Thinking Sideways: Daytona Beach Serial Killer

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Fido and Godzilla for me. The ideas I don't know stories of things, we simply don't know the answer too. Hey everybody, and welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, of course, joined by Devon. Thank you. I was trying to introduce you guys, but thanks for blowing. Next week we'll do it right. We will never do this right now. It really just kind of change up

every week. But this week what is going to be true, as with every other week, is that we have a mystery to cover, maybe solved, maybe just get a little light on. I don't know, but we're going to get into it. I do want to tell everybody though, that this week's story it involves a lot of death, and it involves a lot of adult themes. So if you have little ears around, or if death and adult themes bother you, pause us when er skipping and save it

for later. Whatever works for you. Really late down, then listen, yeah, by yourself while you're walking down the street. This week, we're gonna be talking about the Daytona Beach serial killer who is believed to have killed somewhere between three to seven women between two thousand five and two thousand seven. It's a newer mystery. Yeah, he's probably listening right now. I hope not. It's you. According the Internet, Joe, it is you. I don't even know what you're talking about.

I don't even know what murder is the Daytona Beach serial killer. Some people say has killed three to seven women. Other places the low number is four. We'll get into that later on because that kind of depends on who gets attributed to it. But that's something we'll deal with later. I do also want to let everybody know that we were lucky enough to talk with reporter and author Christine Pelisak recently, and we're gonna he's sharing some of the

audio from that conversation during the episode. The reason we had Christine and is she recently published her book titled The Grim Sleeper The Lost Women of South Central, which tells the story of serial killer Lonnie David Franklin Jr. Recently convicted. Yes, ye, yeah, yeah he was. He was. He killed Okay, his numbers are not exactly firm either, but it's between ten to over twenty five women between five and two thousand and seven. You get that guy

some candy to ribe him and get him to fess up. Yeah, they need to give him some kind of drug. I I don't think candy is the right thing. They're going to give him something eventually. But the Grim Sleeper case shares a lot of similarities with the Daytona Beach serial killer case, which is why we talked to Christine because there's a lot of things that are very similar, and so it seemed like a great opportunity to to get

her insight on these kind of questions. Frankly, never know, I mean, Lonnie might have might have actually committed the murders in Daytona Beach. Who knows. Maybe I highly doubted, but it's possible. I guess not. And you know, also I could fly out of this room with only my imaginary wings. That is possible as well. No, but so we're going to talk about the Daytona Beach Celia killer first. Correct. Primarily, all we're going to talk about is the Daytona Beach

serial killer. Most of the stuff with a Grim Sleep will come up in the theory section, and we'll call out when we're looking. We're talking about similarities because they're they're pretty striking or pretty easy to spot. So here's our story. A Christmas Eve of two thousand five, Lacquetta Gunther left her house or her friend's house, I should say. Her friend's name is Stacy Dittmer. Then she wanted to go out and have a couple of drinks and celebrate

at a bar that she normally frequented. The two ladies had her tradition of that night. They would stay up late and they would cook all of the food that they were going to serve uh the next day. It was kind of a holiday tradition. I think they've been doing it for at least four years in a row. They had done it so Stacy Dippner, she was a little upset that her friend was leaving, but said, well, okay, I mean, if you're gonna go, she said, listen, I want to go and party. I'll be back in a

little bit. It's no big deal. A little bit was turned out to be a long time. I guess yeah, because her a few hours of going out turned into a long time and she never came back. She did wind up somewhere, though by no means did Miss Gunther look how to live, you know, a life of luxury. She was forty five. She was a day labor when she could get work, and you know, when things were tight, she would go to the local shelter to get meals.

She also liked her drinks and was known when she had money to spend a lot of time at the bar, and when she was there sometimes, according to some of the reading, anyway, she was not afraid to ask people for money to have one more round. It's interesting she asked people for money, not drinks. I think part of that is the way the articles frame it. She very very well have said, listen, bid me one more. It probably was that, you know, I don't know why you

would be like, hey man, can I have a twenty? Yeah, I can have a drink? Like why wouldn't you just say, like, hey, can you throw us on your tab? But I also don't know that if it wasn't she was standing outside and let's say, having a cigarette, somebody walked by and she asked for a couple of bucks so she get one more drink. I mean, I don't know how this went down. I think it happened in the bar because otherwise they wouldn't have had this account Yeah. Maybe, yeah,

it's hard to say. Yeah. I mean if they were like locals or you know, other regulars, they would be able to account for if it happened inside or outside. Probably they could all have been a standing outide. I mean, you know, people just like stand outside and smoking groups, and sure one of the other things that I've read about Laketta is by the way, I hope I'm pronouncing her name. We just had an internal conversation about it. I'm not exactly sure, but we're going to run with that.

Didn't just say it and commit Yep, I've committed to it. I've said it a couple of times. It's not like it's not like what yeah, and it's at least you're not the captain who says Madeline McCain. But she, according to the reporting, she also she liked drugs and she was not averse to taking them. But I've only seen that in a couple of places, and it never was very specific. I mean, it's almost it's just as if it feels like to me, maybe they just threw that

in because they could. So I can't say that that truly is what was going on. There are people out there who, you know, we'll just they're not druggy so much. They will do take the occasional line of coke if somebody's or somebody off enjoy or something like that. Yeah, that's and that and that could be it. But like

I said, she's she's a day labor. When she can get worked and have a whole lot of money, and when times are tight, she was known to pick up the occasional john to get a little bit of extra money. She wasn't a full time sex worker. It was the way I got it, or the impression I got, was that it was to make ends meet. On December, a body is found in an alley near a bar called Willie's Place, And remember that name because it comes up several times in this story. That's where she was known

to hang out. And the body, of course, turned out to be hers. It was in the fetal position, some of her clothes had been removed. She had been shot in the back of the head. The gun had the bullet had done enough damage to her face that they had to identify her via her tattoos. They couldn't do a visual identification. The ballistics say that it was a forty caliber Smith and Wesson that she was shot with, which is not a small gun and a close range like.

They also believe that the shooter used hollow points, so that would explain the damage to her face. So you can really tell that from just the bullet that you pull out of their head. You know, well, I don't know if it was I don't know where the bullet was, Joe, I know that they were. I'm pretty sure this one. They recovered the bullet, but it just it was it

was massive, the damage that it did to her. They did check her body, they did find DNA from another individual, ran it through the system, and they got no hits. They had no idea who this other person was, right, I believe it was saliva. Yes, I believe all of them were saliva, but they're all the same. I might be getting mixed up with a grim sleeper, So I'm not actually going to commit to that because I've been

reading about so much of both lately. But the point is they didn't have anything, and they had no idea what happened to her on Christmas Eve of that year and her Hays just it kind of died on the vine right there, that's all they had. Less than a month later, so this would be the fourteenth of January two thousand and six, about five miles away from where Looketta was found, a construction worker at a site near lpg A Boulevard found a body in a ditch. Actually

have a LA Boulevard they do, right near a golf course. Yeah. Now, remember we were in Daytona Beach, so they have the speedways, and they have golf courses, and this is near a golf course. So that's why it just seems like an inelegant name, I get it, But to the golfers, it's an awesome name. Off that. Yeah, So the construction worker, the body that this individual found it would turn out to be a woman whose name was Julie and Green. Julie was thirty four, and she was also a regular

at Willie's place. As a matter of fact, I think they knew each other at least a little bit, at least in passing. Yeah, because I know that one of her friend watching it. We were talking to you were talking about a minute ago, Stacy Diptmer. Yeah. I put up a sense that kind of a poster saying like a little memorial thing saying, oh my God, we love you, we miss you, and everybody signed and Julie Julie Green signed that. Yeah, Yeah, she did sign it. So not

like she knew her at least a little Yeah. I mean it's hard to say what their relationship was, but what we know is that like Loquetta, Julie was also shot in the back of the head. Her body was also found partially nude. Her This is a weird thing to note, but her nudity varies from source to source, like some make it out like she just had her top missing, and others make it out as if she was basically naked butter socks kind of kind of that very instance. It's weird why the reporting seems so so

to shift back and forth. But I noticed that whatever it's worth, it's like telephone, you know. And the only thing is, it's like again, the guys in the press are supposed to get it straight. You know, we we screw up to you, but at least we don't get paid.

At least we've got that excuse. It's not our job. Yeah, Like Looquetta, DNA evidence was recovered from her body from another individual, and the police did determine that it was the same gun that was used to kill both women, and they would have had to have find found ballets then, Yeah, that'd be the only way. Yeah, yeah, good point. Yes, what we've talked about. Thank you. Yeah. Actually, I think they also found shell casing the scene, didn't they, or

at least at least one of the scenes. At least one of the scenes had I think you're right, there was a shell casing. Um, I don't know, God, I can't remember which one the other weird Okay, so here's another weird bit of evidence. Is and this is only in a few places. I tracked this from the Wikipedia article to another news article and then I could never find in any of the other articles that I was reading.

But supposedly near Julie Green's body was a tire track that belonged to a two thousand three Ford Tours or a Mercury Sable. That can be a challenge though in that she was where was she found? She was found in kind of a public space, right, No, No, so it's not it was it was kind of an access road. It was semi I means grass and bushes and she was in a ditch. Okay, so just kidding. I mean it could have been somebody pulled I think somebody pulled

over on the shoulder and and then everything happened. But we only found out that one place, so who knows access. That implies somebody's getting access to it, so you know, I will be that the was unrelated. Kind of curious about how they identified the car, because I mean, I guess you could say, well, they only sell these tires with these cars. So she it's in two thousand six. If brand new vehicles tend to come with the same tire, so so of course Ford and Mercury at that time,

we're the same manufacturer. Yeah, and that means that they know that and the tourists and the Sable are basically the same car with a different emblem on them. So right, so they can always say, well, by default, this tire always comes on the se model or whatever it is. So I think that's kind of how they figure it it out. So it doesn't really doesn't watch enough forensic files. Now I don't know, but I know I know what you're saying. But the thing about it is, of course,

is there are such things used tires. I was going to say, but that doesn't mean that somebody didn't have that same kind of tire on an old t Bird, you know, and an eighties Stockbird or something. Yeah. A lot of people will buy a car and decide, oh, I want more bitch and wheels and tires on it, you know, and then they get rid of the old tires. But similarly, I think there are certain makes of tires that only fit on certain makes of cars. So it's

possible that these were just unique in that. I mean, I know, you know, I have a Subaru and you have to have to get kind of specific tires for it because they just they don't make that. You know, I can't. I couldn't just like transfer over like you're the tires off of your car onto my car, because

they wouldn't work. Probably not it's the depth of the wheel sometimes that can be anyways, it's but it's it's this is kind of a non issue or non point because I don't even know if it's really yeah, because I don't know where it actually came from. Julie did lead a tough life or a rough life as well as well. And I have seen that one her mud shot. Yeah,

and she looks like she looks pretty roughed over. Oh yeah, she's not quite like one of those really seriously deep into a methodics, but she looks like she's starting down that road. She's on like phase two of the phases. She's not not in the best best of standings at

their appearances at that point. And she I mean, it's it's a known fact she struggled with alcohol and drugs, and she was known to work Ridgewood av which is this major north south road right there in Daytona Beach, and Willie's Bar is just off of Ridgewood, So we're just going to bring that back in. But this road is, I mean, it's a pretty major thoroughfare, but it's bars and motels, there's trailer parks on it. It's it's not

prime real estate. It's it's a thoroughfare. But apparently she had been she had received multiple charges of prostitution, and she was known to be in that area. So the thing to keep in mind is I'm going to use Willie's Bar as sorry Willie Willie's Place, Thank you Willie's Place as a bit of a reference point here, because Looketta was like several blocks away or and then we get Julie. She's five my ails to the west, almost

directly west. So this is this is you're going to start to notice there's a very small area that this is going to happen. Was there a road that went almost directly west from the bar too, that you could just like get in a car on a road and drove it pretty much that way pretty easily, because there's I four um which you could you could have gone south on Richardson and then caught the I four and then jumped up very easily to where lpg A Boulevard was.

We're going to go to the next victim. About a month later, this would be they of February two thousand and six, a third body is found. It's found in a wooded area near Mason Ave and North Williams Boulevard. And where is that in relationship our other corpses, That is from Julie. It's about a mile east, so almost on the same east west trajectory and just a couple of blocks north of that line. Pretty close, yeah, very close. She was found, Like I said, it's a semi wooded area.

And it would turn out that the body was thirty five year old. I wanna pattern. She was similar to the other victims in many ways and different and a few others. The similarities for Starters were that she was also shot with a forty caliber gun, but she was not shot in the back of the head. Instead, she

was shot in the face. Investigators believe that she understood what was about to happen and tried to fight back, because remember the first two women are shot in the back of the head, which means that the killer has to be behind them, if if not having them kneeling in front of him, for them to have fallen into

that semi fetal position. Whereas miss Patten she shot in the face, she apparently tried to fight back and prevent her own death, you know, which if you figured out what else you gonna do but try and survive, it could have been that, or it could have been the

other difference. But I want to is that she was black and the first two were white, and so you know, maybe the guy just you know, wanted to shoot the black woman in the face because he liked black people a little less, you know, and just wanted to be you know what I'm saying. I know that's probably the horrible thing. Probably is just randomness, or she was fighting Like you said, I wanted, I really wanted to not

be that kind of racist bs. I wanted to be that she was fighting back because well, she might have been fighting back, and it could have been that he just felt with the other too, I'm gonna be really sneaky about it. They'll never know it hit him. And then with the black girl, I'm just gonna say, hey, you know what here's the end and give her a little a moment to think about it. Yeah, nothing short

of I mean, honestly could be. He said, Okay, get on your knees and turn around, and you know we're gonna, you know, give me a blow job or something, right, And they said, um, you know. The other two girls were like, okay, we'll just you know, wait here. And you know she maybe she was just more forward and was like all right, yeah, let's see it. He was liked dang it, all right, Well, but I agree, I'd rather I'd rather be not that scenario. But I mean,

either way, unfortunately she was killed. This uh, this is where we're gonna get some into the similarities again between her and the others, though, is that they did recover DNA from her body. There is a lot of dispute. I don't know why I keep finding these cases that have so much dispute in them, but there's a bunch of dispute here on what she did for a living. Some sources say that she worked in an assisted living facility in the area and that's all she did for income.

Other places say that she was known to be a sex worker. I've read a few statements even that they are even worse towards her, and they allude to the fact that maybe she had diminished in capacities in terms of her intelligence. Um, and I want to say that that is probably because of the photo that everybody sees of her. It's again not a flattering, freaking photo. But I have heard that her family was helping her out, So to be quite honest, I don't know where she

falls and where the truth in that bit is. What I do know is that she must have been in that area for a good reason, because here's the thing. Her car was found parked behind a speech therapy center which was on Ridgewood and Cultural Avenue. So this is again within like five blocks of Willie's Place, which is again not a good neighborhood. And I can't find anything

that would explain why she was in that area. I'm not saying that she was doing anything bad, but there doesn't seem to have been a whole lot of reason to draw her there. I haven't seen anything that said, oh, well, she was trying to get a job at the speech therapy center, or she was helping out. Nothing like that ever comes up, So I'm I'm at a bit of

a loss. Uh, you know, it depends. I mean, she parked there after hours, that might have just been a good place to park, you know, as simply as simple as that. Maybe the street parking was not available, and yeah, the speech therapy center could just be a complete total red herring. Yeah, I don't know. But again I don't know why she was on Ridgewood. There are certain parts,

you know, if she was going to a bar. There are certain parts of Portland where I'll park, you know, five or six blocks away from where I'm going, because I know if I leave anything in my car right in front of where I'm going, it's gonna the window is gonna get broken, you know, even if it's just a sweater versus like those five blocks away, I know it's not you know, so sometimes it's just things as simple as that. But I you know, I have my own opinion on why people say she's a sex worker,

and I think it's dumb. But you know, that's just me. I'm not going to disagree with that. I just think it's it adds to the narrative of this story. If like all of them were, you know, of like selling their bodies for money, and he had like a total type and blah blah blah blah blah. It's way more convenient than to say, like, hey, he was just a monster who was kind of abducting whoever he possibly could. Yeah, so that's my two cents. They're I'm not going to

disagree with you. Good after one is killed, the shooting stopped, evidence was collected from all of the scenes. Was there sorry, did we say, was there DNA? Yes, yes I did, but yes there was DNA recovery. It's okay, No, No, you were, you were you kind of worked up there. It's okay. I'll let that go. I don't dare say anything. No, you're gonna say the shooting stopped. I was gonna say that the shooting stopped with that particular gun. Maybe we don't.

We don't know that for sure, because the shooting stopped, and then nobody seems to be shot in the back of the head with forty caliber Smith and Wesson for about a year. Then, on the second of January two and eight, the body of thirty year old Stacy Gauge would be found. A local police officer pulled off the road near Hancock Boulevard and I four, which is one of the major freeways. Uh. He wanted to deal with

some paperwork. He said that as soon as he parked and rolled down the window, he spelled something bad and that would end up being Stacy Gauge's body. She had been last seen by her family on December twelve, when she said she was going to go to the store to get some ice. Police don't know, No, I don't, I don't think so. Now, remember this, this discovery is on the second of January, so she's been there for about three weeks. Presumably about three weeks. They think that

she was there basically the whole time. It's because of the decomposition of the body that they believe that. But that decomposition also worked against him because a they couldn't pull any d n A off of the body. They also couldn't tell she had been shot in the back of the head as well like the other victim, and was in a semi fetal state. But they couldn't tell what caliber of gun had been used to kill her because they so they were not able to recover the bullet.

Then it does not appear that there was a bullet. No, because they couldn't tell. I'm guessing they couldn't tell what kind of bullet because she decomposed and quite possibly wasn't killed in that spot. Or yeah, I mean either that or the bullet traveled. You know. Let's just say she's standing in front and guy shoots and bullet travels horizontally and they don't know which direction it went, or it

rained a lot and washed it away. I mean, well, probably wouldn't have washed away, but I could see where if it you know, if it traveled horizontally before it it's trajectory drug it down. Yes, that's the problem with those little critters is they're not made a non ferrous metal, you know, the lead, so you can't just pull out a metal detector and find them. Yeah, this is why I suck as an investigator. Um, okay, no, But so they believe that, Like I said, they believed that she

had been laying there the whole time. And I need to point out for anybody who's gonna do what Joe does it. Actually, I've been using Google Earth a lot lately because I love the satellite imagery to look at

what things looked like at the time. If you're used if you know Daytona Beach, you're saying well, these places aren't very don't seem super secluded now, and they aren't now, But in two thousand five and two thousand and six there there was more vegetation, it was less built up in those areas, so it was a little more secluded, easier to hide what you were doing if you're a bad guy. So Stacy Gauge talking about yeah, about her background here a little bit. She had a cocaine habit.

Her family said that outright, you know, took her to not the best places in the world and in her life. Um, she had been trying to clean up, but her family said, I think she had gone to a rehab center for a while and gotten out. But her family was pretty sure that at the time of her disappearance she was using again. She was, not, however, believed to have been

a sex worker. Police would find the van that she was driving, which was her mom's van, parked in an apartment complex, almost a week after her body was found. And because of the residence of that particular apartment complex, I mean, they were young, they were rowdy, they liked a party, they like to do drugs. The cops speculate that she might have gone there to get a hook up. Now, if she was going to go there and use her body for currency, nobody knows, but that's what they think

is the reason that the van was parked there. It's kind of weird that sat there for that long and nobody like because I know that generally speaking, most department buildings, the apartment the parking is not terribly great, and usually if somebody's just like left there storing their van there, nobody doesn't belong to anybody there. People usually have a

toad that's kind of surprised, and everybody signore. It depends on the depends on the apartment complex kind of a yeah, if it's kind of more of a young partying demographic, you know, oftentimes you just kind of assumed like, oh, we got a new neighbor. Well maybe I don't know, especially if it's like a slightly bigger complex. I've done that before the d g F. It's like, whatever, not my problem, I gotta go about my day. Um So, it's really hard to say exactly why she was there,

but it's believed that she was there. Now I will point out when her body was found. If we remember I gave you that I drew that pattern out about a mile away from Julie Green's where Alanna Patton was found, and about two or three miles south of where a Wanna Patton was found. That's where Stacy Gauge's body is found.

And picturing kind of an arrow shape, you know, the if you were to pictures, So if you know how you draw the number four, and that horizontal bar extends a little bit if you were laying on its side and then inverted, that's actually the shape that it makes when you draw from one to the next. That was probably really confused. Yeah, so that the killer is obviously sending us a message, but not an arrow. It's not an arrow, okay. So yeah, so basically a ford and

that it's an inverted four is what I'm saying. Well, yeah, actually it's, oh I guess it's it's an elongated the tails of the four are elongated. That's what I'm trying to say. Well, it's kind of like, let Devin draw it, so it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Yeah, so Steve's drawing it now. So that's not an inverted for that's just a force. It is a four. So interesting for four murders and and they're in the pattern

of four. I wonder if our killer plotted this numerology, yeah, probably not craiology, yeah, symbology. Maybe Stacy Gage would be the last person killed in this string in this about year time frame that people attribute to what has now been dubbed the Daytona Beach serial killer. You will see, and this is why I said earlier, there's some conjecture on this. You will see more people said to have

been killed by this person. I have some issues with that, and I'm not sure because there's there's three of them that all talk about that. I don't really think you're connected. There's Reagan Kendall. Her body was found dismembered in two thousand and ten. I think I'm pretty sure it was in July she was found dismembered. Then Kelly Lanthern her body was also found that same month. Police haven't released that.

So that's why people say, oh, she must have been killed with the forty caliber gun and they don't want anybody to know. But I don't know that that's actually the case. You'll also see a woman by the name of Faith Jenkins listed as possibly being connected to the killing. Her body was found in naked and in the fetal position,

but she also was not shot. The corner report would say that she had she had experienced internal trauma, which to me means that she got the crap be out of her, which is very different than using a gun on somebody. So the connections, I don't see the connection to these these three like I do in the first four, and I'm not even sure about Stacy Gage. I mean, the first three very clearly linked by a weapon. After that Stacy was shot in the back of the head.

But at the same time, shooting people in the back of the head is not unknown. Well, it could have been a could have been a copycat using any caliber of gun. It could have been a non copy in the back of well that's yeah, that's what I mean. Head with another gun and it's a similar caliber. They'd have no idea, you know what it was, because they didn't recover a bullet. So it's hard to say. I'm I'm willing to say that there are three confirmed deaths

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dirty and we're back. So I should actually probably clarify here. Um, this is one of those episodes where it's not so much theories as suspects because people think that they know who the Daytona Beach cereal killer is. Everybody knows who everybody is. It's always somebody knows somebody. So what we're gonna actually be talking about is the suspects section, and there's a feeling there's some good ones. I kind of like, um, who we got here? You like that one? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,

exactly than the other ones. Yeah. Okay, Well, let's let's dive into this and we'll take them in the order that I've got him on here. How's that sound, Joe? Okay, So the first theory or suspect is a local, so saying that it's a local to the area, who lives in the area, who also happens to be related to a convicted felon. And this will make sense why that's

described that way in just a second. Maybe maybe because one of the things that we do know is that DNA evidence was pulled from the first three bodies and there's no results of who that is. Whoever it is,

is not in the system. However, there is another available to law enforcement, another searching method which is called familial DNA, and that's the method that was used to catch the grim sleeper, who we talked to Christine about yesterday, and it could possibly do a lot in helping to solve this case, which it did with with Lonnie and that's what brought him down. And it is admissible, and it

is admissible. There's there's some issues with it, but we talked to Christine about familiar DNA along with the potential roadblocks of its use. Just a quick heads up, we did the interview over Skype, so as usual with Skype, the audio can be a little funky. Donkey did what we did could to clean it up, but let's go

ahead and go to that audio. Well, I think that you know a lot like a c l U and you know, civil liberty the organizations and civil rights organizations, you know, they believe it's an invasion of privacy and they think that an unfairly targets minorities, you know, because there's more minorities like African American, Hispanics, et cetera in prison,

So they're saying that in fairly targets that population. Like England did a study many years ago and they found that like if you're for the familiar DNA because as you know, like Lonnie, they had his DNA, but Lonnie had never gone to prison, so he had never been swabbed,

so that's why they didn't know who he was. But they knew he was matched to the victims in the eighties and the victims in the tooth and the two thousand's because of they found saliva on many of the women's breasts and so they knew he was, you know, there was one killer, but because he wasn't in any felon data bank, they couldn't find him. So that's why

they decided to use that familiar DNA. And it was the first time actually in California actually in the US, that they used familiar DNA testing to find a serial killer, and they checked it in two thousand eight. And how it goes with the familiar DNA, I mean, they had been UM England have been using it for many years. And basically they said that if you're a felon, there's at chance that you're going to have like a male relative like a cousin and uncle, a brother, a father

who's a felon. So if you're not in the data bank, there's a chance that you're gonna have a relative who's in the data bank and so and so that's why they did it in two thousand and eight and it came back nothing, And then they did it two years later and the felon data bank had grown four hundred thousand,

and so they did it again. And Lonnie's son Christopher had been charged with UM carrying a weapon and he pled guilty and as a result of his plea, he got swabbed and that was in two thousand nine, So he was in the system for she's just like close to a year, you know, before they did that second DNA swab and it came back as a match to him, but he was They knew it wasn't him because he would have been about two years old when the murder started, so they knew he right, so they knew he had

to be you know, he They knew he was related to the killer, and so they actually looked for any relative and there was an uncle, well they thought there was an uncle and Rancho Cucamonga, but they ended up checking checking it out and finding that there was no relation. And then they found out that his father, Lonnie, lived like on eight one and Western, which was like at

the epicenter of where all the murders took place. And so that's why they ended up you know, following you know, Lonnie, if something like this doesn't happen, then it's gonna be very tough to catch this guy. And we've we actually in that same conversation, we had talked about some other serial killer cases that were solved via DNA and what a stroke of luck it was that that particular person

got caught through that method. To look at what happened with the Green River Killer, it was like twentysomething years before they finally caught him. Same with B. T K. I remember, yeah too. I was I was around for living in the area and a lot of people were very angry after all those years and they still hadn't caught the guy. And it's just like you said, though you're looking for a needle in a haystack, it's expecting a lot, really, and it's really lucky that guy's kid

got busted the year before they were nabbed him. Well, I don't think they ever if if it wasn't for that familial DNA and that his son, I said, I don't think they ever would have caught. I think it was just too difficult, you know, it was just it was just too hard. They were really they were really lucky. I think they were pretty shocked themselves. But yeah, I mean so after all that, I agree with Christine that we were indeed lucky that they got Lonnie Franklin Jr.

The way that they did. Yeah. And uh and by the way, generally speaking, serial killers like this usually unless they really kind of are trying to get caught, they usually don't get caught. Yeah, it is a fact. Yeah, I mean that that's part of their thing is they want to they want to have their fun, and their

fun is not had behind bars. I don't know black people consider it fun, but okay, I don't know so we have talked about already the shape the path of the killings and the four and the fact that it's about five miles east to west or eight kilometers between the first two bodies, and it's about two and a half miles north to south or four kilometers between the second pair of bodies. Uh. And that's a that's a

really small range. And that's why it makes me think that this particular person is a local and that they wanted to stay in an area that was familiar to him, which is again, this is something else that we talked with Christine about when it comes to the Grim Sleeper case, because Lonnie did the same thing. He stayed close to home. He hunted in his own backyard. And that's like most

serial killers do that. I mean they had back in the eighties and South Los Angeles there was um, you know, six serial killers operating at the same time, and they were able to identify all of them actually, and all of them lived in South Los Angeles. I mean, Chester Turner was one of the serial killers, and he hunted like literally within two blocks of where his mud where he lived with his mother. You know, they like familiar territory,

you know, they don't want to be surprised. They want to know Lonnie was a garbage man and he knew the alleyways like he knew the dumpsters of South Los Angeles because that's where he worked, right, So they want to have they want to feel comfortable. So that's why most serial killers actually operate, you know, in the same area where they dumped their bodies. I was always kind of wondering too, if if one of the reasons they do it is they're just trying to clean up the neighborhood.

What I'm saying, I mean, I don't mean that, I don't mean that in a harsh judgmental way, but I mean, you know, seriously, is that possibly a motivator for some of these guys that they're they don't really approve that activity and they'd like to see it sort of discouraged. Well, I mean, obviously that was the case for Lonnie. I mean he considered I mean, it's obvious he considered the women brash, right, and so he dumped their bodies and trapped,

you know, so he considered them trash, you know. And his wife was there, yeah, and dumpsters, and his wife was very religious, so he maybe there was something for him. He you know, I think he had this like compulsion, you know, I think that he couldn't control himself. I mean, he had there was he was always after women, you know, he was like addicted to women. And I think that in his case, I think that, you know, he also had this deep seated hatred and you know where it

came from. It's hard to say, because it seemed like he had a good relationship with his mother and his sister, you know, so it's hard to say exactly why how he ended up, you know, hating women so much. But you know, I think that's what he thought. I think he thought he was cleaning the streets. Yeah. So now let's go to our second possible suspect. So the first one is kind of a morphous it's the general description,

I get it. The second person is an actual person, and that's a guy by the name of David Lindsay. In two thousand seven, David Lindsay was arrested for killing a seventy one year old man um Now. Mr Lindsay had also previously served out a sentence for killing his own wife, but he had been working as a volunteer

in a homeless shelter in the area. Uh. And when he was tracked down for killing the seventy one year old man whose name was Austin Dale Runyon back in two thousand one, people started to ask, well, maybe this is the guy. The thing about Lindsay is that he had strangled this the old man and left him in the home, so that doesn't appear that a gun was used. But because he's close, people want to know was it him.

They swabbed his DNA and for a while until the DNA came back every but he was like, yeah, I

think we might have got him. And then that's one thing that that's always bothered me about cases like this, when people are like, well, this person killed another human, so he must be a serial killer, and there's nothing to tie, like, there's nothing to suggest that that person, who is admittedly a horrible human being, is the same kind of horrible human being, Like he strangled a seventy one year old man in his own home and then

left him for debt. I mean left him, right. That's totally different than picking up women, young women and shooting them in the back of the head. Are you kidding me?

You know? And he shot his own wife or killed his own wife, I should say, which again, she wasn't a young woman that he was tracking down for his own pleasure, I guess with technically, these weren't young women the victims, but they're you know women, Yeah, no, I know, I know where you're going anyway, So Lindsay was ruled out good, which takes us to our third suspect, which is Robert Rembert JR. Mr Rembert, was you like that name? R R j R r J was arrested back in

and charged with killing four people in Cleveland, Ohio. One was a family member and the other was a family friend, and he killed those two people in the same night. He shot them both. The other two that he is charged with killing were women, and their bodies were found. Both had been raped, and both had been strangled, and both had DNA evidence on them that was recovered and

that DNA would be matched back to Robert Rembert. Probably saliva in this case, I'm not I don't believe it was, but so, but I'm sure people, if if anybody knows who remembered in they were saying, why are you including a guy that's from Cleveland, Ohio? And a story that's

in Daytona Beach, Florida. Isn't there a Dayton, Ohio? There you go, dayton That's that's totally the connection enough that I made yes, or it was the fact that Rembert was a long hall truck driver and so he would have run roots or he could have run roots down to Florida, which would have put him into the same area where these women were at. Again, the same problem with lindsay, though they have him, they have his DNA. They confirmed that it was the DNA found on the

body of these two strangled and raped women. So it's a pretty easy slam dunk to say, does it match these other women, which apparently nothing is you know, nothing has come out about that. So I'm pretty sure that they checked that and said no, it's not him. Again, more than that, like it was over the course of what was they were one year apart these murders, the women, No, no, no, no, they were they were many years apart. No, no, no, the actual victims of the serial killer that we are

talking Daytona Beach serials. Yes, they were all within three months. Yeah, that seems like a weird amount of time for a long haul truck driver. To like continue to be I don't know, took a Christmas vacation. Yeah, no, but I get it. And that's why I don't think that that's I don't think that's right. Yeah, and again I think the d n A doesn't support it, or they would

have charged him with murder. Well, this is this is one of those dileos I think where the Yeah, these guys became suspects in the papers because well, the papers had to write about something. And you know, I mean, so the police said, yeah, we're checking this guy's DNA. It's probably a nothing burger, but you know, we're checking this DNA. So the next thing and well, you know, I gotta as a story because you've got to fatten up the story because otherwise you're just repeating the story.

You know, you got to add something to it. So there you go. But yeah, these guys had nothing to do with it. I'm sure. Can I can I ask you a question, Joe, Yeah, where where do you order a nothing Burger? Usually like just go to any like major publication network. I've never heard of that one before. That's a that's a good phrase. I never heard of that one. Next up on our list is well, it's

kind of not. It's another one that's not a very exact another one, well, it's yes, the unknown trucker, a k a. The I four killer, which in the news there is occasional murmurs of there being an I four killer, which again, it's a major freeway. And if you've ever listened to any of our other serial killer shows, you'll know that this is a very familiar theory, you know.

There's it basically says that there's some killer roaming up and down a particular stretch or several stretches of freeway and you know, randomly picking out a girl that he takes a fancy too and doing over whatever he wants to do for himself, and then leaving her dead body behind. That's that's what this is. It's very common, but apparently very I'm sorry, it's a very common theory. Not it's

a very common, proven thing that happens correct. Sure, it does happen correct probably, but we can't say definitively like it's very common. But this happens all the time. Serial killers out there, Yeah, every other truck driver. Yeah, maybe not so much, Devin, because accordingly the FBI hip been tracking murders all over the country, and they're actually looking into a whole bunch of them that are happening on the freeway system to determine if there's connections to them

and how they're related to one another. So the FBI, I mean, granted, the FBI takes murder very seriously, but they've actually got a page that talks about the map and what they're trying to do to see if these things are all linked. Sounds like a really good application for a little bit of data mining probably, And you know,

that would definitely be the way to do this. I mean, it would be hard to assemble all the day, but you know you can get all the all the manifests and schedules from all the long haul truck drivers, you know, all their routes and time states and everything. Put it all in there, and you know, along with all these different crimes and everything, and just grind Google death Map, Yeah, and just grind away for a while and see, you know, whose routes match up to what's strings and murders, you know,

And you know, it strikes me the FBI should hire Watson. Yeah, you know, I mean Watson the dog. Well I meant wrong, one. Well, okay, so, so I when I was on the FBI website and I was reading through it, there's a really good statement that talks about some of this and which one I want wanting you to read this because I'm blathering. Okay, Joe, can you read this statement from the FBI on what they believe? Okay, I was saying, well, FBI voice, here

we go. The victims in these cases are primarily women who are living higher risks transient lifestyle. Can we have your regular voice? Okay, okay, let's try regular voice. The victims in these cases are primarily women who are living high risk transient lifestyles, often involving substance abuse and prostitution. They're frequently picked up at truck stops or service stations

and sexually assaulted, murdered, and dumped along the highway. The suspects are predominantly long haul truck drivers, but the mobile nature of the offenders, the unsafe lifestyles of the victims, the significant distances and multiple jurisdictions involved, and the scarcity of witnesses or forensic evidence can make these cases tough to solve. Which is unquote, which is by the way, kind of an understatement tough to solve. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, that's a really nice recap of

what we literally just said. Yeah's authoritative. Yeah, yeah, we're I think I'm tired of the FBI stealing our stuff. Yeah. Well, so the reason that I wanted to bring that up is and have that statement in there, is that you know, as you read about these possible connections, it's easy to say, well that that just seems too far fetched and it's

too much. But the more you read the Internet, the more that it strips away your little security blanket and leaves behind some really terrible people for you to be, you know, stuck with. Let's be honest, it only really takes forty five minutes on the Internet on like a conspiracy site to suddenly be like, you're right, the world is flat and we are living on the surface of the sun. I mean, honestly, it's like you can you

can convince yourself of almost anything. Well, but but what I'm talking about is actual people, because like, okay, the first three people that came up when I ran a Google search of something like killer traveling across the United States, I don't know what my search was, but I got John Paul Knowles, Glenn Edward Rogers, and Israel Keys. Three very despicable human beings. Yeah, they're not not far the

only one. They're the first ones it came up. There were the first three people that showed up in my search. I didn't bother to catalog to search because it was too disturbing. Um. So when you hit on the freeway, just take your take a gat with you, yeah, or

maybe just don't go hitchhiking on the freeway. So the last thing that I want to talk about when we come to this unknown trucker theory is one of the things that has always baffled me about these situations is that there's never that doesn't ever seem to be a witness. And so initially at one point they didn't know if it was a transient worker somebody like that in the Grim Sleeper case. I remember reading some little bits of that.

But when we talked to Christine, we asked her specifically about why there was there didn't seem to be any anybody that was witnessing the crimes, you know a lot of them was I think the only reason, I think a lot of it was that it was late at nine eight and there wasn't a lot of people out

on the street. I think that's why. And I mean he and also too, I mean, he knew what he was doing, so you know, he's going to be stealthy, right, He's not going to do it when there's a hundred people around, you know, He's going to make sure it's

late at night. And I mean when the police were following him around, you know, after they got the familiar DNA from the sun the match with the Sun, they followed him around and he left his home one night at like three o'clock in the morning, and he went to forty second and Western, which was like kind of a popular prostitution hanging out, and there was two girls

standing on the street and it was really secluded. In the detectives there was this undercover cop following him, and he made a point to say to the detectives, He's like, I'm afraid that he's going to find out that I'm following him because there was like literally no one on the street. So he picks times when there's not a

lot of people around, you know. That's why I think there's no witnesses, and then he brings them to alley ways and not a lot of people hanging out in the alleyways at four o'clock in the morning, okay, And another i'd sale so that there's another another reason probably is a nipped off somewhere to commit a sex act which requires a little bit of privacy a k a. The alley, the alley or behind the bushes or somewhere where you're not going to be seen by anybody, and

you know, and and that's the best thing about it. There's probably another reason prostitutes our favorite targets because you talk to a regular a regular female, and you say, hey, by the way, why don't we go off to this place where nobody can see us, just by ourselves, you know, and it's the alley way, would be cool, Yeah, whereas a prostitute is not going about not going to bat an eye and I lashed anything like that. Of course, you want to go somewherehere you're not going to be seen. No,

I'm not going to disagree with you on that. It appears to be that's how that thing works. Yeah, we have another one another suspect. We have actually one more suspect. This is what I found on my own. So I did I did a little bit of internet sleuthing, and I found a very young, upstanding citizen while casting about the Internet using such wonderful terms as shot, prostitute, Florida two thousand's and probably one or two other very lovely keywords.

I bet you've got a ton of a ton of people, right, I actually did get a fair number, but one of them that came back as a guy by the name of Curtis L. Richardson. And Mr richardson Is has been in the custody of the Great State of Florida for a host of reasons, the current of which is second degree murder. Prior to that, he was under lock and key for a number of drug related charges, but the one that earned him his current stay was the shooting in the head of a prostitute in May of into

dispute over drugs. Now, I looked through his records and I found some, I would say, some interesting connections between

him and the Daytona Beach serial killer. And I'm not saying it's him, but this is one of those guys where you go, holy crap, I wonder this kind of matches up because he was in jail from December four of two thousand four until October twenty three, two thousand and five, and then our first victim was killed on December two thousand five, so two months after he got out, he also went back into jail on August one of two thousand six, and he didn't get out of jail

until February six, two thousand eight, which rules him out for Stacy Gauge. But as I said, I don't I'm not sure that I want to lump Stacy Gauge in with the first three killings. But it makes him available for being the bad guy because he did shoot a prostitute in the face. He has no qualms about shooting somebody in the phase when he doesn't get what he wants. I've got no proof his DNA has has probably been run through the system and he's probably been ruled out.

But it's just this is this is one of those things. So listen. We do this internally. We do this all the time, where we look at a board and people start posting, People say, oh my god, what about this person? What about this person? And I found myself going through the correctional website doing that very same thing. The only thing that stopped me is that because he's in the floor system. I'm pretty sure they've already taken his DNA and he's already been ruled out. He's a despicable human being.

But it's interesting the dates the crimes are very dissimilar, though, I mean, you know, he shot a prostitute in the head, in the face. Yeah, he shot a prostitute in the head or the face? How are you looking at it?

But they're actually very dissimilar crimes. I mean, because this is obviously this is the kind of thing that you know, you really see what you know, dumb people with poor impulse control who get a little frustrated to get a little piste off, and they shoot somebody and they're under the influence already that whereas your average serial killer is not that sort of person. He's somebody who's warm with

article and not as impulsive. Yeah, it's not going to impulsively shoot somebody in the head, I mean, you know. I mean that's why I think that the character of the crimes, even though physically the same thing, the character of the crimes is much different in my opinion, and I'm in agreement with you, Joe. That's why I said, I pointed this into an example because I found myself in that situation that we always talk about people falling into and pointing the blame. Well, no, and he is.

And he's actually as good as suspect as some of the other ones that have been named. You know, they'll get me wrong. I'm not not totally slamming him for that, but yeah, but he's in the slammer. Yeah, that's a good point. He probably should be. Uh yeah, I have I have one other thing that I want. This was

a real question for me when it came into this case. Um, and this is kind of outside of our theory section, but if Stacy Gauge is truly in part of the group, how is it that somebody is able too, over the course of basically two months, going a killing spree and kill three women and then suddenly be able to stop for about a year and do it one more time and then not do it again at all. Like that's a giant question to me of how because it doesn't make sense, you know what I'm saying, Like it seems

like bang bang bang bang, pause, bang done. I would not take it as a given that he's done, and he might have been. He might still be killing people. He's just not using his forty caliber pistol and was in the back of the head. Yeah. And this this is another one of those points where the Daytona Beach serial killer is similar to Lonnie Franklin Jr. Be The Grim Sleeper, because, as you'll find out, as we're about to talk about and with Christine, he took a big break.

He took a ten to thirteen year break depending on the victims. I'm not entirely convinced that he did, but it looks based on the victims that were found, he took a pretty big break. So I wanna we're stop here, and I want to go ahead and bring in the conversation with Christine and her take and what she shared with us about this. Detectives definitely don't think that he

took a break. Um. They think that because two of the victims, Bernita Sparks and Genesia Peters, were found in dumpsters by you know, homeless people looking for like recyclables and stuff like that, and so um, there was a good chance that they would have ended up in a landfill. So the detectives think that a lot of his victims ended up in landfills because they think like he's known to have killed fifteen women, but they think it's probably

closer to thirty. And that's some of the women, you know, are in landfill, you know landfills right now. So I don't know, like I think that. I mean, I know that there was a case in two thousand, so I mean his last known victim was in and then there was a case in two thousand. During the nineties, it was also a time when his kids would have been teenagers,

you know, so you know, who knows. I mean, you know, maybe they were like, Dad, what are you doing leaving the house at three o'clock in the morning, Like where are you going? Like I don't, you know, I don't know if there was something going on in his family life that you know, stopped him from doing it, because you know, like with for example, like Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer, I mean he would stop at times too,

you know, when he was happy in his relationships. So I think sometimes he's like serial kill as they might stop if they're happy in their relationships. Like maybe you know, Lonnie was happy and you know with a girl he was dating. You know, who knows. But the cops don't don't actually think that he did but you know, it's hard to tell, so I don't I'm not really sure. Overall,

the whole thing is entirely disturbingly possible. Um and our killer is probably still in the area, and he probably did take a short break, or like you said, Joe, probably worse, he didn't stop and changed his Maybe he started watching Dexter because I've been out for a couple of years, was like, holy crap, I could just dump them out in the ocean. That's so much easier. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean people did, and

we've used the term before killers evolved. Maybe his m O evolved and he realized dumping them in public spaces was not a good way to go, or shooting them is not the way to go. I mean, because his DNA doesn't seem to have have been collected anywhere else that we know of. Well, I mean, he also could have moved. Yeah, that thing that people do true sometimes that is why you haul exists good one. Or he could have started putting them in downstairs and they got hauled off to

the landfill. As Christine mentioned about the Grim Sleeper's a lot of options that could have happened. Possibilities there so it's uh, it's it's pretty hard to say. I personally, I want to think that it's a local because that makes it, it makes sense why Willie's place was kind of the epicenter of everything Willie. He did it, groundskeeper Willie. It could have also been somebody in local law enforcement,

because forty caliber is actually thing. Well, no, it's not my favorite thing, but it's actually hadn't brought that up in a long time. Yeah, forty forty s W is actually a popular round with law enforcement, so of course it's actually a popular round with civilians too. But yeah, I just I just actually wanted to, like, you know, make all our police listeners angry at me. Yeah, wait a while, since you've done it, spot on. Good job,

but good job. Yeah, I know, Thanks Joe Devin. Any particular favorites or disfavorites or my favorite theory is that he's dead. I kind of like that one. I like that one of my favorite that that is a good theory. I know. Okay, let me think, let me think, let me think. Yeah, long haul truck driver. Yeah, probably a local, alright,

local I think it was. Now, Probably it could have been a local who had a particularly grudge against these three women and we just haven't figured out the connection means somebody who just wanted to, like, you know, scare away the prostitutes. If indeed they were all drinking at the same place, they could have all offended the same person in some way. Sorry, I do have another theory. It's called the Joe spectrum. Uh so one of these women was the actual target and Arson was trying to

cover up. Is murder the murder? I like that. That's a good theory. Yeah, okay, yeah, I like that. Okay, great, al right, everybody, Well we uh we're gonna give you that favorite part of the show that you have, which is all of the important details and little bits. This episode, along with all episodes and some of our research links, will be available on the website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. On there, you can also find links to merchandise and um,

all of our basically every episode. That's what I was gonna say is that we have the episode list page. So we've been telling folks to go look at that if you've got to, if you want to see if we've done one before. That's a much easier way to search for them. We are on social media, so We're on Twitter, Thinking Sideways, we have a subreddit, and we are on Facebook, so the Facebook page and the Facebook groups to join the group, like the page. Lots of

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leave a rating, we'd appreciate that as well. And of course, if you've got any kind of questions or additional theories or comments anything like that, and you'd like to send those to us directly, you can email that to us at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. And that is all of that particular bits of housekeeping. So I think I need a really hot shower to scrub off after this, So let's can we just leave now? Yes? Please? I guess Chuppy came out on scathed this time. We'll

hit him next week. Next week, we'll get that little bugger, all right. Sorry Choppy By everybody,