14 Years Gone

and I have a lot of happy memories here. But let's face it, there's a reason why so many horror movies are setting cabins in the woods. Sometimes bad things happen when no one is around to hear you scream. We have no cell phone reception. Yeah, that's all. It was on this desolate stretch of Highway nine in the Ozarks between Mountain View and Melbourne that on September twenty seventh, two thousand and four, searchers found the body of twenty

two year old Rebecca Gould. Rebecca was beautiful, popular, and full of life, and her killing shooken area where the murder rate was pretty much zero It's been fourteen years and Rebecca's killer has never been found. The murder has become one of the most notorious cold cases in the region. But for me, this case is personal. I have a long history with this area. My dad and my little sister,

Caroline still live in Mountain View. She went to high school with Rebecca's younger sister, Danielle, and they are still close friends. Even after I became a writer and private investigator and moved to New York City, Rebecca's murder continued to haunt me. Every time I went home to visit my family, I would hear more rumors about the case. Occasionally, a news station would do an update on the case, illustrated with Rebecca blonde, dazzling smile with her white fluffy

dog in her lap. But over the years the leads were fewer and farther between. I couldn't figure it out. If everyone in town thought they knew who killed Rebecca, why hadn't her case been solved. A few months ago, I came back to the Ozarks. I wanted to catch Rebecca's killer. I was supposed to stay for two weeks, but I never left, and at some point my investigation crossed over into an obsession. I'm not stopping until I get justice for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is

Helen Gone. The last time Rebecca was seen alive was a week before her body was found on September twentieth, two thousand and four. It was a Monday morning, just after eight am. Rebecca had been staying at her boyfriend Casey's house for the weekend. Rebecca gave Casey a ride to work in her black nineteen ninety seven Chevy Cavalier. Casey was a cook at the Sonic in Melbourne. Rebecca had met him about a year earlier when she worked there as a car hop. But Rebecca's days of delivering

burgers on roller skates were over. She had recently moved into an apartment in Fayetteville with her sister Danielle, and was starting college at Northwest Arkansas. After dropping Casey off, she stopped at the Possum Trot gas station in Melbourne, where she bought a breakfast, sandwich and coffee. Rebecca's plan had been to drive back to Casey's, pack her stuff and meet Danielle to drive back to school. When she didn't show up that afternoon, Danielle and the rest of

her family became alarmed. The next day, police showed up at Casey's house. They found Rebecca's car parked outside. Inside, they found her cell phone, purse, all of her clothes, and her dog Lady. There was no sign of Rebecca, but there were ominous signs that something very bad had happened. There a blood soaked mattress that had been flipped over, her uneaten breakfast sandwich, a washing machine full of blood.

Over the years, I've heard a lot of rumors. I heard there was a party over the weekend, a fight with a girl, a jealous lover. Someone even told me that Rebecca was kidnapped, chained up, and held hostage in a horse trailer. So our first job will be separating fact from fiction. Taylor and James, who are both working on the podcast, have come to Arkansas to help me. They started out working on sound and logistics, but quickly got sucked down the internet rabbit hole of topics, boards

and web slues. I know this look. They've been sucked into the case too. Let's start with what we know based on newspaper reports and the murder board. Are brought with me from Manhattan, police released almost no details on this case, and what's out there publicly is hard to find a lot of it's not available online. So we head to the library to look up old editions of the newspaper on microfiche backpacks of persons? Do you need

to be out here in lockers though? Okay? And there are four I don't know a lot of factable ones are online. You're just going to go ahead somewhere. What days that can you guys? Do? The day in September sixteenth? Or was it started with a one? Right? Yeah? So she went missing the next day, which would be there, so this may have been the first day that she was reported missing. Was on Tuesday? Yeah, although again we need to we got kind of confirm that because everyone

tells me different day. Some people say Monday, some people say Tuesday. I'm sure the police would at least confirm that. Maybe, Oh there's search for one woman can das? Yeah? What day is that? Friday? That is Friday twenty fourth and

you can see a picture of the missing poster. Yeah, Rebecca Gould, blonde hair, brown eyes, one hundred and three pounds, So Friday the twenty fourth, it made the Baxter Bolton According to authorities, she had visited a friend of Guy on last weekend and failed to return to Fatball in her car with her purse, keys and money, and it was found at the friend's house. The friend is not considered a suspect of the disappearance, according to Arkansas State

Police Lieutenant Bill Beach. Yeah, see, in the beginning, it was confusing because there was a report that she had been seen that afternoon it looks like, but that was later found to be not true. So it just kind of goes to show like when stories come out after the fact, there's often a lot of facts wrong. Official suspectfile play there. It is what day is that is

that the weekend? Yeah, Saturday and Sundays at this for quite time, there are several people of interest, no particular suspect, So it says here I searched the area Monday morning and found the body thirty five feet down the embankment of the highway. I think that the George Derrick guy knows because he was one of the first people's see the body. Since we have no forensics and so few details have been revealed about this case, we have to

focus on victimology. We have to enter the mind of the crime victim so that we can understand the relationship with her killer or killers. To understand her death, we have to go back to the last weekend of her life. So we had to talk to the person who knew her best, her sister, Danielle starting route to Mountain Home. So it was your sister that got you interested in this or put this case on your radar in the

first place. Yeah, I mean I'd read about it, but Carolyn, because Carolyen was friends with Danielle, I would hear about it more. You know, like over the years, I would just kind of hear what was going on, and then it was unsolved, and then when I met Danielle, it just got really personal. Rebecca was only a year older than Danielle. They were best friends. When Danielle talks about the day her sister was murdered, it's obvious she's not

just relaying information about that horrific day. She's reliving it. It's sensitive subject matter. She has to talk about her sister maybe being sexually assaulted and everything like that. This is as close as we're going to get to being inside Rebecca's head. In that final forty eight hours on the friday before Rebecca disappeared, she and Danielle drove from Fayetteville, where they had recently moved into an apartment together, back to Mountain View. Like a lot of us at that age,

Rebecca's life was in transition. Danielle is visibly emotional as she remembers the last conversation that she ever had with her sister. She remembers that Rebecca was looking forward to starting college, into the future, she had her whole life ahead of her. When they got to town, the sister split up. Danielle stayed with her boyfriend Nick, while Rebecca headed out to spend the weekend with Casey. After Rebecca's murder, Danielle went on to Mary Nick. They had two daughters,

but have since separated. She's been through some tough times and had health issues that have affected her memory. Despite how physically and mentally hard this is for her, she's determined to help find her sister's killer. Can you just sort of take me through what happened from the time that you guys got in the car to when you dropped her off and the last time you talked to her. We got in the car and we started to drive back home. We had a flat tire, like twenty miles

thirty miles away. She changed it. She could change his higher. Yeah, it surprised me. I can't remember if if I drove. I probably drove to Nick's house and she, Yeah, she probably dropped me off there, and she left to go to Casey's and we were going to meet back up Monday and go back to Fayebelle. Danielle remembers waiting for Rebecca, the sinking feeling in her stomach when her sister never

showed up. Yeah, we were supposed to meet early that morning, and I knew, I think I just knew something was wrong, and we'd gotten phone calls, you know, she couldn't be found driving out there, Like I mean, I was just sick already just driving out there. She remembers driving up to Casey's house and seeing the flurry of police activity there. That was the moment when she figured out that her sister's crash pad was a crime scene. Did you talk to her that weekend at all? I don't think it did.

But that was not unusual, right like for her to rise just had to start looking Over the next week, police launched a massive man hunt for Rebecca. Friends and family papered the town with wanted posters. Hundreds of volunteers scoured the woods. It seemed like the whole town was looking for Rebecca. Some of them screamed her name so that if she was hurt and bleeding in a sinkhole or a barn, she would hear them, And on September twenty seventh, the search ended. She didn't deserve what happened

to her. If there was any other way to like help get this out there without having to ask you and prey through it, you know what, Like, Yeah, I know she was a good person. I mean she loved, you know, and cared for a lot of people. And sorry, it's okay, it's fate, brain. I'm sorry, it's okay. I guess I know that you guys were best friends and really close, and I'm trying to understand what was going on in her life before she died. We had just

moved to Fayetteville. We were living with Tiffany and my other sister, and we were in college. She was trying to make her lot better as far as getting into college, moving on to Fayetteville, and becoming somebody. Which relationship been like with the Isra County Police. I don't contact them. I mean, I don't contact anybody other than you. I mean, I want it solved, but there's just no point. I mean,

what would you like to see happen? Someone actually care and help us solve it and get the correct people that took her life. Is it okay with you? I mean, would you be okay with us calling your dad? Yeah? That's fun, Like, that's perfectly fun. Okay, And you can do anything you want to help, you know, get it solved, because it's not fair to no one to lose someone and then just to you know, not have any you know, closure. I was challenging to listen to. She holds it together

incredibly well. You can feel it's just the pain in her eyes. M Rebecca's body was found down as steep Embankment off Highway nine, five miles south of Melbourne, near Devil's Knob Wildlife Management Area. Even though the body was near the road and just a few miles from the Izard County Sheriff's Department, her body was hidden by a

thick wall of trees. It's a day that local journalist George Jared, who covered the case extensively, will never forget he saw Rebecca still wearing the black griefs and T shirt she wore to bed. George was a twenty four year old CUB reporter when Rebecca was killed, and hers was the first murder case he ever covered. It's really strange to say this, but I never knew her. But there's no she had as a profound impact on my career as anything. What happened was actually the newspaper work.

It was a weekly newspaper. I would call all the police agencies in my coverage area. One of them was the Izzard County Sheriff's Department, so I called them. It was probably a Monday or Tuesday. She disappeared that Monday, September twentieth, two thousand and four, and so I called them. And I know I called him on Monday. I probably called them on Tuesday. But you know, when you're dealing with small agencies like that, they don't have murders, I

mean not very rarely. So i'd call them. They didn't say anything, you know, it was, you know, well, nothing going on here. George is right. I've covered a lot of true crime cases, and I know that police often hold back information that only the killer would know from the public, but in this case, they won't even verify basic information. Sometime Tuesday, they went to Casey McCullough's house.

The story is, you know, she went and dropped him off at work, and then she went to the Possum Trot convenience store, got a couple of things, and then left went back to his house, and then somewhere sometime during that morning she died. And so during this process I actually met Danielle and surely her mother and Larry. They were down at the sheriff's apartment when I went

down there, and I started talking to them. Literally the next day, the Thursday, they were out around guy In near where Casey McCullough's house is, and they were looking, you know, searching, And I literally watched Larry taking posters of his daughter and taping them to you know what Those guide wires are arrows, I mean that go around like a curve. And he was he I mean, obviously you can't do that. Number one and number two, nobody driving in eaty speed. We'd even be able to see

or make out what it was. But when I saw him doing that, it just crushed me. And so so I was out there searching with them, you know, looking. The next Monday, I got to work really really early, like five o'clock in the morning. I just went in. I just had this feeling I need to go back to Melbourne, and so I drove down there, went to the courthouse. Now in the morning, a lot of you know, these elderly women would walk around the courthouse and they

were talking. There were several of them down there, and so I parked my vehicle and I got out and I walked up to him. A couple leads I heard. I overheard a couple of ladies talking that there were searchers behind or out near this woman's property somewhere. So I said, could you tell me where you live? And she told me, and it was out It was down Arkansas nine, you know, connecting Mountain View with Melbourne, and so she said, oh, yeah, they're out there, and she

had said something about a smell. I went out there, and you know, I saw a bunch of cars like lined up on the side of the road, and so I knew something was there. Well, I ran into a searcher that I had. He I'd met him through the searching, you know, I'd seen him, and I said Hey, I heard you guys are out here looking for Rebaca out here, and he was pointing, goes, she's right there, and i'sare I mean, she was right off the road. She looked

like she was asleep. You know. One side of her face was you know, seemed okay, and then the other side was, you know, very badly damaged and decomposing. Was she whining down or sitting up or she was slumped. It was like it was like she was in some I want to say, like some There was like tree limbs. It was really grassy. It almost looked like maybe she had been where she had been tossed, like maybe she

had landed on a branch or something. I mean, but when you see something like that for the first time ever in your life, you're almost like you're not there. At that moment, I was like just trying to get away, Like I literally started walking back away from it. And I had a camera with me, and I remember somebody asked me, They said, you're gonna take a picture of that, are you? And I said no, I said, I'm gonna try to forget about this. Probably spend the rest of

my life trying to forget about this. We'll be right back a little just where she walked out. Okay, thank you. Rebecca's father, Larry Gold, is a prominent dentist in nearby Mountain Home. We meet with Larry in the back room of his dental office, a converted house right in the middle of towns. Taylor was so into the gate she drove from Atlanta. How long have you been here? So I've been here almost week on Saturday. As we talked

to him, his dental hygienis work around us. He has the same tan skin and dazzling smile as his daughter's. Larry went to usc before marrying Rebecca's mom, Sharlot and moving here, and his accent is still more Southern California than northern Arkansas. People in this neck of the woods

fall into one of two categories. You're either from around here or you're from off So even though Larry has lived in the area for over four decades, run a business, and raise a family, to many locals, he still falls into the latter category. Rebecca had a hard life. I attempted to get custody of Rebecca and her sisters and was pretty much raised by her mother in different areas

of Arkansas. They eventually settled in the Mountain View area, and then as Rebecca grew a little bit older, I would have to say that my opinion of Rebecca began to really develop further. I had a little bit more time around her. I saw that she was beginning to turn her life around. But there was a lot of outside influences that were really pulling Rebecca in the right direction. And nothing could have made me happier than to see that. So I come back to the one memory in particular

that it makes me cry. Excuse me. The last time that I saw her and I talked to her was probably every father's dream. She came to my home and she said, Dad, I want to talk to you, and so we went out on our back porch and we had some privacy, and she proceeded to tell me that she was wanting to fulfill some dreams of hers in college, and so she was heading heading towards getting into the University of Arkansas. M m hm. So she was at that point in my life in our relationship, I'm doing

absolutely everything right. She had dreams, she had hopes, she had ambition. But the one thing is she said to me that will m h m hm. Always be remembered. I don't know if I can get this advocate this out. No, I mean, I'll take it. But hm, as I said, it was really every father's dream here hear from your child. But she said said to me that, Dad, I've watched you in law life and you've always done well, and I want to I would it be like you so m so those that's my last memory of our time together.

Mm hmm. So with that said, obviously I knew I knew nothing about what was going to happen next. And for some reason, I'm thinking it was only a few weeks before this happened. After that, it could have been a month, could have been a couple of months. But when it happened, that that disbelief. I don't know. You're you're you're in You're in a state of shock, and you've never been through something like this before, and you

don't know the next step. So you obviously beg and to turn to law enforcement and people you trust to answer your questions and to kind of help point you in the right direction. In the years since Rebecca's murder, Larry has done his own investigation. He's written countless letters to the police and to the prosecutors. He's hired pi's and gone to the press. At some point, he even talked to a clairvoyant. At first, he was cooperative, patient, He was a law abiding citizen who raised his kids

to respect God, the American flag, and the police. But after several years passed with no arrests, Larry grew frustrated. He felt like the police were stonewalling, and so he went to the media and he hasn't spoken to the Arkansas State Police since. The investigators in charge of the case believe that by going to the press, Larry hurt the investigation. If you ever murdered, it's unsolved. The longer you go, the harder it is to to come up with with the facts and to get any kind of

a conviction. So there needs to be some parameters built into the law enforcement to where any at a certain given point. And I'll just use as a reference five years, say five years, you give law enforcement everything they can

possibly do. At the end of five years, the family, as long as they're not considered to be a possible suspect, they should have the right to come in and maybe at that point not look at the file, but they certainly have a right to look at certain things and then to bring in qualified people representing them at some point in time. You need have you need to be able to access the entire file. It is a cold case. They want to let me have her any of her forensics.

They wouldn't let me have any of her of the medical uh, the the anatomical findings cause well cause death. It was on a death certificate. But you know sometimes that gets put on a death certificate and that's an error, and you just want other people to be able to look at this. According to Rebecca's autopsy report, the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, probably

with just one or two blows. Nobody's been able to confirm this for me yet, but I've heard over the years that the murder weapon may have been a piano leg Was this, as some people have speculated, a pre planned crime, or did her killer hit her as hard as they could and then panic when she started bleeding. By the time Rebecca's body was found, it had been

out in the elements for a week. Her body was badly decomposed, which makes determining an exact time of death difficult, and the media report state that Rebecca dropped Casey off at work on Monday morning. There's another rumor going around that she was actually killed over the weekend. Rebecca's car had dark tinted windows. Is it possible that someone else was driving her car that morning? To understand Rebecca's death, we need to take the same ride she took on

the last day she was alive. We head to the Possum Trot, the local gas station. Back in the day, Rebecca was a regular. These days, it's pretty deserted. It is super hot out there. Yeah, it feels like asana. I headed behind the counter. There's a black and white TV playing an old western and watching it and me is an old man, the cashier, so he knows who I am and talks to me about the case. Oh, that's a when you were in here? Last time I

was in here, I can't remember. I've been working on this Rebecca Gold cold case, so I've come by a few times before. How are you dealing with that? You know, we've actually made a lot of progress. We got a bunch of kIPS and I'm going pretty well. H thank you. Yeah, I know wish I better conditioning. I know, I wish my car had air conditioning m. Hello. Hi, my name is James Morrison, and I'm trying to get in touch with Steve Wortham Taylor and James on their reporter hats

and try to find the last person to see Rebecca alive. Yeah, I want to convenue stories and stopped. Got the breakfast biscuit in that morning. Jessica, work on this one and team Conservative. I see, And is that a relation? Is that your daughter no belief? Were you involved in the search or anything? And why I talked to her mother a lot of times, her mother come back several times long thoughfully knew where she might be or something, But yeah, I didn't. Well, they got to know who did it

because it's been a too much hush. Yeah, you're talking about the police have to know who did it. Yeah, it was a bad deal I made, Yeah, because I need told me it was a bad deal inside the trailer chasing and you know bleating, you know everywhere ill people. If you did meet gomagain or go mad, I'll meet you when you come out. Let's see if we can find his niece. Hi, my name is James Morrison and trying to get in touch with Jessica Shrabel Ah she here,

she ad another location. I don't know how you would her phone number. Yeah, I'm Sorr. I was just talking with her uncle Steve. Yeah, and he'd given me this number. He must have given me the wrong one. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how you get a hold of Roald on her phone memory? All right, Well, thank you. I found her by looking at Shrabel as a friend of Casey's, and then her sister. Oh, I clicked on her in the mountain and Jessica strable, but also oh

and then also where she worked. I can give them a call. I hate to bother you at work. This is the only number that I had. I had just spoken to your uncle Steve, and he told me that I should talk to you, and I was wondering, you know, if there may be a better time to call you, if you would be interested in talking with me. Yeah, that's fine. This is Jessica s Trabel. She was working as a cashier at the Possum Trot on the morning that Rebecca went missing. Really the last person to see

her alive. I hardly ever worked on Monday and Men day. I was working on Monday. You don't remember something till you know something significant. Happens, and then you're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So Harry and Casey came in several several times, you know, and I remember kevichin, I'll be in a big day, and so that's what she positive. That's what she called that day. Do you remember if she bought a bread of the sandwich? Yeah? Yeah, that was like the kep

chine on the breakfast sandwich, is what you know? Can you just talks about morn? Sure? Okay. So I was at work and paused and tried at the quick stop and she actually came in. I cannot remember what time it was, and I'm gonna say, like it wasn't busy, so I'm gonna say probably after people had went to work eight thirty to ten o'clock that morning and came in. She was someone that like if I seen her, you know, we're like, oh, that's you know, Casey's friend or whatever.

So anyway, so then like when she left, I walked outside behind her, bought a newspaper, picked up the newspaper and was kind of you know, like when you pick up something, you stop and you look. And she got in her car and she left, and I remember looking at her car and she was going like towards I say, home,

guy rode you know, right out of there. And so then that's that's really the only thing I knew until probably Wednesday Thursday, when her mom came in and said, you know, mama was very friendic, which she gave me. She had like a big poster and she was like this like screaming when she came in. She was like, is anybody seeing her? And so I was like, oh, probably, you know, she was in here, my name moved in

and that's it. And she just like like kind of like you know, like starts yelling at me like you've got to call the police. You've got to call the police. And I'm like, you know, that would kind of like scare anybody. So it kind of like freaked me out. I was like, oh, I mean, I said, I don't I don't know anything. I said. I just remember I said she was in here, and she's like, no, you've

got a call. I think maybe I gave her my number or and then said you know, you can, somebody can call me if they need to or something like that. And then like probably two or three days later, then that's when I was contacted by I think that the Marky Mark colleens Worth. When I was talking to him, I didn't even realize, you know, I was like, oh, she's missing, you know, she's spread away something like that.

At some point he said something during our conversation and I said, you know, do you do you think she's dead? And he's like, it looks that way, and I was like, oh my gosh, you know, like I didn't, you know, until that point I realize that it was like anything like that. You know, I just thought though she's missing or really worried about her, you know, but of course that the details had came out at that point, you know,

and Inzard County, you don't think anything like that. I mean, that's like the farthest thing that you would ever think is, you know, had happened to her after Rebecca left the Possum Trot, she would have turned right down the road toward Casey's house. And Guy on, so we do the same thing. We drive out to Casey's house. Of course it doesn't show up on a map or on GPS. Yeah, we'll look at that. Okay, So guy in population eighty six, right, I mean this is Milla nowhere, Like, oh yeah, this

is way more remote than Mount View. Let's see what's hope. So that's it. This is where Rebecca stayed the last weekend of her life. We finally find it. It's a blue gray double wide trailer in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a dirt road. Whatever bad thing happened to Rebecca get started here, she probably crawled into bed, maybe hoping to catch a few minutes of her favorite nine AM show, Live with Regis and Kathy, or maybe

to take a quick nap before meeting her sister. This is the other view about this area that's weird is that, like you're back in the woods, right there's like literally so many little like rat trails and weird little rat runs and backways and you know, male out of here. We'll be right back. Let's start with the obvious true crime. Fans know the police usually look hard at the boyfriend, but Casey was publicly cleared very early in the investigation.

According to the Arkansas State Police, he was at work all day on Monday and out that night with multiple witnesses. Since he thought Rebecca had left for school. He stayed overnight with a group of friends and did not return to the house. Until the police called him at work on Tuesday. Casey had an airtight alibi, So who else could have known that Rebecca would be out here in the middle of nowhere alone. Another thing that bugs me about this case is that Monday morning is a weird

time for a murder. I've tried reaching out to the police before, but I've had very little luck. But now that we're here doing the podcast, I want to let law enforcement know that we're here to help and we'll share any information that we're given. Wait, so who is the lead investigator on the case. There was Mark and then Dennis. So Dennis is in charge of the investigation. Mark is the head of the Arkansas State Police Division, so he has to give permission for any you know,

official interviews or anything like that. And I talked to Mark before. Mark was the original detective on the case. Mark is the one who told me a few years ago when I've talked first talked to him and ambushed him in his office like that. He thought that we were going to have to He thought there were have to think outside the box, you know, get some outside help on the case. Benett got assigned to Dennis because Mark got a promotion right, so he's like in charge

of the whole thing. Rebecca's case involved law enforcement from several different jurisdictions. The Izard County Sheriff's Department responded to the initial crime scene, but the sheriff very quickly handed the case over to the Arkansas State Police. A few months later, the case was given to Dennis Simons of the Arkansas State Police. It's been Dennis's case ever since. His satellite office is a room at the back of the Stone County Sheriff's Department A few walks past the

town square. I leave James and Taylor in the car and head in alone. I hope Catherine gets some good stuff from Dennis Simons and make it on his good side for sure. Yeah, because if he can help us out, then we can help him out. I mean, we have the same goals, so it seems like we would be advantageous for him to help us out. Yeah. No, because I think now it's just going to be playing the waiting game for a while. But I mean, I guess

the longer we wait, the better. Yeah, exactly, because that means he's talking to her and hasn't say in the Dorner face. I'm pretty nervous going in to meet Dennis because I've heard that he's a former military drill sergeant who does things by the book. Normally, you'd wait to be called into an officer's office, but since there's no receptionist, I decide to take a shot. I summon every ounce of what I hope looks like sweet southern charm, walk straight in and sit down. Oh the shit is coming

out Uh her face. Oh she's smiling. It looks like I don't know, it's hard to tell. Let's see what she says. So that's about twenty minutes. Actually, all right. So he's clearly very he's got you know, I could see the case files with recaus picture on him taking up several shelves up there in his office. He's clearly very passionate about the case. He really wants to solve it. But he's also like, look like I've got a couple years to retirement, Like I want to make it there.

I'd love to prosecute this case before retirement. But you know, I'm not allowed to talk about this case. So he said, there's been a lot of heartbreaking the case. There's been a lot of missed opportunities, there's been, you know, a lot of He's just said, it's been a lot of twist. He used the exact phrase. He said, there's been a lot of twists and turns in this case. That it made it difficult. He said, what he needs now is something from the crime scene. One of them is the

murder weapon. He confirmed that, but he said that's already been out in the media. He said he does not want to say what the other items are because he's like, I'll get fired. Did he say anything about Casey? I asked him about that, and he said he's absolutely certain that Casey was at work at the time. Oh. He also said that there have been a lot of people who have come in and given statements, but he said they're all like meth heads, druggies, unreliable witnesses, you know.

He said, it's going to be a very hard case to prosecute based on what those people said. But I don't look is he right? I don't know? But is that is that it's very helpful to know that that is what the cops think. I've heard from multiple sources throughout the years that one police theory is that drugs may have been involved in Rebecca's murder, and two names keep getting mentioned as persons of interest with those theories.

There's Chris, who has a criminal record and has been in and out of prison on drug charges, and his friend JB. Taylor. James and I go back to the murder board, looking at the web of facts we need to untangle to get to the truth. So what is like because it sounds like you have like a like a process that you go through or like a method like, so what is going to be like your approach to We look at the pictures of Chris and JB. I know these guys have been arrested a lot for drugs,

but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'd commit murder. You have to tell everyone, like in a sense, what they want to hear. For example, since the police won't share their evidence with us, we've got a long road ahead as we try to solve this case. But I also know that because we're not the police, we have a shot having someone talk to us that hasn't before, or finding something new that will break the case wide open. Someone in this town knows something, and I'm not leaving

until we find out who killed Rebecca. Goal I think to be really good at this job. You have to be able to stand back and look at it like a chess game, otherwise you're not going to be any good at the job. See, you have to kind of go okay. Like Rebecca's family, they love her and obviously that's your priority and you want to help them. But if you get too emotionally involved and you're not doing

your job properly. Right, think about the torture that Rebecca's family has gone through all these years, the torture of like knowing they live in the same town, knowing what kind of know what happened. Not really. The weird thing to me is that life went on for all these people, so you know, but they're still living with it, and you can like feel it because people still talk about it in the town all the time. It's a tough case. I don't know why I think we can do it,

but I kind of think we can. I'm Katherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint production between How Stuff Works and School of Humans. It is written and recorded by me Catherine Townsend. Taylor Church is our producer and story editor. Audio editing and designed by Jonathan Sleeve. Mix engineer Glenn Mattulo audio Mixing and Love by Tunewelders. Executive producers Brandon Barr and Else Crowley for School of Humans and Conell Byrne and Chuck Bryant

for How Stuff Works. Our field producer is James Morrison, Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman. Them and original score by Ben Solee available wherever you get your music. To dig into the investigation, please visit helegoonepodcast dot com or follow us on social media. School of Humans