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. Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I am your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I am solo this week. If it is no surprise to you that this is coming out on a Wednesday instead of Monday and that I am by myself, then thank you for following along on Instagram. If you don't follow us on Instagram, I'm sorry to announce that Eli's mother passed away unexpectedly this week. So we spent the weekend with family celebrating her life and her memory. So I just want to encourage everyone to love the ones you love.
Call someone up, tell them you love them. Time is our most finite resource. And it's just always really sad to say goodbye to somebody. So I am by myself this week while Eli takes some time to heal and mourn, which is completely understandable. And he is well loved and being checked on by a lot of amazing people. So thank you, those of you who commented on our Instagram post. I really appreciate the love and support. I know Eli does as well. Just thank you to everybody.
And thank you for understanding that our episode came out a little bit later this week. But with that said, this week we have a cold case. And just as a content warning at the top, this case does involve a young person and there is mention of sexual assault. Today we are talking about the cold case of Larry Jo Phebus. And this takes place in Tioga, North Dakota in October of 1962. But first a little bit about Larry Jo. Larry Jo was 14 years old in 1962.
He was born May 8th, 1948 and he would be 75 years old today. Larry Jo had recently moved to Tioga, North Dakota with his older brother Chester Phebus. Chester was working in the oil fields and Larry Jo had come with him. The brothers were from Indiana originally. Larry Jo was behind in school so he was still in the sixth grade at 14 years old. But his teacher said that he was well adjusted and got along great with the other kids in his class.
Even though he struggled with school, he would often take his school books home to re-read the day's lessons. Larry Jo would often tell his classmates and his teachers all about his family and the love that he had for his siblings. Larry Jo was one of six. Chester and Larry Jo lived at the Traveler's Hotel with another young man named Sam Wallace. Sam was 19 years old and he was also working in the oil field with Chester.
He treated Larry Jo like a little brother and the three young men got along great. Larry Jo, however, wasn't loving North Dakota. He thought it was way too cold there and he was looking to move to a warmer state soon. Larry Jo also had a habit of hitchhiking according to his brother and Sam Wallace. His brother Chester said that he would often hitchhike between Tioga and Ray, North Dakota, where he would visit the family of the girl that Sam Wallace was dating and would eventually marry.
Ray, North Dakota, is roughly 15 miles from Tioga. And according to Chester, the farthest that Larry Jo had ever hitchhiked was about 30 miles. And now a timeline of events. So for the timeline, it's unclear when Larry Jo first became missing. There are reports that he was last seen October 17th and October 20th, 1962. I believe, based off of my research, that Saturday, October 20th is the correct date based off of the timeline that Larry Jo's brother Chester gives police.
So on Friday, October 20th, 1962, Chester, Phebus and Sam Wallace have a double date. They plan on going to the movies in Williston, North Dakota, which is about an hour away from Tioga. Larry Jo asks to come along with the two of them, but they both say no and tell him to stay at the hotel. According to Chester, Larry Jo said, quote, you'll be sorry you aren't taking me with you, end quote.
Chester and Sam last saw Larry wearing blue jeans, a green, brown and white sports shirt, black loafers, dark socks, and a black sports coat with a front zipper. Larry Jo stood around five foot with a slender build and sandy blonde hair. Chester and Sam head out on their double date, and when they return later that evening from the movies, Larry Jo is gone.
Chester says, quote, he never went anywhere, to the store or to play football or anywhere without leaving a note telling us where he was going, end quote. On Sunday, October 21st, 1962, this is the next day after Larry Jo has been missing, Chester spends all day looking for him. Chester says, quote, I talked to his two closest friends in Tioga and checked with other people in Tioga and Ray, but nobody had seen him since Saturday night, end quote.
On Monday, October 22nd, 1962, Larry Jo has been missing for two days. Chester officially reports Larry Jo missing to the police. He also starts calling relatives, letting them know that Larry Jo is missing and hoping that he might have turned up at one of their houses. One by one, people are alerted and nobody has heard from or seen Larry Jo.
In December of 1962, so Larry Jo has been missing for about two months now, Chester will leave North Dakota and go live with his mother in Lacombe, California. He leaves North Dakota because he's being asked to serve 30 days in jail. And I thought this was interesting to read. So they wanted him to spend five days in jail for running a stop sign, 15 days in jail for no car registration, and another 15 days in jail for no driver's license. So 30 days in total.
Instead of turning himself in to serve this time, he flees to California. On March 28th, 1963, so it's been five months since the last time Larry Jo was seen alive, farmer Clark Jenner and a hired farmhand John Mann were walking the fields picking up rocks when they discover a partially nude teenage boy body in the field. His hands were tied to his neck with a clothesline cord.
Jenner farm was about two and a half miles from Alexander, North Dakota, which is about an hour and a half away from Tioga where Larry Jo was last seen. Farmer Jenner first calls Larry Lloyd Powell, who was the county commissioner since he farmed nearby. It's unclear by who or when but the police are eventually called and come out to look at the scene. Police notice that the body is scratched and bruised still. His clothes are found with and around him.
There is no ID, but the clothing found with the body matches what Larry Jo was last seen in and Sam Wallace is able to confirm that the jacket found with the body is Larry Jo's. Sam says, quote, I know it's his jacket. I gave him the money to buy it. I know it's him. End quote. In the pocket of the jacket, police find a dollar and 40 cents all in change and a small light bulb.
Since the body and the clothing match the description of Larry Jo, police are tentatively IDing him as Larry Jo, but they will confirm with dental work during the autopsy. Police are also unsure if where the body was found was where the murder took place or if it was just a dumping ground. Nearby the body, police find Larry Jo's shoes, beer cans, pot bottles, a brown jersey glove and either a towel or a piece of a car seat cover that was made of green Turkish cloth.
Police are able to determine right away that Larry Jo was sexually assaulted since his pants and boxers were found around his ankles. The county commissioner who lived nearby told police that he recalled seeing a strange car in the area around November or December of 1962. Near the body, police find old car tire tracks. The next day, Friday, March 29th, 1963, Larry Jo's autopsy is conducted and it's confirmed that he was sexually assaulted and died from strangulation.
Police are also able to confirm with a local dentist that it was Larry Jo. A pathologist believed that Larry Jo's body had been in the field since December. Police get a hold of Chester and his mother Mary in California. Larry Jo's mother is distraught at hearing the news of her son's murder. Chester arranges to head back to North Dakota to help with the police investigation. Police have no idea which way to turn on this one.
Sheriff Leroy Lutt says, quote, We have nothing really concrete to go on yet, end quote. However, on Saturday, March 30th, just a few days after finding Larry Jo's body, police appear to get a break when they find a car that had belonged to the Phebuses. It was abandoned on a county road and had been kept in a garage in Williston. Police theorize that the light bulb that Larry Jo had in his pocket was intended as a replacement for the tail light in the car.
Police refuse to comment on if the tire tracks found near the body match the vehicle that had been abandoned. Those are really all the details I could find around the car, but I personally have a lot of questions surrounding this car. Police also look at other unsolved cases in the area to see if there are any connections, but the investigation has stalled. They're hoping with Chester coming back to the area that they'll generate some leaves from talking with him.
Sheriff Leroy Lutt says, quote, We're living in hope that the brother can give us a missing link that will help us solve the crime. We're hoping and praying we can solve this thing quickly. It's a terribly gruesome thing, end quote. On Tuesday, April 2nd, this is four days after Larry Jo's body was found, Chester Phoebus arrives in North Dakota to talk with police. First, police bring Chester to visually ID Larry Jo's body.
Upon seeing the body, though, Chester is unable to positively ID it as his brother Larry Jo. After this police bring in Chester for questioning, but at the end of the day, they say they didn't learn anything from him that they didn't already know from Sam Wallace. Police do mention that they are interested in talking with a truck driver that was believed to have been a friend of Larry Jo's.
And I use the term friend loosely here since it sounds like this was a grown man that was befriending a 14 year old. Mary, Larry Jo's mother, decides that she wants his body sent back to Indiana to be laid to rest. The next day, Chester requests that police perform an x-ray on the body to confirm if it is Larry Jo. Chester tells police that his brother had broken his collarbone when he was younger, so it should show up on an x-ray.
Police do the x-ray the same day and they are able to find the scar of a broken collarbone on the body. Between this, the clothing, and the dental records, police do confirm that it is Larry Jo, but they do say that they will have experts review it. Police continue to question Chester about the murder of his brother. Finally, Chester asks the police to give him a lie detector test so that he can clear his name. Both him and Sam Wallace are given polygraphs and they both pass.
On Saturday, April 13th, 1963, 16 days since Larry Jo's body was found and 5 and a half months since he was last seen alive, Larry Jo is laid to rest in Moumee Cemetery in Owensville, Indiana. Police continue to investigate Larry Jo's murder behind the scenes. The next month, in May, police in North Dakota work with Alaskan authorities to hold a former Tioga man for questioning.
Police in North Dakota say that he used to work in the area as an oil field operator and left town around the same time that Larry Jo disappeared. The man refused to take a polygraph test and denied that he had ever lived in Tioga. According to police, he had given an employer in North Dakota a forwarding address, which is how they were able to track the man down. In October of 1963, so it had been one year since Larry Jo was last seen alive, police are still not close to solving the case.
They do say they have two suspects, one being a man in Alaska who is being held in a state mental hospital, but police do say that they are close to almost ruling him out as a suspect completely. I have to wonder if this is the same guy in Alaska that police had held for questioning that I had just mentioned a few minutes ago. The second suspects, they don't give any details about and they say that they haven't talked to him yet, so I have no idea who this person could even be.
Sheriff Leroy Lutz says, quote, The killer could be very well in this area, right within a couple blocks of me, end quote. Police confirm that Chester and Sam are no longer suspects. Police also plan to turn the case over to another county. So Williams County had originally handled the case. Tioga where Larry Jo was last seen alive was in Williams County.
All the work that had been done up until this point had been done by Williams County, but now it was going to be handed off to Mackenzie County, which is where Larry Jo's body was found. At this point in October of 1963, Mackenzie County had not worked the case at all and had not even reviewed it according to the newspaper reports at the time. And that is truly the last update that we get on Larry Jo's murder.
It truly seems like once it got passed off to another police agency that the case just really goes cold. If you know anything about the death of Larry Jo Phebus in 1962, please contact the Mackenzie County Sheriff's Department at 701-444-3654.
And the sources for the timeline today come from the Argus leader, the Billing Gazette, St. Cloud Times, Rushville Republican, the Missouliyan, Rapid City Journal, the Republic, Great Falls Tribune, Evansville Press, Ames Daily Tribune, the Bismarck Tribune, and Princeton Daily-Claron. So that is the case of Larry Jo Phoebus. And I actually found this case because it is the oldest cold case in North Dakota, which I just thought was interesting.
I thought, what is the oldest cold case in North Dakota? And it is this unsolved case of a 14-year-old. I was really kind of blown away by Larry Jo's life. Like the fact that 14, he was kind of, you know, starting to drift around the United States, but he was still committed to school. You know, he signed himself up for school in North Dakota. Perhaps his brother was, you know, adamant that he go to school if he was going to be with him in North Dakota.
But, you know, it's also easy to imagine a 14-year-old boy, his brother, who is only 21 at this time, and then Sam Wallace, who also lived with him, being 19 years old, you know, to kind of see all these young boys living together. And maybe school wouldn't have been a priority, but it really did seem to be one for Larry Jo. I have a lot of questions in this case.
And, you know, if I could sit down today with police and just ask anything I want, the first thing I would want to know a lot more about is this car that was found abandoned in December. So the car originally belonged to either Chester or Larry. It was registered to a Phoebus. We don't know who. It's not confirmed. I would imagine it's Chester, you know, just based off of ages. You know, at 14. I don't know how many 14-year-olds had their own car in 1962. But I question where was it found?
Where was it abandoned? I know Chester leaves North Dakota in December of 1962 because he kind of has, it seems like some run-ins with his car. You know, he runs a stop sign and then they're asking him to do jail time for the stop sign stop, which I thought was crazy, the thought of doing jail time for not stopping at a stop sign. It just seems nuts to me. But then also there was no registration and he didn't have a license. So was that when this abandoned car was found?
And was that how maybe all of this started was around that? But I have a lot of questions because police seemed to tie Larry Jo to the car with the light bulb in the pocket. Originally the newspaper's reports say that it was like a flashlight light bulb that he was carrying in his pocket, but then police later theorized that it is a replacement for the taillight of this car. So if he had that, was it in October that this car was found? So obviously I have a lot of questions.
I don't understand exactly all the details around this car. And the other thing I have a big question about, Larry Jo was last seen in October, but the pathologist during the autopsy believes that his body was put in the field in December. So that gives roughly two months of Larry Jo being missing before his body is put in that field. So was he alive during this time? Was he being held? Police say that they see scratches and bruising on the body when they find it in March.
So this would be three months later. This is still evident. And I'm not sure if this is just because North Dakota is cold. So there would be freezing of the body, which might have helped preserve some of, preserve the body from not only decomposition, but like, you know, save some of the bruising, save some of the scratches. So there's just questions around that. I'm very curious about all of that.
And then I just have to wonder because there were these items found around the body, you know, his shoes were found nearby, but also pop bottles and beer bottles and a glove and some very specific cloth, like this green Turkish cloth that they believe either came from a towel or a car seat. Could any of that be tested for DNA? I would be really curious about about that.
You know, are we in a place where DNA testing is advanced enough that they could do it on these pretty old items because I do know there is a, you know, DNA can degrade over time and you know, there's kind of a shelf life to it, so to speak on objects. So I am not an expert in DNA breakdown. So I don't know exactly how long it can last on an object if it lasts longer on certain surfaces.
But that is something I would be curious if at any time any of the items found in this case, because there does seem to be a bit of evidence that if found today would absolutely be tested for DNA. So I wonder if that would even be a possibility or if it's just too old or the, you know, the evidence wasn't handled or kept properly. Those would all be questions that if I could have anything I wanted answered, those are all things that I would ask personally.
I just also wonder if there were any true suspects in this case. You know, at the one year mark, police mentioned that they have two, but one is almost ruled out, but there is another one that they don't give any details about. So that's another question that I think I would ask or that I personally want to know more about. Is that person truly a suspect or has that person been ruled out? Have there ever been any like really good suspects in this case?
Because it just doesn't seem like there were any. There was no big search when Larry Jo first went missing. You know, there was no big canvassing efforts or any attempt really to find him. It just looks like the report was made and that was that. So police were pretty far behind when they found the body and it doesn't seem like they ever really got out of that starting point.
But again, if you know anything about the disappearance or murder of Larry Jo Phebus in 1962, please call the McKenzie County Sheriff at 701-444-3654. And once again, I just want to thank you all so much for the love, the support while Eli and I go through this time of grieving as we mourn the loss of his mother. I know for me, me and my mom share true crime as something that we both like. It's an interest that we share that we have in common.
And I know that was the same with Eli and his mom and me and his mom. So you know, if that's a bond that you share with your mom, I just hope you call her today and just tell her you love her. If that feels good to you, I would totally recommend it. But please, if you're not already, follow us on Instagram. Hopefully we won't have any big hiccups come up. But you know, in the past few months, we've had COVID hit our house and then we had a death in the family.
So if we are ever going to delay an episode or have to cancel a week, all of those updates can be found on Instagram. At cold and missing will pop right up and you can follow along with us there. If you're in your podcast app and you're enjoying what we're doing, please rate and review it and share it with your friends.
If you're in Apple podcasts, if you can leave us a review, it helps others find us and enjoy our podcasts and get these stories out to more people so that way we can hopefully get these closed and solved and just bring the media attention back on these cold cases and unresolved missing person cases that are usually not covered in the day to day media.
And also on our website, you can find all of our past episodes, additional pictures, materials, blog posts, information about Eli and I. And also if you or someone you love is hard of hearing or deaf, you can find transcripts to all our episodes on our website, www.coldandmissing.com. But that is all I have for this week. So thank you for joining me. I'm Allie McLaughlin, so Kowski. This is Cold and Missing. Have a good week and stay safe, y'all.