The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages and is intended for a mature audience. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome back everyone. Welcome back. This is Cold and Missing. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin. I am your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And it's the end of 2022. We're right at the end here.
Yeah. New Year's are coming up if you celebrate Christmas, but New Year is definitely coming up for everybody on whatever the calendar is called that we use. I don't know what it's called. Because you know how there's like Chinese New Year and then like, yeah, there's like other New Year's, but the big one's coming up. All right. Just where we are in time.
And this week, again, if you've been listening to our past episodes, it's just a little bit of a different, no new case, but we do have some really great updates about cases we have covered. So we're going to get into that this week. So strap in and we'll give you the details. So the first case we wanted to update you on is Betty Rolf. We've mentioned last week that there was an update, but we covered Betty's story about three weeks ago now.
And just in case you haven't listened to that case, you can stop here, go back and listen to it. But just a quick synopsis. Betty was a 60-year-old woman in November of 1988, and it was the first big snowstorm. And Betty did not like to drive in the snow, so she was going to walk to her place of employment around 6 a.m. And it was only 10 blocks from her house, and it was on the same street she lived on, so a very easy walk by all measures, and what should have been a short walk.
But Betty never made it to work, and the next day her body was found by police after her family had reported her missing. As we talked about in our episode, they had developed a DNA profile for the suspect, and it had been entered into CODIS several times, no hits, no updates. Can you tell me what CODIS means again? So CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System. Oh, got it, got it. CODIS, I was, okay. Yeah, CODIS.
So it had been put in the CODIS database several times, no hits, until recently, and here's where the big case update comes in. So on December 8th of 2022, just a couple weeks ago, police in Eatonville, Washington, arrested 66-year-old Gene C. Meyer, charging him with first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault with a dangerous weapon for the 1988 murder of Betty Rolf.
So in 1988, Gene would have been 32 years old, and he lived about a mile away from the crime scene, so he's definitely in the area. And Gene has had run-ins with police in Wisconsin and Washington, but he never had a... What kind of run-ins? They didn't get into them that I could find. I couldn't find any reports of what they had been, but it wasn't anything serious enough for his DNA to be collected and put into the CODIS system.
So some questions that we had from the podcast, from our episode when I was researching it, initially newspapers reported that Betty had been strangled, but then they walked that back and said it's asphyxiation, and that is how she died, and that is how police were officially calling it. But now we have confirmation that she was strangled by a ligature, and then we were also... Does ligature always... Does it mean a rope? It could mean a rope, but it's usually just... It could also be...
It could be like a shoestring. It could be a shoestring. It could be a cord from an electronic. It's just something that could be used to tie and is flexible. And then we also were curious where the DNA had come from that they had been able to develop. So it was not clear until this update of December 8th, but up until then it was not clear where the DNA had come from, if it had come from something nearby the scene, like a bottle, for example, or if it had come from a biological sample.
So we do know now that the DNA came from swabs done during her autopsy, and it is semen that they got the DNA from. Because we had questions about if a police officer had mishandled something at the crime scene and perhaps his DNA had cross-contaminated, which is why there was no hit in CODIS. But with this new information, it seems very obvious that the DNA is directly from the crime. So how did police get here? In 2019, police began doing a familiar DNA research. So that's basically...
If you've ever taken a DNA test to know your ancestry and uploaded it to the databases to see distance cousins you may have that you've never met or anything like that, those databases are public information. And police don't need warrants to go into there because they have already been provided and put up online. And this is how they were able to locate the Golden State Killer was through familiar DNA.
So in this case with Betty, they were able to narrow it down to two brothers, that being Gene Mayer and then his brother, who is not named, but is just referred by his initials as CM, but we'll call him Gene's brother here. So Gene's brother fully cooperates with police when he's contacted and he provides his DNA willingly, which rules him out and we're just left with Gene as a suspect. But Gene's brother tells police that he believes his brother is dead.
Nobody has had contact with him in a long time. And then Gene's niece... So I'm unclear if this would be Gene's brother's daughter or if this is a different niece altogether in the family. But Gene's niece said that sometime after 1986, her mother received a call from Gene telling her goodbye and thanks for everything. And then the niece continued to say that her mother was very distraught about this phone call and very upset about it.
And the only thing she would say in reference to this was, I have a secret and it's going to my grave. Police locate Gene in Washington. He's alive and they work with local police to get a swab of DNA from Gene. And they do this not by talking to Gene directly, but they follow him around and they swab the handle of his truck door. And that's how they get his DNA. So they never talk to him. They swab his truck door and it's a match. And that's legal? That's legal.
So if you're out drinking something like a bottle of water and you throw that bottle of water away, somebody can come right after you grab it, put it in a bag and test your DNA. And that happens a lot because once you throw something away, it's public trash. It's public property at that point. Yeah, it's public trash. So Betty's family, they are obviously very grateful that he's been caught.
And if you listen to our episode, we kind of go over the family and watch their hope kind of die in this case. They talk so hopeful for years about it. And then over the last 10 years, they're like, we don't know if it's ever going to get solved at this point. We don't even know if this person is still alive. But Betty's granddaughter, she's quoted as saying, I'm just so grateful he's been caught. This has been such a long time.
I didn't know if we would ever see this day and I'm grateful he's still alive, end quote. Because the family has questions. They want answers and only this guy can really answer them. So as of today, Gene is facing life in prison plus 20 years for the charges against him. And he's currently being held in Washington on a $2 million bond waiting for extradition to Wisconsin. No one had that money to get him out? Nobody had the $2 million. So that is where we are with Betty Rolf.
But really great for this family. Love to see these cold cases get solved and not be forgotten. Yeah. Like, what a, I don't know. It's wild to me that we just had the episode and that's like, I'm not, obviously I'm not saying like, we helped, you know, but just that, that's like crazy. Yeah, it was almost like that with Delphi too. It was like we did it and then like two weeks later there was a break in the case. So maybe it's the beginning of the luck. Not even that.
Just like, I think there's proof in like literally just continuing to talk about these things. Because like, it's hard to stay in the dark when the light is brought to it, you know? So the next case that we wanted to update you all on is the Delphi, Indiana case. So this is the murder of Abby Williams and Libby German in Delphi, Indiana. And we brought you a small update episode previously, but we didn't really know much at that point. We knew who had been arrested.
We knew that he had lived in Delphi and we knew that he worked at the CVS in town, but that was really all that we knew. But recently the presiding judge on the case, they said, quote, the court finds the public interest is not served by prohibiting access to the probable cause affidavit. So she has unsealed it. And in it we learn Richard Allen is being arrested for count one murder, which is a felony.
And in it it says that he did kill another human being while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping of both of the girls. So that is also part of it, is an attempted kidnapping. So those are officially the charges that we have. And now I'm going to get into the probable cause affidavit. So this is what the evidence the police have against him at this point, or at least as much as they needed to get the arrest warrant.
So obviously I hope not everything is in here, but there's potentially more that we don't know that the police have. They say through interviews, reviews of electronic records and review of the video of Hoosier Harvest Store, investigators believe that Abby and Libby were dropped off across from the Mears Farm at 1.49 p.m. on February 13th, 2017. The Mears Farm is located on the north side of County Road 300 north near an entrance to the trail. So this is all things we knew previously.
But we do get like firm timelines on here, which we didn't have before. So it goes on to say, a video from Libby's phone shows that at 2:13, Abby Williams and Libby German encountered a male subject on the southeast portion of the high bridge. The male ordered the girls, quote, guys down the hill. No witnesses saw them after this time and no outgoing communications were found on Libby's phone after this time. Their bodies were discovered on February 14th, 2017.
The video recovered from Libby's phone shows Abby walking southeast on the high bridge while a male subject wearing a dark jacket and jeans walks behind her. As the male subject approaches Abby and Libby, one of the victims mentions a gun. Near the end of the video, a male is seen and heard telling the girls, guys down the hill. The girls begin to proceed down the hill and the video ends.
A still photograph was taken from the video and guys down the hill audio was released to the public to assist investigators in finding this guy. And then this is a new part that we learned through this. So Abby and Libby deaths were ruled as homicide. Their clothes were found in Deer Creek belonging to both of them, south of where their bodies were located. There was also a 40 caliber unspent round less than two feet away from Libby's body between Abby and Libby.
The round was unspent and had extraction marks on it. The probable cause goes in to some witness statements. So there were three other juvenile girls there that day on the bridge and on the trail system who believe they saw Richard Allen or somebody who could potentially fit his description. So all of the names of the witnesses in this have been redacted. So for the juvenile girls, I just have them labeled as one, two, and three.
The girl number one described the male they saw as quote, kind of creepy and advised he was wearing quote, like blue jeans and like really light blue jacket and his hair was gray, maybe a little brown and he did not really show his face, end quote. She advised the jacket was a duck canvas type of jacket. And then the second girl advised that she said hi to the male, but he just glared at them. She recalled him being an all black and had something covering his mouth.
She described him as quote, not very tall with a bigger build. She did say he was not bigger than 5'10". She advised he was wearing a black hoodie, black jeans, and black boots. She stated his hands were in his pocket. And so girl number three, she actually took pictures that day, which helps kind of time when these girls were on the trail a little bit.
We don't fully know when they were there, but they seem to have been leaving at around 1.26, which was roughly about 20 minutes before Abby and Libby were dropped off. And so girl number three, she took these pictures and she says that they encountered the man who matched the description of the photograph taken from Libby's phone. She described the man on the trail as wearing a blue or black windbreaker jacket.
She advised the jacket had a collar and he had his hood up from his clothing underneath his jacket. She advised he was wearing baggy jeans and was taller than her. She advised her head came up approximately to his shoulder. She said that second girl, girl number two, said hi to the man and he said nothing back. She stated that he was walking with a purpose like he knew where he was going and that his hands were in his pocket and he kept his face down.
She said she did not get a good look at his face, but believed him to be a white male. And the girl said that they encountered him when they were walking over the Freedom Bridge, which is another old railroad track that has been built more recently that's part of this trail system, but it's not the same bridge that Abby and Libby were on.
So I think this part about the girls is really interesting because their descriptions of the man they see are all kind of different, which I think is just a great example of how witness statements aren't always that credible because these were three girls there at the same time that saw the same person but describe him wearing different things. Like one girl says he was in all black. The first and third girl are more consistent, but there are still differences in it.
And I would say the third girl is kind of most on the money with the image we all have of this guy on the bridge. But I thought that was really interesting, just the variation in how they described what he was wearing. So then another woman, she is also at the bridge. She's not a juvenile. She is an adult. I just have her in here as Jane Doe as my notes.
And she is, I think, kind of an important witness because she gets there just like five minutes, less than five minutes before Abby and Libby are dropped off. So she's kind of on the trails at the exact same time as them. And she says as she's traveling in, she saw four young girls, four juvenile girls walking on the Freedom Bridge, which is the bridge I just mentioned, not the High Bridge.
When she gets there, she says there's no other cars parked in that parking lot to where you can get on the trails where Abby and Libby are ultimately dropped off just a few minutes later. So she doesn't see any other cars at that time. So she starts walking the trails heading towards High Bridge and advised that she saw a male matching the one from Libby's phone. She described the male she saw as a white male wearing blue jeans and a blue jean jacket.
She advised he was standing on the first platform of the High Bridge, approximately 50 feet away from her. She said that when she got to the bridge, she turned around and continued her walk. And about halfway between the bridge and the parking area where her car was, she passed two girls walking towards High Bridge. She believed the girls were Abby and Libby.
And the videos that we have and the time records that we have from everybody's phone involved in this, we know that the girls were dropped off at 1.46. So this would make sense that she saw Abby and Libby as they were walking to the High Bridge. And according to this woman, this man was already on the bridge.
And when she says the first platform, from my memory, there's like three or maybe four like little square sections that kind of jut off where you can kind of sit and like let your legs hang over. Or you used to be able to. I don't know if you're able to anymore. So I believe that's what she's referring to. So he was near the beginning of where you would walk on this train track.
So this woman, she also says that as she was leaving the trail, so she gets in her car, she just walked there and back. She noted there was a vehicle parked in an odd manner at the Old Child Protective Services Building. She said it was not odd for the vehicle to be parked there, but she noticed it was odd because of the way it was parked, because it was backed into the building.
And then another tip that investigators received from a man, a man who was driving that area around that time on February 13th, 2017, he said he observed a purple PT Cruiser or a small SUV type vehicle on the south side of the Old Child Protective Services Building. And he said that it seemed as if somebody had backed in to conceal the license plate. So they both noticed this vehicle that's like parked kind of funny.
So this man and the woman, police have them both draw diagrams of where the car was parked and they both put it in the same place. And then another man also comes forward with a tip that said he remembered seeing a smaller dark colored car parked at the CPS Building, but he described it as being a smart car. So we have some really wildly different statements about what kind of car it is. So it goes from a small SUV PT Cruiser to possibly being a smart car, which are very different in shape.
So that's a question I have. Is there another car that came switched out? Did they see the same car? That's really odd to me. And then the last witness, altogether there's seven witnesses mentioned in this. The last witness, it's another woman with a tip from February 13th.
And she says that as she's driving on the road that leads into the trailhead to where you can park and everything, she says that she saw a male subject who was wearing a blue colored jacket and blue jeans and was muddy and bloody. She further stated that it appeared he had gotten into a fight and she was driving around four o'clock. So this all happens in the range of three hours, more or less, depending on these witness statements.
Witnesses also have talked to other people who were on the trail after 2 13 that day, which is when the video cuts off. That's a very significant time in this case. But through interviews, none of those individuals encountered the male subjects who was seen in the video or Abby and Libby. So they were not seen again after 2 13 PM. So when they interviewed Richard Allen in 2017, he says that he was on the trail between 3 30 and 3 30.
He parked at the old Farm Bureau building and walked to the Freedom Bridge. Now, the old Farm Bureau building doesn't exist and has never existed in Delphi. So police believe that he is referring to the old CPS building. It was abandoned at this time. No one was using it. So it was kind of normal for cars to be parked there, but it's since been leveled. It's not there anymore. So he says that while he was at Freedom Bridge, he saw three females.
He noted that one of them was taller and had brown or black hair. He did not remember descriptions for all of them, nor did he speak to them. He walked from Freedom Bridge to High Bridge. He did not see anybody, although he said he was watching a stock ticker on his phone as he walked. He stated there were vehicles parked at the High Bridge trailhead. However, he did not pay attention to them and he did not take any photos or videos on his phone.
And in 2017, police say that Richard Allen owned two vehicles, a 2016 black Ford Focus and a 2006 gray Ford 500. Investigators observed a vehicle that resembled Allen's 2016 Ford Focus on the Hoosier Harvest Store video at 1.27 p.m. traveling towards the trails, which kind of coincides with his statement. He was there around 1.30 and this video could place his car there.
Investigators note witnesses described the vehicle parked at the former CPS building as a PT Cruiser, a small SUV or smart car. Investigators believe those descriptions are similar in nature to a 2016 Ford Focus, which I'm going to say is a stretch. So police keep investigating. So they talked to him in 2017 and they didn't talk to him again till October 13th, 2022, when he was interviewed again. And they asked him about his time on February 13th.
And he said that he saw juvenile girls on the trail near the Freedom Bridge and that he went to High Bridge. Richard Allen further stated he went out onto the High Bridge to watch the fish. Here in his statement, he said he walked out to the first platform on the bridge. He stated he then walked back, sat on a bench on the trail and then left. He stated he parked his car on the side of an old building.
He told investigators that he was wearing blue jeans and a blue or black Carhartt jacket with a hood. He advised he may have been wearing some type of hood covering as well. He further claimed he saw no one else except for the juvenile girls he saw near Freedom Bridge. And he told investigators that he did own firearms in his home. And his wife also confirmed that he did have guns and knives in the residence and he did still own a blue Carhartt jacket.
So all of those things were in his possession, but not illegal. So on October 13th, investigators get a search warrant for Richard Allen's home. And among the items collected, officers locate jackets, boots, knives, firearms, including a specific model, a.40 caliber pistol. The pistol is important and the gun is important because between Abby and Libby, police found an unspent bullet with extraction marks on it. And police confiscate this.40 caliber gun because it matches the bullet.
And they send it to the laboratory for ballistic testings. And it comes back with sufficient agreement is related to the significant duplication of random saturated impressed marks as evidenced by the correspondent of pattern or combinations of patterns of surface contours. The interpretation of ID is subject in nature and based on relative scientific research and the reporting and examiner's training and experience.
So that's like a really fancy way for the laboratory to say that like it was a match, but it is based on this one person's experience and training in the area. Because ballistic testing has really kind of come under scrutiny recently in courts. It's being challenged a lot. Some argue that it is more of an art than a science. And so you can't lean as heavily on it.
It's more circumstantial, but that seems to be the big piece of evidence and like the nail in the coffin for them to arrest Richard Allen, because he says that he has owned the gun since 2001 and he never let anyone else borrow it. And so basically the state's case is kind of summarized by these witness statements and by the gun, the unspent bullet.
And I had to really look up what an unspent bullet was because I wasn't quite sure if it was something that had fired out of the barrel, but maybe didn't like was a dud, like didn't explode or like impact or anything like that. But just an unspent bullet, it means it was loaded into the gun, but it was never fired. So the marks on it is really just like it being pulled up into the chamber. So it doesn't even have the striation marks of going down the barrel on it.
And Richard Allen's defense attorney has also released a statement once the affidavit was released and in it he says that Rick is a 50 year old man who has never been arrested or accused of any crime in his life. And he says that the police did not contact Rick after Abby and Libby's death, but Rick contacted the police to say that he was on the trails that day to try to offer any assistance to the police of maybe what he might have seen or done that day.
And his lawyer says without Rick coming forward, the police probably would not have had any way of knowing that he was on the trail that day. He says Rick tried to assist the investigators and told the police that he did recall seeing three younger girls on the trail that day. His contact with the girls were brief and of little significance. And the next time Rick heard from the police was in October of 2022.
This was approximately two weeks before a contested sheriff's election and within days of a federal lawsuit filed against the Carroll County Sheriff's Office by its former second in command, Michael Thomas. In the lawsuit, Thomas claims that he had made suggestions and offered assistance in the investigation of a high profile child homicide investigation, but those suggestions and offers were rejected by the sheriff.
Thomas further claimed that the sheriff and others in the department feared that disagreements with Thomas would become publicized as a result of the political campaign for sheriff. Thomas claims in the suit that he was ultimately demoted and replaced by Tony LeGate, who later that year in 2022 would become sheriff. I think I'm butchering his last name, it might be LeGate, but LeGate.
And in this lawsuit that came just a couple of days before the arrest, he also claims that he was removed from these cases kind of unjustly. So Rick's lawyer also says in the five plus years, Rick volunteered to provide information to the police. He did not get rid of his vehicle or his guns and he did not throw out his clothing. He did not alter his appearance. He did not relocate himself to another community. He did what any innocent man would do and continued with his normal routine.
The probable cause affidavit seems to suggest that a single magic bullet is proof of Rick's guilt. It is premature to engage in any detailed discussion regarding the ferocity of this evidence until more discovery is received. And he also says that they wanted, they didn't want any of this to remain out of the public eye. They want it all out there because they think it will help his defense because they truly believe he's innocent.
I mean, as a good defense lawyer should, they should believe their client if they are saying they are innocent, which Richard Allen is saying he is innocent at this time. Richard Allen's lawyer goes on to say, prosecutors mentioned at the last hearing his belief that others may have been involved in the killing, yet there is no mention in the probable cause affidavit about a second suspect involved in the killing. And that's true.
It doesn't mention anywhere in the arrest warrant that there was somebody else involved, but police really heavily suggested that and have kind of suggested that from the beginning as we discussed in our update episode. And his lawyer also talks about his Ford Focus is not in any way similar to the distinctive looks of a PT Cruiser or smart car that were described by the witnesses. So he kind of points to these really shifting car descriptions.
And at this time, this is all the information that we have on the case is this affidavit that was released with what the police believe is probable cause to arrest him. And so hopefully there is more, hopefully they have a really strong case to arrest him and bring all of this to trial. The judge ultimately since then has issued a gag order.
So I really don't think we're going to hear much about this until he's supposed to have a bail hearing February 17th, 2023, which is a significant time in the case because that will be the six year anniversary of the girl's murder. So I think that week is going to be very high emotionally in Delphi with the anniversary coming and going and then a bail hearing because his lawyers are arguing that he's innocent.
He should be able to make bail to get out of jail to wait his trial and prosecutors want to keep them in there because they believe he is the murderer and that he could potentially run. So there's going to be hearing about this potentially February of 2023. So we'll bring you updates on that, but that's really it. That's all I have for you as far as updates go. We will be taking a short break next week.
It's Christmas and we're going to go ahead and take the holiday to relax, but we're going to come back January 2nd, first Monday in 2023, right back at it with more cold cases and unresolved missing person cases. Awesome. Thanks for the wrap up. And of course, as always like and subscribe wherever you're at, wherever you like to listen to your podcasts, please follow us on cold and missing on Instagram.
And from there we post lots of photos from the cases we cover and we also have links in the bio to where you can buy us a coffee if you want to tip us. And also if you have any cases that you want us to cover that feel important to you or you don't think have gotten enough media attention, please feel free to email us at cold and missing at gmail.com and we would love to work with you. So have a good week and stay safe. Y'all.