This episode maintain content of a graphic nature, including descriptions of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals. Listener discretion is advised.
Hi, this is Tanya. Hi this is Shannon, and we are.
Crimes and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast.
Hi Shannon, Hey girl, how you doing. I'm doing good. How are you? Ah? Pretty good?
Well, we're always gonna start off with the weather. We're not always gonna but you know when it's changing or it's cold, And today was a nice rainy day here I Metro Detroit.
Huh yeah, it was cold and rainy.
I wanted to just stay in bed all day.
I have no hot coco in the house, so that's going on the grocery list.
How about you, how was your day? It was busy in my new job, so it's just good. I'm enjoying it. I'm glad it was.
It was a good move, so I enjoyed my new job.
But it was good. It was a good Wednesday. Is that what today is? Is? Today? And Wednesday? Today is Thursday? Oh no, yeah, you're right, it is Thursday.
Oh my gosh. I wasn't even fucking around. I really thought it was Wednesday.
You know, I'm like, is it Yeah, it's Thursday girl.
All right, all right, I need some strike, So would you bring us today?
Well, I have a really exciting episode.
This was a case that was cold for a long time, so thanks to DNA evidence, it eventually helped.
So spoiler alert.
And before we start, I I'm going to remind everyone hit the subscribe or follow button on whatever you're listening to. And this case originated in the eighties. So it's Tuesday, June eighteenth, nineteen eighty five, and a man named Jerry Estes was woken up by pounding on the door to his office after a busy Monday. He'd stayed up late socializing and drinking beer after hours with some employees, and he fell asleep at the sale Barn, which was his
cattle auction house and cafe in Nixa, Missouri. Now I think it's Nixa and Ixa, So people in Missouri will probably write and tell me that I said it wrong. It's probably like some fancy pronunciation, but that's what I'm going.
Oh, come for me, please, Missura. Please.
I am not from Missouri and I have no idea how it's pronounced. Well, and you know, people will be like, well, she could have looked it up, but okay I did.
I did everyone, Okay I didn't. I didn't put it through Google translation. Sorry pronounced that's sorry.
I remember when I was wearing at the police station, Georgia called and they're from Macon, Macon, Georgia, and so they had pronounced Macomb, may Comb.
Macom, Yeah, Malcolm.
Yeahcom was like, oh adorable.
No it's Macomb.
We say it boring, but go up exactly.
So Jerry owns this cattle auction house in this cafe. So he opens the door to his office. He's half dressed. His cook, Alice, was standing in front of him and she was just talking excitedly, and behind her he could see one of his servers named Dana, and Dana was distraught. After Alice took a deep breath and slowed down, Jerry was able to understand what she was so excited about.
Alice and Dana had spotted a black Camaro with the license plate that was Jackie Ja c KI dash one abandoned on the side of Highway one sixty with the driver's side door open, and they all knew exactly whose car this was. One of the other servers at the Sailbarn Cafe named Jackie Johns had purchased her dream car last year, which was the black hardtop Camaro with red leather interior and.
Yeh sweet right Camaros in the eighties.
Oh that was a status symbol. Yes or sure, yeah, I love this. It's her dream.
So Jerry leaves to investigate, and he drives to the spot the women had described, and he saw the Camaro parked on the shoulder of the road and it was pointed as if the driver was.
Headed away from the auction house.
Jerry turned on the headlights of his truck like he pointed them at the Camaro, and he walked up to the car and he looked inside. He saw an open purse on the floor of the passenger side seat that belonged to Jackie. There was still money in it visible from where he was standing. The keys to the vehicle were still in the ignition. There were some scattered items like typical like a twenty year old girl and like for example, there were empty cans of Aquinet hairspray.
Do you remember Aquinet? Yes? I do?
And my time capt for night my graduating year of nineteen eighty.
Eight, yes, loved aquinet right lived on it.
Yes, But it was the blood. The blood was everywhere, mixed with strands of long, dark hair that made Jerry's stomach drop.
Wow.
The steering wheel was bent, the driver's side headrest was nearly snapped off, and Jerry figured there had been just quite the struggle inside this car. Wow.
He investigates a little.
Further, and he found blood mixed with dirt and dried leaves across the dark red leather of the back seat. On the floor, he saw what looked like a pair of jeans. The legs of the pants were rolled up, with a pair of women's underwear caught in one of them. There was also a blood smeared bra. He didn't see a body, but he feared that Jackie was dead. Jerry
was seen enough at this point. He quickly drove the two miles back to the Sailbarn to call the Sheriff's office, where help was dispatched, and then he went back to the Camaro to wait for the police to arrive. The Missouri Highway Patrol officers and Christian County Sheriff Dwight McNeil pulled up and looked inside the vehicle. And they were
shining their flashlights. They opened the trunk, a portion of which had been white down that they noticed, and there was no body inside, but they did find a spare tire, a tire iron, and various items of clothing. Looking further into the trunk, Sheriff McNeil leaning down and with a that he had picked up, he lifted the bumper jack from the tire and the rear wall of the trunk. Hair could be seen on the lip of the jack and blood. So after this, Jerry returned to his frantic
employees and reported what they already knew. Something bad had happened to Jackie.
Yeah.
Jackie John's was twenty years old, working as a server at Jerry's Sale Barn cafe and part time at the kmart customer service counter like the local Kmart. Right, the former cheerleader and prom queen lived with her parents in a trailer in the small Missouri town of Nixa. Again, I'm probably saying it wrong. Anixa was a really small town. There was population there was less than two thousand people.
Wow, that is tiny. Yeah.
Socializing in the small town meant hanging out in the parking lot of local seven to eleven. That was the hot spot, right, and that seven eleven happened to carry that aquinet that Jackie had become obsessed with.
Right.
She was a beautiful girl and she worked hard to look good and the summer before she'd even become the Sucker Day Queen at the Nexa Sucer Day Festival.
Right.
Well, small town girl Camaro's She's had in places, for sure.
She was a good girl at heart, but she did have a bit of a wild side that she had a fake id. She occasionally used to buy you a six pack here and there. Another member of the community was a guy named Gerald Carnahan, and at this point in the story he's in his late twenties. The Carnahan
family was rumored to be the wealthiest in town. Jerry's father, Garnet, founded the Springfield Aluminum Company, making fence parts, and eventually that company went on to supply aluminum casings to many industries throughout the United States.
Wow, I think I do know that name Springfield. Actually, yeah, I think they are still a big name in fencing. How I'll have to You know, you just don't know what's seeping in or staying right when you notice stuff as you're driving right.
Right, Okay.
Jerry worked for his family's company and so hit Jackie for a short time, but it's not believed that their paths crossed until Jackie began waiting tables at the Sailbarn Cafe.
Okay. Jerry would frequent.
The restaurant often, and all the servers thought he was just weird. He would sit in their section, never speak, and just stare at them with what they said was a faint mocking smile. He would always try to sit in Jackie's section, but whenever he was placed in the area of another server, he would just be rude and.
Misbehave to that server.
At this time, Jerry was married to an older one whose name was Pat Collins, and he had a stepdaughter, Sarah, who was nineteen at the time, so pass a little bit older than Jerry. I'm figuring she's got to be like ten years older.
I'm you know, right.
The Carnahan home was only half a mile away from the trailer where Jackie lived with her parents, and they lived at the end of a long road called Carnahan Way.
So just to give you an idea this fall, they named their own road.
After the crime scene photos were taken. Sheriff McNeil had the Camaro toad to Ozark because this is near.
Ozark, Okay.
So following the tow truck out of Nixon, Sheriff McNeil radioed in to put together a search party. Newscasters took Jackie's disappearance, you know, to the TV. Hundreds of people showed up to search for the missing woman or a volunteer at the Sheriff's office, Jerry asked us to groups out on horseback, and helicopters and private planes flew over to see if they could find any clues from the sky.
The morning of the fourth day, after Jakie's car had been found, some fishermen called into the Christian County Sheriff's office saying they had spotted a body of a naked woman floating in the weeds near the southern end of Lake Springfield, which and where they saw her was about seventy five yards from the shore in a few feet of water. Sergeant Tom Martin and Sheriff McNeil took a canoe out to a boat launch. Both men were weary of making the discovery in the view of the three
teams of newscasters that had followed them. Yeah, seconds after launching the boat, they saw something floating on the surface. They paddled just a little further and they could clearly make out the body of a woman with dark hair, floating face down. After recovering the remains from the water, they were able to flip her over and they recognized the face of Jackie John's. The unusually cool water had a louder body to be well preserved, but they easily
saw a gaping hole in her right temple. That was probably the injury that ended her life. Jackie's autopsy noted facial smelling lacerations to the vaginal area she had been raped. Her eyelids, lips, nos chin all had lacerations. There was bruising on both arms, legs, and her chest. There were four deep cuts near her right ear. But she clearly died from the skull fracture caused by a very heavy object which made a deep hole in her right temple.
They determined that the killer had beat her unconscious, thrown her to the ground, and clubbed her with the bumperjack from her car, and the way that he swung it was like a side swing, like how you do a golf club.
Right, Oh my gosh. Yeah.
The sheriff began a series of interviews with her family and friends, and that took weeks. The police had found a partial fingerprint on one of the Camaro's dome lights. Hair and blood samples were collected from the car's floor in seats from Jackie's body, They had collected blood, stomach contents, hair from her head, pubic hair, and semen from vaginal spobs.
There were no suspects at this time, but on June twenty third, nineteen eighty five, a male caller had called the Christian County Crime Stoppers and from that log he said, quote, I don't want my name used, don't trace this. I got information it's not that girl from the lake. I saw someone I know on the same night the paper said she disappeared. It was at the seven eleven. Jerry Carnahan. He was in his old Chevy truck parked in their lot when that girl went its side. He just sat
there with his lights out. The bastard was watching for that girl. That's a fact. You need to check it out. I don't want the reward end quote, Oh my gosh, he's an angel. Yeah, right, whoever that was?
I know.
The following day, Monday, June twenty fourth, Jerry Carnahan arrived for questioning at the Sheriff's office. The anonymous phone call had been corroborated by another witness, and Jerry was turning out to look like the prime suspect. Even though Jerry was the son of the richest man in the town. He enjoyed driving a nineteen sixty one Chevrolet Apache pickup with a bad muffler. When the caller mentioned the old
Chevy truck. Sheriff McNeil had run a search through vehicle registrations in the area and found only two vehicles of that same color, make and model registered in southwestern Missouri. Wow, so there wasn't a lot too. The sheriff also ran a background track and only found a few traffic tickets
in one drunk driving charge in Jerry's past. When he pulled up for the interview, Jerry had that faint, amused smile that unnerved the servers at the Sailbarn on his face, and he seemed to know that his father's money and influence would get him out of any trouble that he possibly could be in. A quick once over showed Sheriff McNeil that Jerry's knuckles were skinned in red. Sheriff McNeil told Jerry that he'd received a tip about his truck
being parked at the seven eleven. He also told Jerry that three people said they saw the truck backed up looking toward the seven eleven. Jerry calmly and steadily denied that his truck was there. When asked if someone may have borrowed his truck and taken it there, he said no. His alibi for that night was he'd spent most of Monday night with his stepdaughter Sarah. The two worked together at the aluminum factory and had gone out with mutual coworkers. At the end of the day, they went to the
Repair Shop, which is a restaurant in Springfield. He had two beers, Sarah had a soda. They ate some tacos. After they ate, they drove home and Sarah went to kmart to buy a curling iron. He said Sarah and Jackie were friends and Sarah had hoped Jackie was working that night, but she wasn't scheduled that day like at the kmart. Right while Sarah was at the kmart, Jerry went to the Varra Warehouse, which was a storage business of his that was under renovation. Two of his friends
were there building shelves. He brought beer and they chatted for about thirty minutes before he went home and watched the beginning of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson with Sarah before they went to bed in their separate rooms. His wife, Pat was at Lake of the Ozarks for training for her job. During the interview, he innocently stayed, I'm trying to think why somebody would think, you know that my truck was up there behind the seven eleven.
Sheriff Miniald replied, quote, apparently this person knows you, he knows you and your truck and said it was you in your truck. We have other witnesses too, who didn't say it.
Looked like you. They said it was you. Nice going on.
Jerry said he knew Jackie from when she worked at the factory and from being a server at the sailbarn. He said he didn't know anything about her disappearance. When asked about the bloody knuckles, he said he'd played several volleyball games the day before. He was an avid volleyball player.
By the way, mm hmm.
They're like, okay, So they took fingerprints and he agreed that he'd take a polygraph before he walked back out to his truck and drove home. The polygraph was scheduled for the next day, but was canceled after Jerry's father, Garnet, investigated the reliability of the tests and didn't like what he found, So you canna investigate in nineteen eighty five, he didn't go on the internet.
Yeah, yeah, right, nineteen eighty five. Yeah.
His son came home and he was like, are you out of your fucking mind? Yeah, you're not going to take a lie detector test exactly, and just the cockiness of yeah, I'll take it.
Mm hmm.
Right, there's no internet to.
Look up how to beat a light detector test, yeah, exactly.
So stupid, stupid.
The best the police could tell was that Jackie had gone to the seven eleven to buy hairspray and cigarettes around eleven pm, you know, plus or minus ten minutes. This has put Jerry's truck there around that time too. The officers decided they needed to wait to get more information before they interviewed Jerry's alibi witness, his stepdaughter Sarah, but they would go ahead with an interview with his wife, Pat.
Pat was the offensive and clearly aligned herself with her husband, saying, quote, if he's saying it wasn't him, I believe him.
End quote.
When asked about the state of her marriage, she denied any problems. When asked about her daughter, she defended Sarah, reminding them that she was a college student with good grades. She said Jerry hadn't left until after ten pm. Then you know she believed her right. After only a few minutes, the interview was over and.
Pat walked out.
When the police did get a chance to interview Sarah, she corroborated most of her stepfather's story. However, she didn't state that he'd gone to the Vera warehouse after they got home for dinner, so this discrepancy was noted by the officers right By the fall of nineteen eighty five, more than one hundred and fifty interviews had taken place. Friends and former boyfriends were called in, Transcripts of interviews
were studied and details were checked out. There was still no z one at the top of the list, except for Jerry Carnahan. In October nineteen eighty five, Sheriff McNeil received information through sources that Jerry was planning a trip to Taiwan. Sheriff McNeil knew that the family's aluminum company did business in Taiwan due to the cheap scrap aluminum they have. He also knew that Taiwan didn't have any extradition treaty with the US. OH he believed his main
suspect was going to go on the run. Sure On October thirty, first sources told Sheriff McNeil that Jerry was on his way to Los Angeles to board a plane to Asia. Contacting the prosecutor, he inquired if there was anything that could be done that day to arrest him and keep him from that plane.
Right.
They decided to use the three witnesses that swore Jerry and his pickup truck were behind the seven eleven that night, which meant that Jerry was lying when he claimed he wasn't. The prosecutor said, they would say it was technically tampering with evidence, like that's what they're going to bring it as bring him in under sync that he was tampering with evidence, Okay, even though it might get laughed out of court if a judge signed that order, their suspect wouldn't be able to leave the country.
Yeah. Once it was.
Signed, Sheriff McNeil immediately called the LAPD to ask that Jerry Carnahan be arrested at the airport, and the warrant was faxed. Jerry Carnahan had already boarded a plane, which meant local cops couldn't go on the plane to remove him, so the FBI sent two agents racing to the airport to remove him from the plane. I didn't know this, I know, I didn't know it either. I guess maybe the airplane is federal jurisdiction now I know.
Oh maybe because oh it's going out of the country.
Yeah, because like when you see like terrible passengers being escorted off, I think they are low or.
Their security or their maybe airport police.
Maybe I didn't know it was that Feds that are coming to right to grab spitters and yellers off the plane.
For agents, Like you know, they're like, really got some asshole on a plane.
Yeah, fucker, God damn it. Everyone's got a d board. Come on, everybody, we can do better. Let's do fucking.
Better exactly, So really throw a wrench in my trip to CanCon.
Come on, don't we all want to be with our families. Yeah, gosh, Now I gotta punch you in the throat.
So we can get out of here.
So the FBI ends up getting him, and Jerry was held at the Men's Central Jail for Los Angeles County, which you know is one of the largest and toughest jails in the country, until Sheriff McNeil and his deputy were able to pick him up eight days later.
Oh, he was there for a little while, Yeah, getting ready.
Once he arrived back in Missouri, he was placed in the Green County Jail in Springfield, and his family quickly paid seventy five thousand dollars to get him out.
Seventy five thousand dollars in the eighties, fash so just times that by what eight nine ten, Right.
It was a lot of money. It's it was like three hundred thousand dollars to day, no kidding.
In mid December nineteen eighty five, a grand jury convened and on January twenty third, nineteen eighty six, they returned an indictment against Jerry Carnahan for the evidence tampering charge, requiring another arrest arraignment and bail proceeding. In Missouri, the state law required after a formal indictment is done for him to be arrested again for the same charge and to be fingerprinted photographed, but the same seventy five thousand dollars bond could be used to cover his bail. It's
just I don't know. That seems odd to me, but that's what their law is, right. This arrest was well documented and the local television station and radio stations took note. A search warrant authorized the police to take hair and blood samples. He was sat down for questioning when suddenly he flung himself on the floor of a small room, where he screamed, moaned, and sobbed. He was wheezing and behaved as if he were choking.
The men in the room, throwing all of it at the fan. Motherfucker.
Yeah, I'm gonna start having culsion and I start drooling at my mouth. I could pull some shit out of my hands, you know what. You know, he's desperate. He just about eight days. It's different to be a big fish in a small pond of Missouri than La County.
Right, that's a bit humbling.
I'm thinking, so the authorities are like, look, we're going to get these blood and hair samples from you, whether you're going to cooperate or.
Not with the theatrics. Yeah, with the theatrics exactly.
Without acknowledging this morning, Jerry was lifted to his feet and stood against the wall while samples were taken. A male technician approached him with late text gloves on, and he told Jerry to take down his pants. Shocked, he hesitated for a second, but Jerry eventually pulled his pants down to his knees so the technician could get pubic hair samples.
How how embarrassing? Yeah, imagine at your fucking job though, Oh right.
Gosh imagine, Like so, yeah, I would be I think I'll try to make it funny.
Take down your pants, kiss me first, looked deeply into my eyes. Ah, you tell me I'm pretty. That's then I think my pants off. But for him, I bet it's a shock, this whole thing, for sure, right right, Yeah, I would be shocked. I mean, I'm scared.
I'm scared and being like, damn it, I got to prove myself in the yard soon.
Yeah, exactly.
So after this, Jerry was allowed at that point to go see his lawyer. In late December nineteen eighty five, Sarah Collins, remember his stepdaughter, arrived at the courthouse for her testimony on the evidence tampering charge. This was the first grand jury convened in Christian County in fifty years. Jackie's parents attended. They had not missed a hearing connected to their daughter's death at all. During every testimony that she gave, Sarah gave the same story she had been
polygraphed and passed, and she never wavered. She and Jerry returned from the restaurant and then she left to go pick up a curling iron a kmart. However, this time she claim Jerry was leaving at the same time as her, and that he went to the Vara warehouse. This meetil you had been missing from her previous interview. And then she said that when she returned from kmart, Jerry was already home. After they both had ran their errands, They'd watched the first part of Johnny Carson, and then they
both went to bed. Jerry couldn't have left, she said. If he had, she would have heard the loud muffler on his truck. She was certain he was home from nine thirty until the next morning. The prosecution called her a liar, accusing her of not being able to keep her story straight, and the grand jury didn't believe this story she gave, so Sarah was indicted for felony perjury.
After all, I know you never hear that right right.
The evening of January eighteenth, nineteen eighty six, Kenny Carnahan, who was Jerry's older brother, showed up at Sheriff McNeil's office. Kenny had been summoned for interrogation. Although he had testified to the grand jury that morning, the sheriff hadn't been present, so Kenny would be expected to tell his story again
in person. Kenny had spent part of the night of June seventeenth with his parents and relatives at a country western comedy show forty five minutes away between eleven fifteen and eleven forty five like at that point is when they left the show. Kenny was driving his parents car and went to drop it back off at their house, where he picked up his truck and his wife and kids,
who had stayed there while he was out. He had it back up a side road that intersected with Highway win sixty, which was near the seven eleven, just before the intersection and only about two hundred yards away from where the camaro would be found. Kenny said he saw his brother's pick up parked on the west side of the road and it was empty. Further, he admitted that he commented to his wife, is that Jerry's truck? The next day, Kenny ran into his brother at the plant.
Jerry insisted that it couldn't have been his truck since he'd been home with Sarah. Weeks later, Jerry stopped Kenny at work to tell him that if anyone asked if he'd seen anything, he shouldn't mention seeing.
His pickup on the road.
That night, the officers were excited about Oh my gosh, yes, and Jerry was asked, you know, why did it take you so long to speak up? And Kenny didn't have an answer. He just shook his head in response. When asked if he believed the trip to Taiwan in October nineteen eighty five was arranged for Jerry to flee arrest, he.
Agreed that it probably was.
Yeah, damn, his brother ritting him out, No kidding, he must know his brother. Yeah, No, his brother probably piece of shit right, yeah good. Thursday, January twenty third, nineteen eighty six, breaking news flashed across the screen as Kenny watched the e television. It said the police have arrested Jerry Carnahan in connection with the murder of Jackie Jentes. The news flash the scene. It showed Jerry leaned over Sheriff McNeil's cruiser.
On Highway one sixty.
Flipping through the stations, it was the same story on every channel. On December ninth, nineteen eighty six, the flimsy evidence tampering charge finally made it to the courtroom. The defense attorney asked, how can this be tampering with evidence? Jackie's parents sat in the front row. Although this wasn't a murder trial, this was the only prosecution for their daughter's murder to date, so you know, they had to be there.
They felt like they had to be there.
Yes, The argument surrounding the claim that Jerry tampered with evidence by lying when he claimed he wasn't behind the seven eleven like that was super thin.
Okay, yeah, it's very very thin.
Prosecution introduced a micro cassett of the interview where Jerry had lied in order to beat the defense to the argument that there was nothing to be tampered with. However, during testimony, when witnesses were asked if Jerry had ever had access to the micro cassett, the prosecution realized that they had made a mistake. Jerry would have never had access to the item and so would not have been able to tamper with it. Jerry and his wife Pat waited until the defense attorney gave them a signal.
When the judge.
Moved to toss the charge, Jackie's parents and her three older sisters looked defeated, and the judge dismissed the case. Oh my gosh, the family, the people in the courtroom, and the entire town was disappointed in the outcome. So now flash forward to April twenty seventh, nineteen eighty seven, which was the last day of Sarah Collins's perjury trial. After a change of venue, it was now fifty miles away. BJ Honeycut. Come on, now, this guy is not named BJ honeycut.
Oh my god. Hello, yeah, Benjamin Franklin Pierce.
Yeah right here, hop it, okay, right, BJ Honeycut, Which I just can't fucking believe this guy had the same had been reporting on the trial, but hadn't had the time to make the drive for the end of it. He made a short report based on information from sources, and got in his car, driving along the same stretch of Highway one sixty that Jacky's car had been found on two years ago. Looking up on the left of the shoulder of the oncoming lane, there was a Voltswagon.
The driver's side door was open and the parking lights were on. Honeycut he believed someone had run into car trouble, maybe, so he slowed to check. Further down the road. He drove past a police officer in the parking lot of a supermarket in Willard, which was a nearby small town, and he stopped to tell him about the vehicle. Two days later, he got a call from the Green County Sheriff's department asking if he knew a woman named Debbie.
Sue Lewis Wi.
Sue was thirty one, five foot three and about one hundred.
And five pounds.
Honeycutt was told she had gone missing from the VW he'd driven by that night. The vehicle had been impounded, but she never returned home to her apartment. Her purse was lying on the passenger front seat with money visible. The keys of the vehicle were in the ignition, just like in the case of Jackie John's. Honeycott later found out that just minutes before he'd driven by w Seue's car, a deputy sheriff on his way home had seen a different car on the side of the road with the
hood up. As he was about to stop and offer aid, he saw a light colored VW pull in behind. He figured the driver of the car that was in distress had already called for help in the VW. You know, they just arrived, so the sheriff he contigued to drive home. Yeah, the working theory would be that Debbie Sue had pulled up behind the car with the hood up to offer help and.
She was abducted. You know, he could have still stopped. Yeah, that's a lot of fucking assumption.
Oh I thought that my professional opinion, I figured he had called someone.
Were cell phones around in eighty seven, I don't think so. No, I don't think nothing. That didn't have an antenna you had to pull out. That's right. Mm hmmm, sough.
Terrible Honeycot connected the dots between this disappearance and the murder of Jackie John's. He told his editor quote, I think I was just a few minutes behind the abduction, and it's the weirdest feeling, right, ah terrible. One night, Debbie SU's parents were talking and both remembered during the previous summer she had talked about a guy she and
her friends had met at Table Rock Lake. He'd shown up with a speedboat and offered to take them water skiing after the boat they'd been using had broken down. The guy called himself Jerry. Wie Sue later saw the same man named Jerry on TV when there had been reports of a woman named Jackie Johns that went missing in Nixa. When Jerry Carnahan's picture flashed across the screen, Debbie Sioux's parents remembered she'd gotten excited when she told
him that that was the Jerry from the lake. Debbie Sioux's father went to the library and did his research on Jerry Carnahan. He discovered that Jerry was a volleyball player in a league that played at the Ozark Mountain Stadium, where Debbie Sue worked pushing a cart that sold soda in hotdogs. The one main difference between the two murders was that there wasn't a grizzly scene in Debbie Sioux's voatswagon.
Okay.
Eight months after Debbie Sue disappeared, a couple but went on a walk through their acreage in a remote area of Newton County, which was about a half an hour from Nixon, where they spotted something pink and white on the ground among fallen leaves. They then noticed a light blue colored pair of shorts and realized that they were still on what looked like to be a human pelvic bone. Minutes later, the man was on the phone to a dispatcher at Newton County as the county deputy was headed
to the site. The officer received another call that a dog owned by another residence of the area had just arrived home with a human skull in his mouth.
Oh my gosh, right, this is so close.
So a dog comes home and then this couple discovers ye, oh my goodness, crazy crazy, crazy, crazy gray.
The skeleton had been scattered, but police were able to get most of it within the barrier of the crime scene tape. The pink and white ton of shoes still hit. The laces tied inside the shoes were a pair of multicolored socks with the foot bones still within.
Wow.
The turquoise legwarmers were still on the lower leg bones, and the light blue shorts and black bikini underwear were visible. There was a red, blue and green striped jacket with armbones within the sleeves.
Wow.
Yeah. The officers saw that there was nylon rope wrapped around fingerbones, which led them to believe that the victim's hands.
Had been tied behind her back.
Right while the skull was gone, They did find a patch of brown hair with an elastic headband and a banana clip under some leaves. It was clear the remains had been lying there for months.
The skeleton was.
Nearly complete, but they were unable to determine a cause of death and were only able to say it was a homicide because they have no head right right, and it's all bones, and you know, if you're you know, if you're killed in some way.
That drama head, yes, yeah, with no trauma.
To your bon then it's really hard to say. The following day, the Sheriff's office in Green County had received notice of the remains with the list of the close with a list of the clothing, making a call. He said he was shirt was Debbie Siue. Lewis later confirmed by dental records. Around this time, the deputy heard the
name Jerry Carnahan. He hadn't paid much attention to the homicide investigation in the neighboring county, but witnesses had put Jerry at a bar in Springfield nearby on the night that Debbie Sue disappeared, and he received information that the victim may have had an interaction with the man soon before she died. In March nineteen ninety three, eighteen year old high school senior Howther Starkey was a passenger in
her boyfriend's car around two am. They had been arguing and he hit the brakes, leaving her to slap him in the face. Getting out of the car, she began walking, intending to make it to a friend's house about five minutes away to get a ride home. When she left the car, the area she was dropped in was a rural She was able to spot a well liit gas station close ahead, so she wasn't like scared.
Yeah.
When she reached the edge of the convenience store's parking lot, a white Chrysler pulled up in front of her about fifty yards ahead and parked sharply as if to black her walking path.
She stopped and.
Considered running when a man in his mid thirties in an overcoat got out of the passenger side and began walking toward her at a threatening pace. He grabbed her arm and Heather screamed. She felt he was pushing her toward the woods, but in the early spring sleet, she slipped and they fell together to the ground. She tried to pull herself free, but he was too strong, so she screamed again and began to flail to get out
of his grip. Finally, she was able to get free and sprinted to the convenience store, sobbing to call for help. Another happened to be driving that same route and saw the struggle. When the passenger saw the girl run towards the store, she looked back and saw the attacker get into the white Chrysler driven by another man. As they pulled away, the chrysler got close to their car behind them. The witnesses could see the driver, passenger, and the license
plate number. The number was noted, and when they got home they called the Springfield police to report it. Nice Four days later, On Thursday, March eighteenth, nineteen ninety three, the Christian County Sheriff's Deputies, NIX, the Police, and a detective from Springfield Police Department arrived at the aluminum plant to arrest Jerry Carnahan. They had traced the plate number to a white Chrysler that Jerry had rented. Jerry's friend,
Eric Turnage, had been driving the truck that night. He said he'd had no idea what his friend intended to do when he told him to pull over.
Sure. Yeah.
When Jerry returned to the car after the struggle, Eric had asked, you know what happened, and Jerry claimed it was just a misunderstanding. Yeah, it was just a misunderstanding.
Okay, doesn't sound like it looked like you were really gunning for her.
Yeah, And Eric apparently didn't ask any more questions after that.
Sure.
Jerry was charged with attempted kidnapping and released that afternoon on fifteen thousand dollars bail. Later, he was arraigned for attempted kidnapping. Realized that there was no way they would be able to find twelve impartial jurors in the area, the case was moved one hundred and fifty miles away to Boone County. On September seventeenth, nineteen ninety three, mere months before Jerry's trial for attempted kidnapping, an intruder used a steel pry bar to force open an unloading door
of the custom aluminum foundry south of Nixa. There was no attempt to conceal their footprints and gloves were left at the scene the padlock on it. The door lock was cut with bolt cutters, which were left on the loading back. A mark was left in red spray paint below the window on the driver side of a Ford panel truck, and the window was smashed. The intruder tried to steal the vehicle by shoving a screwdriver into the ignition,
but the battery was too weak. Instead, he broke into the warehouse, breaking the door handle off the door and throwing it into the bushes. Coming upon the production area, he found expensive sand molds for casting aluminum parts for fishing boats. They weighed about fifty pounds and were worth
about two thousand dollars apiece. The intruder spent about an hour carrying dozens of the molds one by one into the van he'd brought to the foundry that night, the wood pailets that the molds had been sitting on were set on fire with gasoline.
I don't know why. Yeah, I'm not sure either.
By seven am, the Aurora Fire Department finished putting out the fire. Investigators determined that the fire had been set to destroy evidence of the theft, but it didn't do its job. Watched attempted little more than char a small area of the production floor.
They hilarious. I think maybe they were trying to burn down the whole place.
Maybe, Oh, absolutely, And they have no plan other than a couple of movies.
They saw.
This is super sloppy and no long game work, you know, because I mean you're just breaking stuff, you're leaving a trail, and because you really believe, yeah, that it's just gonna go up like backdraft or something.
No it's not, I know, right, Yeah, it's gonna explode. But yeah, as you walk into the sunset with your molds.
So the fire department is they are sure that this job was done by an amateur. The owners of the foundry were Wes and Dolores. They had opened the business about a year earlier, but had run into financial problems and reached out to Springfield Aluminum, the Carnahan's company, to make a deal that would let them keep their most important customers, which were several nationally known fishing boat manufacturers.
The previous day, Wes had driven to Springfield to meet with Roger Moore, who was president of Springfield Aluminum, and Jerry Carnahan, the owner's son and an executive of the company. He wanted them to make the parts with the sand molds in his foundry in Aurora. Roger declined, but Wes found a taker for the deal in a foundry in Kansas, and they planned to truck the molds over to them
the following day. When Roger arrived at the office at Springfield Aluminum the following morning at seven am, he was surprised to see Jerry had already arrived two hours earlier than normal in a Chrysler Mini van that looked very heavily loaded. Roger knew something was up and was apprehensive. In a later police interview, he said of Jerry Carnahan that he'd never met a man so dangerously out of control.
Wow.
When Roger walked into his office that morning, he'd seen Jerry sprawled across his sofa sound asleep. Roger inquired as to you know, what are you doing here? What's up with the van? Jerry said he'd picked up some tooling at Custom Foundries that night. When Roger asked how he did it, Jerry didn't mince word and simply said, well, I stole it.
Well direct, okay, yeah.
Telling Jerry to go back to sleep, Roger walked out to the parking lot and called Jerry's father, Garnet, telling him to come handle this right now, then called the attorney for the owner of Custom Foundry, and then he called the cops. On September twentieth, nineteen ninety three, arrest warrants were issued charging Jerry Carnahan with felony, counsel of arson, burglary.
And theft.
The bail was set at forty thousand, which Jerry's family easily paid, so he was out in public once again. Right in late nineteen ninety three, the attempted kidnapping trial began for Heather oh Okay. Thirty five year old Jerry appeared in an expensive suit with in aloof smile on his face. Other Starkey had been asked to testify and reluctantly would pat and Sarah Collins attended the trial, as did Jackie's widowed father, Les John's. Her mother surely had
passed away of lung cancer in nineteen eighty eight. On December first, nineteen ninety three, opening statements were made. They were brief, with prosecution saying eyewitnesses would tell the jury I horrifying tale, while the defense claimed his client was merely trying to help a young woman.
Being helpful. Yeah, hullul gentleman.
Yeah, like, come on now, fucking psychopath, I mean gentlemen. Mm hmm.
The following day, the jury was out for only three hours before they found Jerry guilty of the crime, and they recommended two years in prison. The maximum would have been seven years for charge. Les John's sat up and smiled. That was Jackie's dad.
After all of the.
Charges of nineteen ninety three were finalized, Jerry was sentenced to a year for felony tampering with a vehicle, plus for the charges of attempted kidnapping, arson and destroying a car.
There were four.
Convictions adding up to seven years, which the judge ran concurrently, meaning he was sentenced to four years total and he would probably end up serving just too. He was relief least on April seventh, nineteen ninety six, to the custody of detainees from Green County. They were going to hold him in the county jail for another fifteen months for unrelated charges of assaulting a police officer and brandishing a pistol while drunk. Okay, boy, this Jerry sounds like a piece.
Yes he does, He really does. Pat Collins divorced Jerry while he was in prison, citing mental cruelty. After getting gout in prison, Springfield Aluminum sent Jerry to Taiwan on an extended business trip that was assumed to have been.
Made up to keep him out of trouble. Sure Over the.
Next handful of years, a few detectives tried to revive Jackie John's case. In two thousand and two, there had been an attempt to run a DNA analysis on the vaginal swabs from Jackie's case, but the SAMPA was too small at the time. It wouldn't be until October two thousand and six, when Dan Nash of the Springfield Police Department was assigned to the case that movement really began. By two thousand and seven, Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime
lab had attained the latest equipment for DNA testing. The swab that had been too small in two thousand and two was now able to be tested.
Nice.
Yeah, this was the sample that was turned in on January thirty first, two thousand and seven. It took the crime lab six weeks for them to come back with a sixteen point DNA profile, which is nearly the best possible.
Wow, very nice.
Would be unable to get a sample from Jerry Carnahan right away he was still in Taiwan, but patients paid off and when the officer got a phone call in August that Jerry had returned the police department, they didn't waste any time.
I love it that he has no idea of all this DNA advancements, and he's all like I'm going to fly back to the state. Yeah, fright, web, come and go as that please, right, come on home. Jerry Nash had gotten a search warrant signed by a judge to compel Jerry to open his mouth and let that swab sample get from inside his cheek. That booking job.
The officers arrived at Springfield Aluminum and walked into Jerry's office. He looks startled and asked, is this over that Jackie John's thing?
Like, really, yes, because I know that's what you've been thinking about every day since you killed her. Mm hmm.
His voice broke.
The forty nine year old man had tears running down his cheek. Gone was the aloof grin replaced by a frown. He asked when the test would be done. Detective Nash, lying told him that they were backed up for at least a year, but he knew better, right, you would have this test run overnight. At six fifteen the following morning, Detective Nash received the word that the test results were in. Jerry Carnahan only had a few hours left as a freeman.
At nine am, Yeah, finally, yes, the fucker evaded fucking decades.
Yeah, decade.
You know, he reminds me of just the one every time you said like a loop ors that smug ass face, I think of cal from Titanic. Oh yeah, you know that fucking smugg I'm looking at steerage, Yeah, steerage, yes, yes.
Ugh.
At nine am, Detective Nash pulled up to Springfield Aluminum to wait for Jerry to arrive. Arrest warrant in hand. A minivan pulled into the parking spot that was Jerry's just after ten am, and Detective Nash approached the vehicle, arresting Jerry on the spot. While he was putting the handcuffs on Jerry, he again spotted a tear rolling down his cheek.
Oh what happened? Why was he crying?
Because he's getting arrested.
Girl, he got caught. That's all about Jerry, Poor Jerry. No one's silent, but except Jackie's parents exactly.
Speaking of Jackie's parents at eighty years old, Les John's had fallen ill by this point, and he worried that he would never see the day that Jerry would pay for Jackie's death. However, in the state of Missouri, versus Jerry Carnahan, the DNA evidence was irrefutable. The trial began September fourteenth, twenty ten. Shortly after noon on September twenty second, twenty ten, the jury left the courtroom to discuss and
decide the verdict. Just before three pm on the following day, the twenty third, there was news that the jury was ready. Gerald Leonard Carnahan was found guilty of the murder of Jackie John's twenty five years after all.
My gosh, how bittersweet.
I know, her sisters cheered. Her father waited by the phone until the call came in, so he finally got some closure.
Gives me the chills there, you know, there's a stare at your daughter. I know.
On October twenty fifth, twenty ten, Jerry was sentenced to life without parole, and as of October twenty twenty, a judge in Springfield, Missouri, upheld the conviction good. There was no arrest made for W. C. Lewis's murder, so that one is still technically probably unsolved.
So unsolved on the technicality.
But we know, yeah, it was very similar to Jackie's disappearance and murder.
So oh same m a yeah, same emo.
I mean, you know innocente'l proven guilty, Shannon, I know.
Yes, I'm so jaded. My fifty four years here hasn't been all, hasn't been all sun flowers and sunshine.
Unfortunately, girl, I know, I'm like, oh, he fucking did it right?
Oh this lion. They're fuck lion, motherfucker howard.
Ass bitch you know, yeah, you know, don't even get me going. I'll tell you how I really feel about fuckers like this. I know so well thank you. I love this story. I thought how long it kept going. I thank God for DNA and I know.
By ince and it just helps us become better people.
And I know all these cold cases, you know a lot of cold cases get solved by DNA.
So I love that they had the for the long sight of the long game.
Of collecting when the technology wasn't there yet, you know, if it was, you know, of course we have our goals.
Looks like we're going to be there soon, but you just don't know till you're.
There, right, Like how in nineteen eighty five, do you know you know all these years later that they're going to be able to test this and you.
Know wonderful things. Yeah, for sure. Oh very cool.
Well, thank you Shannon for being my audience today, and thank you everyone for listening. Yes, use hit the subscribe or follow button on whatever app you're listening to if you haven't done so already. If I know, if you employ Crimes and Consequences and you enjoy our weekly episode, we also offer an additional episode for a very small fee, a very small monthly fee. Yes, we have a Patreon page and you can go there by going to Patreon
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