This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Stories We're following for you today. On this Tuesday, February eleventh, twenty twenty five, President Trump says us taking control of Gaza will bring peace in the Middle East. He was with the King of Jordan at the White House today said the Gaza Strip is a warn torn region and Palestinians will be moved what
he called a safer place. He had put the onus on Jordan, while King Abdullah today pledge to take in two thousand Palestinian children. It seems like that was the happy medium they decided upon.
Today in Washington, another big international story, the Trump administration was able to secure the release of Mark Fogel, an American who's been held in Russia for about three years, in what they describe as an exchange. Still getting the details on this, but this deal to release Fogel was negotiated by Trump by Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Whitcoff and some of the president's advisors.
At least according to a statement from the National Security.
Advisor Mike Waltz didn't give any details about what the exchange is, other than to say that it was a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign that we were moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine. Witkoff actually went to Russia to bring back Mark Fogel. No known high level US travel to Russia since the start of the Ukraine War in February of twenty two, so they have already started releasing some pictures of Mark Fogel on an
airplane on his way back to the United States. He's an American teacher who was detained there for apparently having drugs in his suitcase at an airport. He claimed that they were medical.
It was a prescription for marijuana. They don't care in Russia.
That's not what they But what else is going on?
Time four?
What's happening?
A serious storm is on the way to us.
Here in southern California, three days of rain expected to begin tomorrow. Heaviest rain will likely arrive early Thursday. Flash floodwatch goes into effect in the Burn areas. The weather system expected to bring gusty winds, mountains, snow. They say have an evacuation plan ready, sign up for weather alerts if you're in those vulnerable areas.
Because of the vulnerable areas, we will be paying attention a lot to the real estate markets and the palisades in the Altadena area. According to realtor dot com, one lot where a home used to stand in the Pacific Palisades before it was destroyed, has sold for about a million dollars just the lot, nine hundred square foot property located on Avenue to de La Herradura, listed for just under a million dollars on January sixteenth, a week it was listed a week after the fire.
They people are swooping in probably all cash to rebuild and sell or just.
Rebuild.
I mean, you're seeing a lot of foreign money sweeping into real estate markets.
And this is what you're going to see.
Alta Dina and there was a lot on West Calaveras Street used to be a rental property was sold one hundred thousand dollars over the asking price, all cash, for five point fifty. There are several signs up in yards in Altadena that say Altadena not for sale that way. They want their community back, They don't want a whole new population to come in and swoop over and take over what Altatina was.
And you're going to see this I think.
I mean, whether it's Altadina or Palisades, obviously the prices are going to be different, but you're going to have multiple offers. The one in Palisades they said they had seventy or eighty inquiries into a burned out lot.
That's can look very different for.
Almost a million.
San Bernardino County Sheriff's departments asking for help finding couple of robbers who broke into a home in Hesperia tied up their residents before they stole cash and took off.
This was a few nights ago.
They tied up the family, they stole an undisclosed amount of cash. Victims eventually freed themselves. Were able to call nine one one, but did not provide any description of the robbers or of the vehicle.
Gulf of America has arrived on Google Maps. Of course, Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico. Now when you check out the Google Maps you will see this to follow the executive order. Google has previously said it has a long standing practice of applying name changes when they've been updated in official government sources, so there it is Gulf of America.
Okay.
Some fake signs have been posted in the West Hollywood area, causing concerns for the community. Mayor of West Hollywood said that these Immigration and Customs enforcement signs appear to mean to intimidate the com unity all the signs, he said, the signs are not what the city stands for and on and on. Flyers were first spotted on Friday were immediately taken down by the city's code enforcement because it
does appear that they're fake. They're home printed signs. They are apparently literally duct taped to poles and trees and things, which is not how the federal government posts signs, and all it says. It's a sign that says the logo of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and then has a phone number for you to call, which is a real phone number for ICE apparently, but that's all. It doesn't say anything about We're coming to get.
You or so.
A collapse landing gear is apparent cause of that plane crash near Phoenix involving the jet owned by Vince Neil. One person was killed in that crash yesterday afternoon at Scottsdale airport Fire Department spokesman saying three people were taken to hospitals, two with life threatening conditions. This is just a few minutes drive from where the PGA's Waste Managed
Meant Phoenix Open was held over the weekend. It was wild because I was there this weekend for the Savannah Bananas and everyone in the airport was wearing waste management stuff and I figured they had a convention or something in Phoenix. But anyway, TMZ reports of Vince Neil was not on the plane, his girlfriend was and is currently in the hospital with broken ribs.
That's pretty rough.
Are you going to get your wife roses for Valentine's Day? It'll cost you ninety dollars?
No, No, you'd rather take her to dinner.
You're not going to do both. You don't love her? Well, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. You know how I feel.
Ninety dollars and fifty cents is the national average for a dozen roses, two percent increase from last year.
The highest cost for a dozen roses Hawaii.
I feel like roses is too to hack.
If you know your wife or your girlfriend, or you're whoever you're in love with, you know that what their favorite flower probably is, or just don't.
Get rose because it's easy.
Yeah, get something obscure and just say, oh, these reminded me of you because they're so different.
And by the way, the lowest price for roses this year Alaska.
Under seventy six dollars for a dozen.
Because up in Alaska, you're worried about the bush. You're worried about skin and an animal for dinner, not worried about bringing home roses. Maybe bush. I don't even know what that means. Is that a thing wild wild.
Part of Alaska. Yeah, you're worried about the.
Foliage, foliage, the dense foliage, foliage, foliage things out there with the beasts of the wild claws and the teething the nook of the north.
I don't know if we can say that.
Why it was a book. Oh, it's like Sarah Plane and Tall But no nook.
That's exactly what it is. It's just like Sarah Plane and Tall.
Well, they both lived very boring lives.
I was on the phone with my brother yesterday and I said something pretty biting because I still have the chance to hone my brother insults with you. Oh, I'm your practice and he doesn't have that anymore because we talk in pretty infrequently. I mean we talk, but not that often, not enough to get in constant barbs to each other the way we used to.
So I'm not out of practice, he is.
And I said something on the phone yesterday to him that was so biting, and I felt and I could almost see him recoil from the phone, and I was like, I'm very sorry that came out.
I'm used to. You know, being able to.
Your sparring partner is tough.
For the sparring partner, it gets more is more exposed to my meanness than you are these days. So all right, we have women disappearing over a period of time off the rural Highway twenty of ore again started in the late seventies, continued into the nineties. Finally found the one man linked to all five crime, which had a lot of sense surrounding it being this one guy because he had such access to this road.
And what's unfortunate is there's plenty of other mysterious stories about Highway twenty through Oregon that were never connected to this guy, but show every indication that he was responsible.
That's where we start our true crime Tuesday the story is true.
Sounds true?
No, it sounds made up.
I don't know.
Garry and Shannon present True Crime.
It begins in nineteen seventy seven in Sisters, Oregon, there was a woman by the name of Marlene Gabrielson. Now, this was Marlene's first night away from her baby girl. Her daughter was born three months earlier. You can imagine how apprehensive she was leaving her baby girl. She was young, she was about twenty years old, but still late spring in nineteen seventy seven, and she and her husband decided
that they would have a night out. Mom and dad would have a night out at the rodeo there and Sister's, Oregon. She found a friend to care for her baby. She pumped the breast milk, She wrote out the napping schedule, the whole bit. She threw on her green Levi, She put on her buckskin boots her husband had gotten her, and she whispers to her daughter, good night. Mommy loves
you too much, she said, be a good girl. They drive about ninety miles from their home there and Lebanon set up camp near the rodeo grounds, and they sit around the campfire, having a couple of beers now. They got into a little bit of a fight later on that night, and he says he wants to head off with a couple of friends. You know how young people go after they've had a couple of beers. She says, well, then I'm gonna leave. I'm gonna go home to the baby.
Anyway, she wanders around out of the campground back towards the highway, and as she gets back to the campground, a stranger said that his buddy would give her a lift.
So she had hitchhiked before.
This was nineteen seventy seven. Everyone hitchike, Everyone hitchhiked. She didn't think twice.
She squeezes into the front seat of the truck between these two guys, the stranger that she met and the buddy that was going to drive home.
Think about uber, but you don't have.
To pay interesting.
Yes, Oh, there's also no repercussions and no rating system. As they drive west, the guy in the passenger seat gets out.
And she notices there's something weird about the vehicle at that moment because he has to reach outside of the window to undo the door handle from the out On the outside, she notices that the interior of the doors have all been taken out. There's nothing for you to roll down the window back when he had to roll down the window with the crank, there was no door handle on the inside.
It was basically a trap vehicle.
She sees the rifle in the rack in the back of the cab, the hunting knife that was stuck in the lid, and an old cop I he can and she's alone except for the driver, a guy named John Arthur Akron.
Now the twenty two rifle again not something to be suspicious of, not in that part rural Oregon. It's the seventies, it's a truck. A lot of people had twenty two's in the cab. But anyway go.
She sleeps. About an hour into the drive.
This guy turns off of Highway twenty onto an old wagon road and she wakes up. He is dragging her out of the truck. She feels the blade of the hunting knife against her neck and he says, I'm going to you're going to do what I tell you.
He rapes her.
He then says I'm not sure what to do with you. She says, you could take me home. He says, I don't know if I want to do that. She says to him at this point, I've got a baby, not even a year old. Please take me home. So he considers this for a long moment, which must have felt like an eternity, reaches into the back of the truck, grabs an old pair of pants. She puts them on. All she had was her t shirt because he had ripped her the pants she was wearing. They climb back
in the truck. They continue on a highway twenty He makes a stop at the house he shares with his mother. Goes inside to use the bathroom and grab a soda. She tries to see the house number from the truck. She's trying to get some evidence here, but she can't see it. When he returns, she has a presence of mind to ask for his phone number, kind of insinuate that she's into him, like maybe we can see each other again, and he gives it to her. She writes
it down on a pack of cigarettes. He drives her another twelve miles down the road, stops in front of her mother's law. In in front of her mother in law's house where they had been staying, she flies out of the pickup the mother in law's like, what the hell happened, and she calls the police.
She eventually goes through a lie detect or test. Did she tell the truth? Did you feel like you'd been raped? Was there a question? Were you afraid to answer? The conclusion was that she was lying about this. So and he didn't offer an explanation as to why he put that in the report. But they asked the guy they found, John Ackroyd, and they found him. Did you force her to have sex? Did you have a knife in your hand? He lied the entire way, but they said no deception was detected.
This was a time when men were believed over women as well, and this is why many rape cases went unreported and still due to this day, because it's he said, she said. And in this situation, she's a young girl, she had been drinking, all of the things she got into the truck willingly, all of this counts against her.
That's just the way it was.
And this is why you have so many of these true crime stories of missing women that the cases are never solved because a lot of the stuff doesn't go reported or it's not taken seriously.
Also interesting that she was apparently the only survivor that they know of, of an attack by this guy, and there one of the reasons why they weren't investigating it so thoroughly was they were already investigating the murder of a young woman that.
Was also in the Sisters area.
Well, the only reason that investigators circled back to Marlene's story is because they were investigating that crime two years later.
Well, I started in the late seventies.
We believe right where we left you off.
John Arthur Ackroyd is a guy who worked for the State Department of Transportation in Oregon, and Highway twenty was his beat. Goes from Newport, Oregon all the way across over the mountains into Sisters, into Bend, kind of wends its way out the southeastern part of Oregon, makes its way all the way across the country, does Highway twenty.
This was a guy who was an odd dude too.
This was a guy whose name would come up because well, he was an odd dude. He had worked for the Highway Department. He was raised in that nearby area of Sweet Home, a modest logging town along Highway twenty. Only son of an office worker at the local police department, a maintenance guy, middle child between two sisters, low grades in school. His high school diploma marked with special education, loner, bullied, beaten by glassmates, felony, theft as a teen, stationed in Korea,
Korea after he enlisted in the army. Also was in Thailand and Germany. He worked as a mechanic overseas. Investigated for selling weed, going a wall, caught trying to steal equipment and supplies. He had a disturbed mind, shall we This was the guy who would drive back roads, known for shooting squirrels, cutting off their tails. As a young guy, he killed puppies using a machete.
I mean all the red flags.
In nineteen seventy seven, he was connected to the case of Arlene Gabrielson, a young mom who survived an attack nineteen seventy seven. Short time after that, nineteen seventy eight, Kate Turner was found dead. Now Kay Turner was about thirty five years old. She had lived in Eugene. She was working as a Planned Parenthood employee and then at a manager at a local public health agency.
She was an only child, close to her parents. She was a runner.
She'd run a couple of marathons in nineteen seventy eight, and she and her husband joined some friends at a getaway in Camp Sherman, which is a little fly fishing retreat along the Metolius River there just off of Highway twenty. Christmas eve, very cold, she's going to go for a run, and.
She planned an eight mile run and said she'd be back in an hour in time for breakfast.
Which makes me feel very slow.
Pretty good, she's pretty quick running right.
There was a guy, a highway worker State highway worker named Thomas Hannah that spotted her that morning that she had been running alone south. He saw he had been returning to his place there in Camp Sherman after working the night shift. When he's driving home he sees her. He sees enough person driving through Camp Sherman that morning and who was it? That was John Ackroyd. By ten o'clock, she wasn't back. Her husband got worried, finding no sign,
they called police. At this point there was also a weird story.
Everybody was a little on edge because there were two young women at Kleine Falls State Park just about an hour away who had been run over by a guy in his pickup truck. And then the guy in the pickup truck got out and hit them with an axe.
He attacked these women.
They both survived the attack, but no one was ever charged in that case, so so Kay Turner is missing. Ackroyd was one of the guys who came forward and said, I saw her, but I didn't do anything. I mean, I saw her running, but I was just I'm a state highway worker. I had a job to do, so I didn't do anything.
He said.
He was based that day, twenty five miles from Camp Sherman. Said he'd gotten off work about six thirty am. A while later, he drives through the camp planning to hunt coyotes, and he passed by a runner. This is what he tells the cops. Detectives did not dwell on him, though. They focused on this woman's husband because she had had a couple of affairs, extramarital relationships. She had had with
two men at the time. In fact, she had her liaisons with these guys written on her calendar at work, so they thought, well, the husband's got a reason to kill the wife.
He's pissed off that she's screwing.
Around eight months later, John Ackroyd walks into the general store there in Camp Sherman and says, I got to talk to somebody. I found the remains of that jogger that you're looking for.
Now. The woman who worked there recognized this guy. He was the weirdo that she had seen a number of times since that runner had gone missing. One of those times stood out because, oh, I don't know, he was looking at a newdie magazine while touching himself.
She was grossed out.
So she goes to fight her husband, and by the time they returned to confront him in the store, he's gone anyway.
Anyway, the cops roll in. He leads them to what's left of kay Turner's body, which at this point is just scraps of clothing and some random bones.
Also, a piece of her watch was there. The watch had stopped.
Nine twenty seven am on the day she went for that run and turned up missing December twenty fourth. Turns out the watch stopped when it was ripped apart.
Now his story changed. He says he didn't stop and see her when she was jogging that morning. Then he says he did stop it. All he did was talk to her. Still, they're not smart enough, apparently, to put this together that this guy happened to be the one who despite everybody else out there.
Looking for this woman. He was the only one who found her.
Also, her breast had been punctured by a bullet, and he had said that at one point he touched her arm and her hair. Anyway, they learned that he had returned to check on the remains after she was initially killed, which is obviously a tell that this was the guy who did it.
And then there was his own stepdaughter.
Thirteen year old stepdaughter.
I'm telling you the story about John Arthur Ackroyd and a series of victims. He's considered to be one of the worst serial killers, definitely in the Pacific Northwest, and that's saying something. He worked along the Highway twenty corridor from Newport, Oregon over into Bend and back. Was a highway repair guide, not just fixing equipment that was owned by this state of Oregon, but also people that would
break down trucks and things like that. He is accused of attacking Marlene Gabrielson back in nineteen seventy seven, a young woman who survived Kay Turner, whose body was found eight months after he last saw her. And then a thirteen year old stepdaughter of his own, Rashonda Pickle.
Rashonda Pickle just thirteen years old. Family lived at the State Highway Division compound where US twenty and Oregon twenty two meet.
Now.
John Ackroyd had an unusual agreement with Rashonda's mother, Linda. The couple married in the mid eighties, divorced soon after, continued to live together though raising Linda's two kids, Rashonda and her older brother Byron. This little girl, good kid, helped her on the house, did not stray too far, would ride her bike, took a bus to school, was into Debbie Gibson and Wilson Phillips, just like everybody else
at the time. And to some they say she seemed lost, almost invisible, that when parent conferences rolled around, no one showed up. That in fifth grade something shifted. She seemed withdrawn and tired and clash. She would count down the minutes, a sense of dread rising at the end of the day, the school day approached.
In the assumption now, of course, is that she was being molested by her stepdad. Right there was a day that she doesn't go to school. Mom is working as an a as a maid, i should say, at a resort kind of nearby closer to sister's Oregon and dad was her Stepdad was going to go in to Bend and work at the transportation shop, but parts didn't come in or he made some excuse to go back home.
That was the last that she was ever seen.
He claims that he thought that maybe something someone broke into the house. He did tell cops that he went home and saw her and invited her to go with him to go take pictures of deer off of one of these logging roads, and that she declined. But by the time mom and dad, Mom and stepdad got back that night to the house, she was nowhere to be found, and it looked like she left in a hurry.
At this point, his name comes up again, obviously, because not only is he in the home, but his name had surfaced with the last dead woman that we talked about and the runner, and the fact that he had last seen this little girl and the dead runner at the same time. This is the fact that he was the guy to last see these two people alive and ended up murdered was enough for them to realize, this is our guy, and we've got to do something about this.
Here there were at least a couple of other murders Melissa Sanders and Sheila Swanson made their final call from a payphone in the dark. They'd gone camping at Beverly Beach State Park and then were picked up when they hitchhiked. They had met six months earlier. They knew nothing of this guy's background, obviously, but when the parents woke up and saw that their seventeen and nineteen year old girls were gone, they assumed that they had gotten a ride
from friends. And what they didn't know is by the time they reported it, those two girls were likely dead because this John Arthur Ackroyd had picked them up and killed both of them.
Detectives were able to finally prosecute him for the murder of Kay Turner the Runner from nineteen seventy eight, of which he was sentenced to five life sentences for aggravated murder. He pleaded no contest in the murder of the stepdaughter of the thirteen year old, agreed to not seek parole for the murder of the Runner. A case was developed against the murders of those two girls, Melissa Sanders and Chilliswants and the last ones, but he died before the
case could be presented to the grand jury. The first woman we told you about, Marlene Gabrielson, who left her baby for the first time, three month old baby girl and was raped in the woods. Was this his only known survivor, the only victim known to have lived Her case was never prosecuted.
We also mentioned, of course, the other cases up and down Highway twenty or a long Highway twenty where there was no suspect identified, just mysterious deaths of people that were involved. Some young men also that disappeared along that corridor. And the expectation is that this guy, who by the way, died in prison eight years ago, is probably responsible for many other deaths and disappearances between Newport, Oregon and Bendor.
At least six, many of which are called things like Lynn County Jane Doe or Finley Creek Jane Doe, women, hitchhikers, forgotten women, young who nobody paid attention enough to track down or hunt down who was responsible for their disappearance and eventual murder.
I say, next week we do something like copyright infringement on True Crime Tuesday.
That sounds tintillating, Well, it's tintilating or scintillating. I decided a mashup of the both of them.
You know, conserve your words.
Listen.
Sometimes you got to come up with new words. When one word does not suffice, take two and join them.
John Colebelt show is coming up like a.
Frucus, which was coined on the John and Ken Show. It's like a ruckus and a fracus and a fracas and it became a frucus.
If you missed any part of our show, go back and check out the podcast anywhere you find your podcast.
Don't forget to Frucus with John and Iceland.
Search for Gary and Shannon. Are you signing up for that trip?
Are you close? I'm damn close.
I want to see John in the whirlpools in the Golden Circle.
John's up next. We'll see you Tomorrow's day Drive.
Everybody you've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show, you can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio lap