yeah. I just, listening to that thing and finding out all the stuff that happened to her just devastated me. Yeah. I'm sorry you had to hear it like that, too, because obviously, like, when you know somebody, it's that much harder to... And thinking about her little girl. Something has

shifted significantly in Elizabeth. Though the subject matter is painful and sad, her demeanor is completely different. She is more confident. She seems lighter, more open. She is also clearly no longer afraid of him. At least, she's not

afraid to speak her mind about him anymore. I might have talked to him once or twice, her mind about him anymore. I might have talked to him once or twice, but I blocked him again. I'm not ever going to talk to him again. Walk me through that. Why did you feel the need to block him last year? And I understand why you would unblock to check and see if he's alive. But what is it that you just are like I don't want communication with this person anymore he wanted me to come down to the hospital and then from I just was too scared I wouldn't go number one are you scared of him uh I don't want to be around him that's just the truth why do you think he chose you then of everybody to start calling when we started talking to him?

I don't know. Maybe because I knew Renee a little bit. Not really. The last time we talked, we were talking about this description of him as like sometimes he can be mean. Yeah. And the very first, you know, I said, well, well you know tell me what that looks like to you right because everybody's got a different definition of what mean is and you immediately started to tell this story about the fish yeah what happened to the fish he ran over it with a car in front of you well yeah I was in the car. Oh, you were in the car. And I was young, so it really just...

And he did it on purpose. It wasn't a, you know, oh, no, I forgot we left that there at home. He did it on purpose. And there it is, the ending of the fish story. She had shut down, held back last time when she got to the part about this little fish just being too small. Now we're a little over a year later, and her voice, the way she tells it, is much stronger. I had guessed it was something cruel, something that would let us into that dark corner of his mind.

I honestly wish I had been wrong. It would have made it easier to let go and move in some new direction with this case. Instead, it makes me even more certain that he's capable of having at least been involved in Renee's murder. I tell Elizabeth where we're at with the case. The sheriff is pretty confident we could put this before a grand jury and just on circumstantial evidence he'd probably be indicted. But we don't want to do that because contrary to

popular belief we don't want to put him in in jail if he did not do this. And so it we would rather unfortunately a guilty man be free than an innocent man be locked up, even if he doesn't have a ton of time left, right? The information she gave us today is not enough to move forward with an arrest, but it's helpful. There's one more thing I'm hoping she knows something about. Did you ever hear the name ****? ****. He would have been like a truck driver.

Elizabeth is shaking her head. No. Okay. I'm just curious because there is, like I said, the tip on this guy is pretty credible. And this, again, is what I mean where it's like maybe Jerry did this and David doesn't want to rat this guy out. You know what I mean?

And that's all it is. And if that's the case, we would want to know that because we don't want to accuse somebody. I give her a few more details, but nothing lands. She doesn't remember Jimmy Williams. Seems like no one does, even though he lived here for years and was active in both legitimate and not so legit industries. It makes sense that Jimmy's full history is difficult to nail down. When someone's job is to know as much as possible about people whose prosperity or even their freedom depends on other people not knowing anything about them,

the person searching often comes up against a lot of carefully constructed brick walls. Aliases, stolen identities, fake records. It's not likely to be a coincidence that David, Ace, Jimmy, even Renee herself, leave very light footprints for us to follow in the world outside of structured criminal activity. I've gathered what I can about this man, and it's time to try to initiate contact with Jimmy. One of the most important moments in an interaction with a potential suspect, especially in cold case investigations, is that very first contact. How they react in the moment to an out-of-the-blue question about a crime they may not have thought about in years can tell a great deal.

If nothing else, it will always be an honest reaction in that moment if they aren't expecting you. Not necessarily a truthful response, but an honest reaction. Because we really want to surprise him, we'll drive six hours to knock on Jimmy's door, hoping that he'll be there. The problem, in a way, is really just simple logistics. I don't think there's going to be any difficulties.

I think we're going to drive up there. I think we'll get the local authorities involved, and he's going to come to the office or their facility where we're going to talk to him. I mean, it's not hard. It's not rocket science. It's just talking to people, and short of him just shutting down and saying, you know what, screw you guys.

I've got nothing to say. We haven't really ran into that in this investigation. Everybody, we're pretty good at speaking with people and making people feel comfortable with us so that they will speak to us. I don't think there's going to be any problem speaking. Now, are we going to get a confession? I don't know, but getting him into the office and speaking with him, I don't see issues. I tend to agree with Matt.

I don't think we'll have issues. Still, as a precaution, I call the local sheriff's office to ask if they'll send an officer out with us. This way, if he does start to talk, we can do everything through official channels. The sheriff's office agrees, and we set a date to go see our new suspect. 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. So we got an ice storm that is unfolding to kick off a Monday morning commute. Less than ideal. So please limit your travel. A massive ice storm is moving across the U.S., and I'm driving across state lines in a region that is not even slightly prepared for snow. What should have been a five- or six-hour drive has turned into ten. But eventually I make it to Jimmy's small town, and I meet up with detectives from the local sheriff's office in the parking lot of a

donut shop, no less. Now, for the record, this was not my choice. Anyway, we've already chatted a few times on the phone in preparation, but we run down the pertinent details one more time. We even discussed two murders in the last two years within a mile or so of where we're sitting, as these detectives are now wondering if they might also want to poke around in Jimmy's life a bit. Finally, we make our way to the house. The whole neighborhood is lovely, full of gorgeous trees currently heavy with snow. Pulling up to Jimmy's address, we see a quaint ranch house on a large lot. Every house in the neighborhood looks similar on a similar lot.

Jimmy's front door doesn't look like it's ever used, but the porch is nicely decorated with some fading ceramic animals and a welcome sign. We follow the driveway around to the carport behind the house, and it's clear this is where everyone comes and goes. More knickknacks and welcome signs, some wind chimes. It's all very homey. We knock at the door. We wait a few minutes. Knock again. No answer. I walk back to my car. I decide to park nearby where I can keep an eye out for his return.

I promise the detectives I'll let them know as soon as he turns up. I wait for hours. Where can he be? The roads are a disaster. Nothing is open within a 50-mile radius. No one seems to be out. I can only wait so long if I'm going to make it safely anywhere before the sun goes down and the conditions get even more treacherous. It's time to call it. Unfortunately, there's nothing more we can do today, and we can't go much further until we speak to Jimmy face-to-face. Ultimately, I settle for knowing I'll have to come back another time.

I'd hoped this trip to Mobile would solve the riddle of David Young or Jimmy Williams. Maybe Jimmy, David, and Ace. We are closer to an answer, but not quite there. And while we have not yet made an arrest, we've come a long way in our investigation. I plan to revisit Jimmy Williams until I get a chance to speak with him. There is no doubt that, at least with the original investigation, the silencing of women played a huge part in the failure to solve Renee's murder.

The witness who lived just yards from where Renee's body was found, she called detectives twice to tell them about the screaming, the wailing to be precise. She heard in the woods behind her house the night Renee was killed. No one ever called her back. The other woman who called and left messages for the detectives

saying she'd been with Renee all day Friday. She never got a return call either. Both of those women are dead. What priceless, time-sensitive information was lost from failing, even refusing, to hear what all of these women had to say? Who knows? If they had talked to Joyce, they might have had a reason to speak more with David, and that could have led them straight to Laura Morris, placing Renee on that porch, the last time anyone can report seeing her alive. When we reopened the case, we did find Laura Morris, and she placed Renee at David's house

within 48 hours of Renee's body being found. When we first spoke with Laura, she defended David. She did not think he'd killed Renee. She maintained this position for three years. Well, Laura no longer believes in David's innocence. Few people do, and for good reason. Matt included. As an investigator, when you walk out of an interview with way more questions than answers, Matt included. And we just don't, we can't. He's still hanging in there after three dang years.

And until we can eliminate him or prove otherwise, then he will be a person of interest in the death of Renee. This case, just because I've been on it so long and invested so much time away from my family and other friends and with you that it's close to home now, right? It's like I know Renee just probably as good as her family does. So I want to see it solved. I want to figure out what really happened.

We know through our years of investigation that David and Renee were in an on-again, off-again relationship. They lived together at times and even raised Amanda together briefly during the first year of Amanda's life. Even in the last year of Renee's life, the house she was living in when she died, with the blood on the porch no one had bothered to test, she and David actually rented that house together in May of that year. Then they split up again, and she got back together with an ex-boyfriend. With everything we've learned, I've started to think that we may be looking at a case of intimate partner violence. And if that's true, it changes everything. At this point, Sheriff Birch, Matt, and I agree that we could get an

indictment and possibly even a conviction based on the circumstantial evidence, but we have no intention of charging him if he didn't do it. We are not sure yet, and we don't want to charge the wrong person. We're still working on locating Ace. Yes, his nephew said he's dead, but I can't find any record of his death anywhere, so I'll keep looking for him, because his version of events certainly needs to be told. We are finally getting a clearer picture of how

Renee got from New Orleans to Mobile at such a young age. That picture was viewed one way back in 1981 when it happened, at a time when almost every missing kid was chalked up as a runaway, and often no one but the child's parents went searching. It is one I think we would view very differently today. Remember, Renee was 14 years old. David Young was 26. She was carried across two state lines without her parents' permission and dropped off at the home of a grown man she'd never met.

Imagine if that happened today, how we would view it, what we would call it. Renee, by today's definition, was abducted. With certain details, it might even be classified as trafficking. But at the time, she was just a runaway. And if Ace Sager was involved in any part of that, we need to know more about it, from him, if at all possible. There are very real reasons to solve this case,

none more than closure for Renee's family, if that's actually possible. I started this entire process with Amanda's blessing, and I've kept her up to date throughout the investigation. For years, Amanda carried the feeling of, why won't anyone do anything about this? Why can't we talk about my mom? She finally feels this is changing. She is getting attention. She is getting what she deserves in this aspect of people caring, because she was disregarded for so long.

We definitely got their attention now. And that's what we need, because the more people pay attention, the more people want to ask questions. I want everybody to know her name. You know what I mean? Are you feeling like we are making progress, that there is something approaching closure? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you got to realize, realize like it's been 30 years any attention any steps

in the right direction any interview any lead any tidbit of information is a step into where we've been wanting this to go and for somebody to even look at this case after everything that my grandma went through is reassured of course i would love it to be like an svu episode we know what happens at the end of an hour but it's the real world i waited 30 years six more months isn't gonna kill me six more months isn't gonna kill me so do i want answers before heaven forbid something happens to my grandma absolutely i want her to die at peace with that but i i also feel that my grandma knows now that we are doing everything we can. We are listening to her. We are talking about Renee. You know, everybody knows who she is,

what's going on. And the more we talk about it, the more response we're going to get and hopefully lead to the right direction. So I'm very optimistic. I've said this before, and I'll keep saying it, that this is the most important case in my life that I've ever worked or that I ever will work. And that I'm not going anywhere either. And we're closer now than we ever been, so. Yeah. It breaks my heart to even think of this investigation

having to carry on past the point when Joyce can get those updates and answers. And it fills me with rage to think that had things been handled differently at the beginning, there's a real possibility she could have had those answers a very long time ago. But I do know that she knows it will keep going, and I'm glad to at least be able to give her that. To the outside world, to the true crime world,

it may seem like this is coming to an end. But I was on this case years before we made a podcast, and I will remain on it until we are all satisfied with the answers. For reasons deeply personal to me, reasons only Amanda and a few other people know, Renee's case is the case that will never leave me. And I'm sure that because of that, she knows I won't ever give up on her mom. Back in 1993, Joyce wrote to the original detectives, offering her help with any information or names of friends they might want.

Then she wrote to them, asking for updates and status. Then she wrote to the sheriff, pleading for him to step in and get her some answers. Then she wrote to the next sheriff, telling him she was desperate for someone to even respond to her. I have one of those letters. Please write to me with some kind of report as to what has been done and what is being done. If you know of anything I can do or anyone I could write for help, just let me know. She was no angel, but we love and miss her very much. The person who killed her killed my dream.

One day, she would move down here to be closer to Amanda. She would be near us, and she would be Renee again. Someday, someone, somewhere has to answer. Maybe not in my lifetime, but her daughter's. Please don't let her be an unsolved case. If you have any information on the murder of Renee Bergeron, please contact the Mobile County Sheriff's Office at 251-574-8633

or online at mobileso.com. Case 93-110576, the Rene Bergeron murder, remains our case until it is solved. My January 2024 trip to Mobile served two purposes. In addition to Rene's case, I came here to get started on another case. It's the one that brought me out of retirement. The murder of a 20-year-old woman named Jennifer Judd.

When I first heard the details, I couldn't sleep. This case is one of many associated with a self-confessed serial killer named Jeremy Jones. He confessed, yet the case is considered unsolved. Paul Birch took that confession more than 15 years ago. In this new podcast, Paul Birch and I aim to answer the question, who killed Jennifer Judd? This is for Jennifer. This is for my best friend. He's just such a liar. I've just felt like the guy's a creep

and that he's done a lot more than what people know he's done. It just makes you question if he ever thought it was real. She loves her brother, but she knows that her brother's done wrong. I just will never be convinced that Jeremy Jones is not part of many of those. I don't think that there was a true effort made to solve this. Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom is produced by Arc Media for ID.

The network executive producer is Meredith Russell. This series is hosted and written by me, Sarah Kalin. Our senior audio producer is Danielle Elliott. Our producer is Eden Turner. Our associate producer is Imani Leonard. Executive producers are Zachary Herman and me. Score is by Travis Bacon. Sound design and mixing is by Dean White.

Audio engineering and editorial feedback provided by Josh Wilcox at Brooklyn Podcasting Studio. Forensic research provided by Jennifer Leahy.