It is Tuesday at this time. You know what that means. We bring you stories from the world of true crime.
The story is true, sounds true? No, it sounds made up. I don't know. Perry and Shannon present true crime.
So here's a headline that captured our attention. Nearly half of America's murderers get away with it. When you think about high profile murders, you think of dateline, You think of the familial murders, husband wife stuff. You think of the headlines of Lacy Peterson and things like that, and of course there's always one suspect that's zeroed in on. And what do you mean half of America's murderers get away with it? Because we hear about one percent of
the murders. I don't know how many of them reach our our minds, our television screens, our newspapers, but many, many murders do not reach that level. Someone had murdered Raymel Atkins in Louisville in twenty twenty three, and more than a year later, his mom and sister don't know who did it. Police have not made an arrest in the case. Raymel's not the only one. Same for Tiffany Floyd killed in twenty twenty one, Michael David killed in twenty seventeen, Corey Crowe killed in twenty fourteen.
Not just no ending, no solution, no verdict, no arrest.
Don't even have a suspect in these cases, and these are just a couple of names. In fact, police in Louisville do not arrest anyone in roughly half of murder cases. Family members of these victims have a similar sentiment that the police had abandoned them. The police don't really care. They've proven it to me, the victim's family say. Now, Lousville's police department acknowledges serious problems. They are understaffed, like
many major police departments, about three hundred officers below full staffing. Now, you don't get to say that murders aren't solved. Nobody cares about us. The police don't care about us. In one hand, and in the other hand, say let's get rid of the police department, because that has been the mood in this country now for ten years, at least five years, the defund the police movement, things like that.
Get rid of the police. They're out to get you.
But what about when you need the police to go get whoever killed your loved ones, then it's nice to have them around, right. Well, that very sentiment of defund the police has done just that. It's defunded a lot of police departments. It's a struggle here in Los Angeles to get the LAPD back up to where it needs to be. It's not just budgetary concerns, it's recruitment. Who
wants to be a police officer anymore? Who wants to be a police officer in twenty twenty five Put on that uniform and that badge and go put your life on the line every day for an ungrateful public who wants that job. It used to come with honor and respect, and now you get zero of those things. For a lot of the population. You don't look at police and see help. They look at police and see the enemy. And one of the side effects of that is going
to be a very low conviction rate. The Louisville departments trying to address those issues. They've told victims' families, we understand you're grieving. Oh, it's frustrating for us too, they say. In the United States, most people get away with murder. Louisville's just my or cosm of that the clearance rate was fifty eight.
Percent in twenty twenty three. What does that mean?
The clearance rate, that's the share of cases that result in an arrest or that are solved, just fifty eight percent. All that figures inflated too, because they're also counting murders from previous years that the police solved in twenty twenty three.
So yeah, you're looking maybe at forty percent. In other words, a murderer's.
Chance of getting caught within a year essentially comes down to a coin flip. For other crimes that don't rise to the level of murder, clearance rates are even lower. You steal a car, You're pretty, You're good, You're good. I'm sorry, but that's what the data says. Only eight percent of car thef's result in an arrest. That's that's pretty good odds. I hope I see a Lamborghini on the way home. I understand understand why people jack cars
and lead police on a chase that aren't Lamborghinis. Now, if I'm going to lead the cops on a chase, I'm going to do it with it like a Dodge charge or something with a little something with a little go maybe a Honda civic.
You know, if we're not going to get the Lamborghini.
America compared with its peers, does an unusually poor job of solving killings. When you look at murder clearance rates of other countries Australia, Britain, Germany, those hover in the seventies, eighties, and nineties.
They say there are several issues.
Lack of resources, the sheer volume of cases, a distrust of the police. This is from a criminal justice researcher not named me. This is Philip Cook, who says it's a serious problem. And I've got to believe my hypothesis more than just the volume of cases. If you hate the police, you're not going to talk to them either. And a lot of clearing cases, solving cases relies on witnesses.
I'm not just talking about people who saw a crime, but people who know the guy who did it, or know that the guy who did it recently came in the way of a firearm, things like that. Right, we're just at this. If you're okay with defunding the police, you've got to also be okay with unchecked violence. Unfortunately, so they say that there's some sort of solution in this article guns, they blame it on guns. Well, we've had guns for a very long time. Volume distrust of
the police. Yes, they said that the solutions are this. First, lawmakers and the police could commit more resources to solving murders. Okay, again, nobody's signing up to be a police officer because of the anti police sentiment right now in this country. They say, Second, the police could make greater use of modern technology cameras, facial recognition software.
Okay, well, I'd like.
To introduce you to people over here called the ACLU, which will keep that kind of technology wrapped up in the courts for a long time. They talk about more police departments embracing flock cameras they automatically read those license plates, detect gunfire, things like that. Again, those are not going to be in line with what civil libertarians will go.
To bat for.
So we're just at this place right now where we're screwed. So if you want to steal a car, I guess to take away is you know you might you might do better in that in that field. Where is Jody huisen trut I'm not sure if I'm saying that last name correctly, but Jody Hoisten truth Twissen Truth was a local morning television anchor in Mason City, Iowa, meant arriving for work at three am. If you've worked the morning shift in broadcast, you've done this before as well. And
she had never missed a show, not once. But if you've ever done a morning broadcast schedule, you know that time always comes.
You oversleep at least once.
When your alarm goes off at two AM to get to work, it's gonna happen.
It's going to happen at least once.
Even for the most dedicated, the strongest work ethic, it happens at least once. Well, it was June twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five, and she finally overslept. She called the news producer at the station and she said, I'll be right in. She realized she lived about a mile from work. She was from Minnesota. Jody was youngest of three daughters, very much into sports, loved golf, and she briefly worked
as a Northwest Airlines flight attendant. A friend remembers that she liked to say she wanted to be on the air, not in the air, and that morning, when she still didn't show up at the station, everyone thought whateveryone one else thinks, oh, she overslept.
It happens. She was never found.
Twenty seven year old Jody hoisten Trut was never found, but they did find disturbing signs of her absence. When police got to the scene of her apartment, there was no sign of Jody, but her car was there and there were definite signs of a struggle a bent car key. They said that it indicated she was probably attacked from behind, a lot of force used. Her stuff was strown across the garage and the floor, red heels, blow dryer, earrings, drag marks in the parking lot. Anyway, her building had
no security cameras, it was not lit very well. Police found no blood, no witnesses, never been seen nobody. Thirty years later, there is a devoted team of volunteers still trying to solve this mystery. Mason City, by the Way, on its fourth police chief since Jody's disappearance. That tip continually come in about Jody, usually around this time of year because it's the anniversary. Late June is when they
hear more about it. Now, about nine months before she went missing, she did file a police report regarding a suspicious subject who was following her, driving her or driving behind her in a small white Newer pickup. She had taken a self defense class. The day before she disappeared. She played in a charity golf tournament, and she told some people that she was playing with that she considered changing her phone number because she was getting harassing phone calls.
This is kind of troubling, but also she's in the public eye and it's not completely out of the realm. There was a guy that they focused in on, John Van Seiss was his name. They ran in the same circle. He was twenty years older. She had been at his place the night before she disappeared. He was never named a suspect, never charged. He had always claimed he was friends with her and denied any involved in her abduction.
Back in twenty seventeen, as technology had come a long way since ninety five, they did put a GPS mobile tracking device on his vehicles. He provided DNA fingerprints palm prints to comply with a court order, but nothing and then he died.
He died last year.
They do have one piece of evidence, a palm print, and they do have her belongings collected at the scene. Whose palm print is it? They don't know. They did get a tip last October and they worked with police in her home state of Minnesota to search a farm construction area. They'd only found animal bones. They had gotten a tip that there was a guy by the name of Christopher Revik who had been linked to two other cases with female victims. And there were some sort of
connections between the two. But again that led nowhere, and then he died. He died in jail, but again nothing, nothing else. There's a colleague that worked with her at the TV station in this small town, Mason City, Iowa, and he said he can feel the anxiety and the shock of it as if it were yesterday.
Yesterday.
Remember, she did the news, so this station was covering her disappearance in real time. It wasn't just a local girl has disappeared. It's a local girl who worked here, who was on your television screen, in your living room, in your bedroom.
Every night. They had to cover the news of her disappearances. It was unfolding.
This guy, Brian still has a two page script he wrote for that night's broadcast. He said, nothing would it have prepared him or that team for having to report on the disappearance of a beloved colleague. He says he's surprised that nobody has slipped up over the years to reveal any secrets that would lead to any answers. He said, it was crazy trying to be a news reporter just
starting out and investigating that story. And you know, the person missing, the eyes in town, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation are in town.
They're all in the newsroom.
They're doing the same investigation that you're doing about your friend, interviewing them while they're trying to write that night's show.
About the disappearance.
I mean, it's all just so very surreal, just like the fact that nobody has turned up. Now nineteen ninety five, if not necessarily the time when you were having any sort of great results with technology with DNA and things like that, but it's not like it was nineteen fifty five. It's wild that there's been no body and no one has talked, and they worry that everyone that knows something could could die. But again, nineteen ninety five not that
far away. Jody Hoisenstrut Weisnstrut. I'm going to learn her name overnight.