Episode 10: Bonus Information and a Special Guest - podcast episode cover

Episode 10: Bonus Information and a Special Guest

Dec 29, 202143 min
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Episode description

In this Season 1 bonus episode, we discuss new information about potential suspects provided by our listeners and the producer of another true-crime podcast. You’ll hear from Final Days on Earth host and producer Claire St. Amant. We also share an interview with a woman who escaped an abduction attempt in the same neighborhood and around the same time Sarah Kashka vanished. As we discuss other fascinating tidbits, you’ll get a look ahead to Season 2 of “still…”

www.thereportersnotebook.com
www.finaldaysonearth.com
fwpdcoldcasesupport.org

Transcript

In our first season of Still, we explored a period of time in Fort Worth, Texas between nineteen eighty three and nineteen eighty six, when more than twenty women vanished and were later found murdered. Some were shot, some were strangled, some were bludgeoned to death. Most had been sexually assaulted, and

sadly, few of their cases have ever been solved. Our investigation of this time period led us to focus on seven specific cold cases, the rapes and murders of Mary Till, Sandra Bush, Katherine Davis, Cindy Heller, Angela Ewart, Sarah Kashka, and Terry McAdams. Through our research of known killers at the time, we homed in on a likely culprit. Curtis Don Brown, was already serving a life sentence. He had raped and murdered three women.

He died in a Texas prison in early twenty twenty one before we could interview him. Now, we want to step back and discuss what listeners have shared with us about their theories and memories of that time of terror. In this bonus episode, we'll also be sharing unreleased tidbits of information, follow up interviews, and a Q and a discussion with a special guest from the pages of the reporter's notebook. This is Still. I'm your host Gary Anderson.

Hello everyone, and welcome to our bonus episode of Still season one. At the end of the season. Earlier this year, we asked listeners to share with us their thoughts about our story. Were there other killers out there we should have considered, is there any evidence we missed? What cases should we tackle next? And did you guys deliver? We want to begin with a discussion of potential suspects suggested by our listeners. While a number of names were

brought to our attention, four in particular piqued our interest. The first comes courtesy of a special guest, fellow journalist and podcaster, Claire Santamal. Claire met with us recently to discuss theories of our cases. I'm going to play some of that conversation for you. I wanted to start out with tell us a little bit about you, tell us a little bit about your show, and just expound on that. Thanks so much for having me, Gary.

It's fun to be here in real life. I don't think we get to do that in the podcast world that much, so it's nice to be sitting across the table from here chatting. I've been in the Dallas area for about ten years now, and you know, really enjoy crime reporting. That's where

I've found my place. I do it primarily for CBS News. I'm a development producer for the show forty eight Hours, which airs on Saturday nights on CBS, and then I also do some crime I've done some crime stories for sixty Minutes and the morning and evening shows as well, so pretty much all crime all the time. But I found a new love of podcast. And you know, at first, I was just a listener for many years. And then whenever I was approached about, you know, did I want to

host my own podcast? Did I see myself in that space? You know, it was it was a gradual evolution, you know, one of those things where I was like, well, I really enjoy this as a consumer, you know, but I hadn't seen myself as someone who would be creating that content, um. And it took me a little while to warm up to the idea. But once I did, you know, I've really enjoyed

it and see it as as such a valuable medium. Um. And So my first show was called Final Days on Earth and the first season came out in April twenty twenty one, and it's on the life and death of Damien Hurd, who was a college wrestler who grew up not too far from where we are now in the Fort Worth area in Texas. But he got a college scholarship to Western Colorado University in Gunnison, and that, unfortunately, is

where his life ended. And so my story goes to the final days of his life and tries to find answers for um, you know, how how he ended up dead at the age of twenty and and many people have raised, you know, questions about about that investigation and about the ruling in the case, which was suicide but has been heavily disputed by his family. So my podcast ended up being thirteen episodes, and we look at that case inside

and out, backwards and forwards and every way in between. If you haven't listened to Final Days on Earth, find it and add it to your playlist immediately. You won't be disappointed. We're going to discuss some details of Claire's podcast with her, but first we wanted to dive right into our cases, particularly since Claire herself offered up a potential suspect that we found intriguing. This

is Karen talking. I wanted to ask you, Claire. You had mentioned a potential suspect for our cases, William Reese, and so I wanted to ask you to just tell us what you know about him and kind of why you think that he would be a viable suspect or our cases. Yeah.

Absolutely, So, as I was listening to your episodes and you're going through the emo of the killer, and you know, like you say in your podcast, it could be one killer, it could be multiple killers, but there's a lot of similarities in you know, the way the crimes are committed and who the victims are. And so it was interesting to me because the name that popped into my head was William Reese. And he was a truck driver and also works as like a ranch hand, worked a lot with horses,

and his crimes. His first known crime was in nineteen eighty six, and he was a truck driver and so he would go from the Oklahoma City area, Oklahoma area, down into Texas all the way from you know, North Texas, going through Houston, going down to Galveston and back up to Oklahoma. So he really was on the road a lot and hit a lot of different cities and has a lot of victims in different cities across Oklahoma and Texas. And his seems to be his mo was to find women in distress

on the roadway and offer to help. Many times the tire would have been changed. Other times women. You know, there's a case where a woman's car was flooded out in the in the water, you know, a flash flood type situation. And he drove up in his eighteen wheeler like a night in shining armor and said, oh, get in the cab, you know

my car, I'll take you to a pay phone. And so I was struck by the similarities of some of the women in the four Worth cases where they had car trouble sometimes explained sometime to the unexplained, and William Reese, so he was. His first known case was nineteen eighty six a young woman, a freshman at the University of Oklahoma who has car trouble and she survives. And he is actually put on trial in nineteen eighty seven then and goes

to jail. It was a twenty five year sentence, but he only served ten years in the kidnapping case, and immediately when he gets out in nineteen ninety seven, he starts committing the same types of crimes, and he also is known to have committed murder as well. And there are cases where he would put he would stand outside a gas station and he would post up there

and watch for women to come in alone into the gas station. While they're in the gas station, he would go slash their tire, puncture their tire, and then he would follow them into the night into the day, and and you know, take it from there. And so that seemed to be

a very similar emo to several of the cases that you looked at. And I just wondered, you know, if the timing lined up pre nineteen eighty seven when he went into prison for the first time, if you potentially as a truck driver, we could find out, you know, if his routes

took him to the Fort Worth area. The crimes that initially put William Reese behind bars occurred in the spring of nineteen eighty six, around the same time Curtis Don Brown was committing one of his known crimes, the murder of Jewel Woods in Fort Worth. Reese, then a twenty six year old truck driver, picked up a nineteen year old college student in Norman, Oklahoma, under

the pretense of helping her after her car had broken down. Once inside his truck, Reese tied her up and raped her and said his intention was to take her to Houston. At some point along the way, the victim escaped and survived the attack. While awaiting trial for that kidnapping, Reese raped another Oklahoma woman whom he followed home from a bar. Reese was convicted of both crimes and was sentenced to twenty five years and in Oklahoma prison, but he

only served ten going free in October nineteen ninety six. By July of nineteen ninety seven, he was passing through North Texas, this time committing murder in the city of Denton, just north of Fort Worth. Denton, if you recall, is where Sarah Kashka and her mother had moved to from Fort Worth. I don't want to confuse you, though Sarah disappeared at the end of nineteen eighty four, nearly thirteen years before Rhese kidnapped a victim from Denton.

But it's notable because he was definitely in North Texas as he hunted for and found a victim right and one of his victims actually was in Denton. Correct, that's right, Kelly Cox. That was an unsolved case for many years. That was in nineteen ninety seven case. If people aren't familiar with that, unbelievably tragic and just a really hard case because that young woman was actually touring the Denton County jail that morning with her criminology class at the University of

North Texas. But whenever she got out of the tour of the jail, she realized she had actually locked her keys in her car, so she wasn't able to get in. And this is I don't believe she had a cell phone at this time. This was nineteen ninety seven, pre cell phone. So she tried to go use the phone at the jail and they they turned her away, and so she went to a gas station to buy a coke to get some change to use a pay phone, and that's where she had

the unfortunate, unbelievably unfortunate chance encounter with William Reese. She allegedly spilled a coke on him and that led to her kidnapping and murder. So it's it's definitely true that he was in North Texas and that he was at a gas station and found a young woman that you know was never seen alive again,

So he seems like a good suspect in a number of ways. The nineteen ninety seven murder of Kelly Cox was a case that our associate producer, Christine Hughes, was personally aware of. Christine talked to Claire, Karen and I through zoom. I actually remember the Kelly Cox case. I was editor of a newspaper in that region at the time that had happened, so we covered it. And she was also a young mother, She had a child,

and that was really a tragic thing for her family. And it took a long time for them to solve that case, so she was not found for a while, and also he was not identified for a while. Is it possible that William Reese sabotaged Angela Ewart's car that night at the seven eleven in

nineteen eighty four? Was he watching her from somewhere nearby? Perhaps? Another person of interest is an unknown assailant who attempted to abduct a young woman in southwest Fort Worth at around the same time as Angie's and Sarah's abductions in December of nineteen eighty four. The kidnapping attempt was even in the same Wedgewood neighborhood where both Sarah and Angie were last seen alive. It was also just a

mile or two from where Katherine Davis and Cindy Heller each disappeared. Tria Foster, known as Tria Jester at the time, lived with her grandparents in the Wedgewood area and was friends with Sarah Kashka. We talked with her by phone about what happened when someone attempted to abduct to you? Was that there in that neighborhood? Yes, yes, right Caddy corner from my grandparents house.

So I was walking to my friend house that was kind of down that hill on the way where those apartments were, and I was, you know, I had just cross the trail lake and I was, I was right there at that corner. Um, and a guy I grew up, I grew up, drove up and I could have sworn it was like a green I've I've curved the details or listened to the podcast, and it's saying that he was in a blue truck. I remember it being a green truck, a

greenish truck that was kindo lusty or older. Um. And he pulled up and he said get in, and I immediately went because I was always taught just like go walk into a house, you know, the seas act like you lived there. Um, I couldn't get in, so I sat on the back of a car because everything's had like card boards over there. They don't really have garages. So I thought, like when couldn't see me? But I guess my legs were there, and he was still very good,

I'm not leaving, you might as well get in. I'm not going anywhere, and I know where you live. Um, And so I just kind of sat there for a long time and I kind of kept looking like I need to make it for it. But I was afraid that he could get out and get me because he was like reaching in his pocket, like maybe had a gun or something like that. A carspooled up behind him, and I want to say it was like a station wagon because he was kind of in the middle of the road. He had to pull up a little bit.

And that's when I took off and land to my grandparents house. But he remember him having kind of you know, shoulder link brown hair, I want to say, like an army green jacket on. I don't remember color of eyes or anything. Like that, but I remember it's sandy brown hair kind of long and then the older greenish truck. As it turns out, another friend of tree Is had an encounter with a man fitting that same description. My girlfriend I was walking to somebody was following her in a similar truck

when she was on her bicycle. And that was right up from where my grandparents was. So and that was probably a month after a debt. What happened, miss day So I think he was in that area for a while. The person, the person that followed her was at the same type of truck. Yes, yes, yeah, I don't think they called the police and he didn't stop and try to do anything. But her mom called my grandmother and had a long conversation about it, and like neither of us were

really allowed to walk or rider bikes around there anymore. And this was in broad daylight, correct, broad daylight. This was the middle of the day. There's like two o'clock in the afternoon, okay, on like a Saturday. Is it possible this is the assailant who abducted and murdered Sarah Koshka. Remember we told you in episode two that a car was stolen from the Wedgewood area the same night that Sarah went missing. That car was later found abandoned

somewhere in Dallas. We're not sure if it was the same part of Dallas where Sarah's body was found, but the val was not a pickup truck. Tria gave us some of her thoughts about Sarah. We would talk on the phone all the time. She was like my confident person because she was older and always, you know, gave advice and stuff like that. So she was older, she was. She was also kind of more, you know,

she was. She was not somebody really messed with that reason. I just remember that being like, was really surprised, like she would she either she knew this person or she would have put up a fight. I think knowing who she is. While Tria's experience may help shed light on Sarah's abduction and murder, and maybe even Angie Ewart's, it does little to help explain

the other cases. A third potential suspect was brought to our attention by a listener who messaged us on Facebook. In January of nineteen seventy eight, seventeen year old Licia McGee was brutally murdered after she didn't return home late one evening, her car was found abandoned on the side of the highway and her body

was found in the trunk. Although her murder happened several years before the cases we have discussed in our first season, Leicia lived in southwest Fort Worth and her car and body were recovered along the same route Angie Ewrett was driving the night she pulled over with a flat tire and then vanished. Leicia McGee's killer has never been officially identified. However, a cigarette butt left in Licia's car led investigators years later to a Fort worthman who was in prison for aggravated assault.

That man is Robin Duwayne Carter. This is Karen, and DNA recovered from those cigarettes were tied both to the victim and to Robin Carter. And although Robin lived in the same neighborhood as the victim, he says that they did not have any interaction with each other, that they had never really met or talked or hung out anything like that, so there was no reason for

his DNA to be on a cigarette butt inside her vehicle. But police say the cigarette but was there the DNA as a positive result, and that's how they tracked it to him. Carter is scheduled to be released on parole after serving a prison term for severely injuring a woman in nineteen ninety five in a Fort Worth suburb. Prosecutors said he deliberately hit the woman with a pickup he was driving while she was out for a walk. The woman survived, but

required five surgeries and months of physical therapy to recover. It wasn't Robin Carter's first brush with the law. His rap sheet dates back to his teen years. When he was just sixteen, he was charged with attacking a twenty four year old seminary student who notably was having car trouble. That crime happened just days after Lesia McGee was murdered. Carter later got into trouble for marijuana possession,

d WI, and burglary of a vehicle. In nineteen eighty seven, he went on an hour's long crime spree that included carjacking, theft, and aggravated robbery. He committed the string of crimes in fort Worth and neighboring Benbrook. Carter was originally a person of interest in Lesha McGee's murder, but he was never charged. Then, in two thousand and nine, Carter's DNA returned to Coda's hit when compared with the DNA of the cigarette, but from Lesiha's

car. It's also noteworthy that it was in December of nineteen seventy seven when he stole a seminary student's car during his attack on her. He was arrested after he wrecked the vehicle on a neighborhood street. Less than two months later, Lesia McGee was on her way home from visiting friends on the street that

Carter wrecked the stolen car when she was attacked and killed. The strange thing, though, is that the prosecutor is not going to bring this to trial and less new evidence comes forward because the existence of the DNA on the cigarette, but he says is not enough for a conviction, and he's afraid of losing the case because all of his other convictions and the circumstantial evidence the prosecutor

says would not be admissible in court. So was Robin Carter, who lived near the Wedgewood area in the late seventies and early eighties, only a few streets away from Lesia McGee, responsible for the nineteen eighty four disappearances of Angela Ewart, Sarah Kashka and Cindy Heller. It's certainly possible, but we feel that it's unlikely. In all of our seven cold cases, sexual assault appears to be a motivating fact one that is an established pattern. For Curtis Don

Brown, it does not appear that Lesha McGee was sexually assaulted. That leads me to a question that I wanted to ask, Claire. Have you encountered a lot in in the work that you've done where prosecutors and investigators are at odds and how as a reporter do you approach that and try to tell that story and tell both sides of that story. Yeah, it's a challenge whenever

there isn't a clear runaway suspect that's head and shoulders above the rest. But in our experience, in my experience, typically you know, they reserve the suspect for when they have you know, their their clear guy, you know in their law enforcement eyes, in the eyes of the state that will soon

be a defendant, than they'll call them the suspect. And before that, you know, it's persons of interest, and that's that's a can be a difficult area to come in as a reporter and talk about persons of interest because you want to be fair to everyone. A fourth potential suspect that we wish we would have taken a closer look at before now is Glen Samuel McCurley Junior. Earlier this year, McCurley was convicted of the nineteen seventy four kidnapping and

murder of seventeen year old Carla Walker. He dragged her from a car in a fort Worth Bowling Alley parking lot, bludgeoned her boyfriend until he lost consciousness, and then took Carla about ten miles south to rape and strangle her. He left her body in a culvert near a lake. Like Robin Carter, McCurley had a prior conviction of kr theft from his younger days. Also, like Carter, McCurley had surfaced on detective's radar not long after the murder,

but they were never able to definitively link him to the case. However, in twenty tw money, new DNA testing produced conclusive evidence. Now detectives are reviewing other cold cases to see if any evidence remains that could be tested against mccurley's DNA. Glenn McCurley moved to Fort Worth in nineteen seventy two and was free to commit crimes until his arrest last year. In nineteen seventy eight, he and his wife bought a house in a neighborhood just northwest of the Wedgewood

area, and he still lived there when he was arrested. The house is less than a ten minute drive from the spots where Katherine Davis, Cindy Heller, Angie Ewart, and Sarah Kashka were all taken. It's also really interesting that when McCurley was arrested for a car theft back in nineteen sixty one, he had also stolen that vehicle from a Bowling Alley parking lot, and his known victim, Carla Walker, was kidnapped from a Bowling Alley parking lot in

another part of town. Wedgewood Bowl, which touted in nineteen eighty four newspaper ads that it sold soft drinks for a quarter and hot dogs for fifty cents, was just down the hill from the gas station where Angie Ewart bought gas the night she was taken, and directly across the street from where Sarah Koshka was last seen alive. McCurley didn't live as close to the spots where these

women vanished, as Curtis Don Brown did. But he's a very viable person of interest, and like Curtis Brown, McCurley spent time as a teenager in a boy's home. E two clearly had a troubled childhood. It was in the interest of fairness that we didn't spend a lot of time in the podcast discussing a person who was arrested in nineteen eighty five, specifically in connection with Sarah Cooshka's murder. That person was Rensen Wolf, who we mentioned briefly in

episode four when we discussed possible suspects. Wolf, if you recall, was the son of wealthy and well known New Yorkers. He found his way to Fort Worth, Texas, where he later became embroiled in a child molestation charge in nineteen eighty three, a charge that, while later dropped, was still pending when he was arrested in nineteen eighty five. We spent a great deal

of time investigating remsen Wolf. However, like the police task force in nineteen eighty five, we could find nothing that substantiated him as a viable suspect. Despite the unusual circumstances surrounding him. Not long after wolf was released, he returned to New York, and we can't find any reports of crimes he was later associated with. After Wolfe died in nineteen ninety eight, the contents of

a storage unit filled with his belongings went up for auction. We reached out to the owner and manager of that storage facility to determine if, by chance, any of the contents were cataloged before the auction. We never received a response. Similarly, we have been unable to determine what became of Curtis Don Brown's belongings after he died in prison earlier this year. We have filed a

request for that information from the Texas Department of Corrections. It is still pending, and we will, of course let you know if we discover anything important. In both cases, it's possible that materials left behind by either of these men could shed light on their involvement, if any, in these mysterious cold

cases. Since Claire Saintemal was gracious enough to share some time with us, we wanted to get her general opinions as a listener of our podcast about her thoughts on this nineteen eighties murder spree are you shocked to think about what happened in the eighties and like, oh my gosh, who knew. I mean,

what were your reactions to that? Yeah? Absolutely, I had no idea that there was this, um, you know, extremely fraught situation for women traveling alone in their cars in the DFW area, you know, in the eighties that that was like a daily concern that you know, I several of the people that you interviewed on your podcast talked about just the feeling of panic and anxiety, and you know, like you said, this is the age before cell phones, and so the idea that you know, if you

get into car trouble, you know, it's potentially a life threatening situation is terrifying. And you know, as a crime reporter, who's who's cynical and and everything else. I always tell my friends, you know, if you get a flat tire, just drive on the rim until you can get somewhere. Do not pull over on the side of the road, like it's not

worth it. Like if it's it's dark and you're alone, you know, just get somewhere, get somewhere with other people and hopefully some security cameras and all that good stuff, because um, you know, stranger danger is rare, but um, there's certain circumstances that can make it, you know, much more likely that you could, you know, become become a target of these absolutely, um, you know, just unbelievable. It's hard to call

them bad luck. But you know, if you're in the if you just happen to come across the path of someone who you know wishous harm and you're in a vulnerable situation, it can end very badly. And you know, just trying to not live your life in fear, but also just recognizing, you know, maybe maybe I'm just gonna push it and get to that gas station or get to somewhere where you know there will be other people around. Um, you know, I think that that's uh, that's good advice.

Even in twenty twenty one, let's talk about DNA evidence. We're constantly trying to push and find ways to get evidence that can be tested for DNA, whether it matches Curtis Don Brown or not. Our goal is to find out you know, who the who the killer was. UM, have you encountered that in the stories that you've covered, How does DNA evidence play into anything that you've covered, anything interesting that you've encountered along those lines, as you've

been a crime reporter for so long. Yeah, probably. Some of the more interesting cases are where they've had DNA and they've they've used it to create a suspect profile. Um. There's a place called parabin Labs and they can actually take if it's a good enough of a DNA sample, they can take it and create a sketch of the victim and that is just fascinating by you know, the features of the DNA. They're able to say, this is what the person's facial structure looks like, this is their race, this is

their ICL her hair color. In some cases, the picture that they have drawn looks like a drawing of someone's driver's license picture. And it has solved crimes. They have solved multiple cases across the country. And it's a developing technology, but it's one that law enforcement is relying on, especially in cases

where they have a good DNA profile and they don't have a suspect. You know, it's a way to get you know, like an artist surrendering of a suspect, and a lot of times they do that and they put it out in the public in the media and people call in because they recognize the

person. That's how accurate it can be. As we shared in our final episode last March, Arlington police are still trying to solve the murder of Terry McAdams, the UTA student found brutally killed in her boyfriend's apartment on Valentine's Day nineteen eighty five. We believe that because Terry and Sarah Costca were found then days of their murders, their cases may have the best chance of being solved through DNA If sufficient evidence was saved, we pray that remaining DNA could be

used to build a suspect rendering like the one Claire just described. I want to mention two that a foundation associated with the Fort Worth Police Department has been set up as a way for donors to help pay for new, more advanced DNA testing of evidence from Fort Worth cold cases. If you're interested, you can make a donation online at FWPD Cold Cases Support dot org. That's FWPD for Fort Worth Police Department Cold Case Support dot Org. Will include a link

in our show notes. Now, I want to ask you a question about Final Days. The question I was going to ask you today was about the cognitive interview that you wanted to conduct with Linda. If you haven't yet listened to Final Days on Earth, Linda Nienhauser was a Colorado hiker who saw the body of Damien heard from a distance the day after he went missing from a

late night Collins party in twenty fourteen. As Claire reveals in a bonus episode that came out last August, Linda Nienhauser, who had earlier agreed to undergo a cognitive interview, unfortunately died of cancer in January twenty twenty one before that interview could happen. That is so true and it was heartbreaking. So the

idea of a cognitive interview is that it's not using hypnosis. It's just using memory aids and techniques that trauma therapists use for people to go back in the recesses of their mind and recall usually traumatic events that for the most part, they really do have a place in your brain that for your own emotional health and protection that you block off and their ways. There's relaxation exercises that have been proven to help you access those memories. And you know, it's often

used with people who have endured trauma. You know, it can be used with children who have seen something and you know, it's imprinted on them and ten years later, five years later, whatever it may be, you know, they're able to recall it with pretty good you know clarity. And forensic artists have used it with women and other people who've been attacked and they don't they think they can't remember anything about their attacker, but they're able to go

back to that place put themselves in that moment. A lot of it has to do with um, you know, ye like I said, relaxation and then also you know, building that memory piece by piece, you know, would you remember what you were wearing, do you remember where you were sitting? Do you remember you know what time of day it was? And it it really does help you, um, to get back to that place and

to to pull up you know, those memories in your mind. And then there have been you know, proven it is somewhat controversial there of course, there will always be people that that um you know, don't support it, don't believe in it, UM, but it has been used you know, in in criminal cases and court cases by you know, authorities. Not being able to conduct a cognitive interview with Lynda Nienhauser is a big setback and Claire's

mission to uncover exactly how Damian Hurd died. In her podcast, she talks about how she has waffled over the years trying to make sense of a very strange situation. Given my own feeling about what happened to Damien, I just had to ask Claire where she stands today. So the final question that I want to ask you about Final Days, I'll be honest, the first two or three episodes, I kept going, Man, Claire's reaching, Claire's reaching. This kid just killed himself. He just killed himself. Now, I'm

not sure. There's just so much there. There's just so much inconsistencies. I'm just not sure. Is that where you land today? You know, I really do go back and forth on my theories and what I believe. You know, The place that I feel that I'm in today is we deserve

more answers. His family deserves more answers, and it seems to me that they could be given those answers if people would come forward and talk about the ID card usage, if they would talk about, you know, if we could identify who was driving that white truck that day at Cabin Creek and who was using those bicycles. I believe that there could be innocent explanations for all

of it, but we need to hear it. As we ended our conversation, Claire had a question for us. I was so glad to find your podcast because it's so well produced and it's such an interesting story and really opened my eyes to a trend that was going on in DFW that you know, I had no idea about. And you know, I guess was this was Curtis not Curtis don Brown. But were these unsolved cases things that you had worked on previously in your career and you had how did you find your topic

for still for season one? So that's one of the things that Christina and I debate about because we can't remember exactly who first found these cases. I think it was her, She thinks it was me. Part of it was also the fact that we grew up in DFW. We were alive when that was going on. We were living in the Dallas area, not Fort Worth, and so we were oblivious to what was happening in Fort Worth. So as she really started diving in, As Christine started diving in and we would

just start talking about it, I just kept getting mortified. I kept going, my god, we were here, we lived through this. How did I not hear a thing about all of these women being found murdered and missing, you know, just thirty miles down the road when I was a junior and senior in high school. So that was the personal connection for me. I think you kind of felt the same way, but it just grew into something that we felt really passionate about. I would say I was those women.

I was those women at that time. I was the same age, I had the same experiences with college. I went to the same nightclubs, and I heard about them on the news at the time, and you thought about myself and my safety as a result. So for me it was extremely personal. Well, Claire, it's been a real pleasure. We thank you for making the track over to our neck of the woods, and thank you so much for being willing to spend your afternoon with us. So this was

very interesting. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me. So with season one behind us, many of you have asked what's next for season two, we're moving to a different cold case. Well, actually it's two cold cases, both of which take us to the Pacific Northwest. First, we have a woman who vanished and was presumably murdered in nineteen seventy six, and then there is a woman's body that was found in the area almost exactly

two years later. Like everyone associated with the cases, we're trying to figure it out. Is this the same woman? With DNA and modern forensics? That should be easy, right? What could have happened that has kept those long awaited answers hidden for so long? Join us January twenty seven for season two of Still. Anyone with information pertaining to any of the murders in season one should contact the Fort Worth Police Department's Cold Case Unit at cold Case at

fort WORTHPD dot com. Still as a production of The Reporter's Notebook and Grayson Shaw Media, You can connect with us online at The Reporter's Notebook dot com or via email at info at the Reporter's Notebook dot com. Still was researched, written and produced by Karen Shaw Anderson. Research was also provided by associate producer Christine Hughes. Original music by Smith Uoso, I'm Your Host and associate producer Gary Anderson. Special thanks to Claire Santama, hosting producer of Final Days

on Earth. Like Follow and subscribe to still on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to join the conversation. Limitations three twenty one. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this

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