Welcome back to the Pathwe Chile for part two of our series about the murder of Ashley Estell. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up on what we talked about in our previous episode.
Well, this is a heartbreaking case involving a seven year old victim named Ashley Estelle who lived in Plano, Texas in September of nineteen ninety three, and she was going to her brother's soccer tournament in the middle of a public park and she separated from her parents for a
few minutes to go play in the playground. But even though there were hundreds of people around, she somehow got abducted without anyone seeing or hearing anything, and the following day, her murdered body would be discovered next to a remote country road and would turn out that she had been strangled to death. It was long before a potential suspect
named Michael Blair popped up on the radar. He was a convicted sex offender who had spent time in prison for attempting to sexually assault and kidnap a young girl from her bedroom, and even though he received a ten year prison sense, he was released after only serving eighteen months.
He caught on the investigator's attention because he drove by Ashley Estelle's murder scene and he seemed to have a weird obsession with the case, so they gradually built a case against him, and he was finally charged with Ashley's murder, and it turned out that most of the case against him was based on what we now know as junk science, because they found hairs on Ashley's body, but of course they did not match Blair, and they found hairs and fiber evidence in his car, but of course none of
it could be linked to Ashley or the murder scene. And Blair was definitely a bad guy because he did have an extensive history of molesting children and because he was painted as such a monster in court. He was convicted at his trial, but surprisingly he spent eighteen years on death row. But they did DNA testing against the evidence, and surprisingly it turned out that none of it actually
match Blair. He was exonerated as being responsible for Ashley's murder, but because while he was in prison he had confessed to molesting some other children before he was charged with the murder, he wound up getting some additional life sentences added to his original death sentence. So even though he was taken off death row, he was not released from prison. Emerald Man incarcerated for the rest of his life because
of his other child sex offenses. So they've attempted to try to figure out who Ashley's real killer might be. They looked at an unnamed individual named Suspect number four, who has since passed away, but they've yet to find any evidence such as DNA which proves he could have been responsible for murdering Ashley. So officially, after thirty years, more than thirty years, this crime is still unsolved. Now.
This is definitely one of the most complex wrongful conviction cases I've ever come across, and it's pretty remarkable to see how this story has evolved over the past three decades. If you type Ashley Estelle's name into YouTube, you'll find a one hour clip which is a compilation of local news segments which aired in the year following her murder and chronicled the investigation and arrest of Michael Blair, along
with his subsequent trial and conviction. And if you were following the media coverage at that time, it would really be hard to imagine Blair being innocent of this crime. There was zero doubt that Blair was a dangerous sexual predator who armed children, and many of those aforementioned news segments put a heavy emphasis on the fact that he was senced to ten years in prison for attempting to assault and abduct an eleven year old girl, but he
wound up being after serving only eighteen months. This escalated into quite a scandal, as the Texas Board of Pardons and Pearles tried to do a lot of covering up to justify their decision, such as concocting a really lame story about how the paperwork about Blair's attack on the girl was mistakenly left out of his file at his
parole hearing. Well, the fact of the matter is that Blair's early release was due largely to an epidemic of serious prison overcrowding which took place in Texas during the nineteen eighties and early nineties. It reached the point where as many inmates as possible had to receive parole or early release in order to deal with this issue, and unfortunately, this meant that some dangerous criminals were allowed to walk
back out under the streets and wound up reoffending. So you can imagine the outrage when everyone believed that Blair murdered Ashley Estelle during a time period he should have been behind bars serving a ten year sentence. As we mentioned in our last episode, this whole controversy led to the passing of Ashley the Laws, which ensured that sex offenders who harm children when receive harsher sentences lesser chances of parole and mandatory sex offender registration if they did
get released. Now, even though he did not actually kill Ashley, we know that Blair did molest some children after he was parolled, so the decision to release him still had negative consequences. Those who champion Ashley's Laws do not believe Blair's exoneration made the legislation any less worthwhile, and I do agree with that though it's pretty ironic how these laws stem from a case which turned out to be a wrongful conviction.
Yeah, when you step back and you think about these laws, that Ashley's Laws that come out, I don't think anyone would say those shouldn't be in place.
When you look at the idea that it.
Took a person who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of a child for these laws to pass, none of these laws are about murder. There to get a notification and I didn't vcation and awareness about who sexual predators are in the community and to get higher punishments for these sex offenders. That should have been in place long
before Ashley Estelle was ever killed. That should have been in place when they started to pay attention to the serial nature of child sex offenders, when they started to pay attention to the fact that once they start offending against a child, it's likely that that's something that is going to be continuous. It's something that will escalate, it's something that's really difficult to overcome. And so why it
took Ashley's death is what's frustrating. And you do have to step back and say, you know, are we basing it on his sexual offenses that he committed, because we know that Blair did have sexual offenses against children. So Blair alone could have been an example for Ashley's law without Ashley's murder. So the part that maddens me is that the murder of this little child should have had nothing to do with the existence of these laws in
the first place. But I I'm grateful as a mother and a community person and someone who wants to protect the children of our communities that these laws are on the books.
Yeah, and I should have mention that the overcrowding in prisons in Texas was a serious issue during the nineteen eighties, and there were criminals even worse than Michael Blair who wound up getting released even though they really shouldn't have been.
And one of those is serial killer Kenneth McDuff, who was originally sentenced to death for a murder from the nineteen seventies, got it commuted to life imprisonment, but then got released in nineteen eighty nine because the prisons were so crowded that they just had to start releasing dangerous offenders and hope they had rehabilitated. And then Kenneth McDuck went on to kill more people before he was recaptured.
So this was a rampant problem. And it is a big shame that Michael Player, even though he did not kill Ashley, did wind up harming other children after his early release.
I don't know how I didn't know that about Texas. I had this idea in my head that they're so tough on crime that I thought that it wasn't possible that they would rule least all of these prisoners prematurely. It goes against this obviously false belief that I held. This is really wild, but as sho, didn't you live in Texas for a while.
I did, And I believe that McDuff actually told the prison officials and the sheriff that if you release me, you're going to have another body on your doorstep. And he followed through with that after he was released, and so they it was almost no systematic approach to it. It was, oh, you murdered someone, likelihood you'd kill again is lo How do you know that?
Right?
Because he was a dangerous offender, and so he even said you should not release me, and then he went on to kill. Beyond that, it became to the point where it was just so overcrowded they desperately had to start opening doors and figuring out, you know, we're going to take a gamble, and a lot of those gambles did not pay off. Texas is crazy. It's very very
harsh on crime. But then they do just like every other you know, corrections department, when they don't have the budget and they don't have the space, it almost seems like they're not really looking at the data when they make some of these decisions.
Yeah, I think this is a situation where they were just too tough on crime and as a result, they did not have a space for all their prisoners.
So there's really no other way to say this. Michael Blair is a sick human being and he most definitely deserves to be locked up for the rest of his life. This isn't like most other wrongful conviction cases, as there was no emotional scene where an innocent person walked out of prison to experience freedom for the first time in years.
Even though his death sentence was overturned ensuring that he would not be executed for murder, Blair had already received multiple life sentences for molesting other children, so the only change was that he was transferred from death row to the prison's general population. I know everyone was pretty insulted when Blair sought one million in compensation for his wrongful conviction.
A few years earlier, Texas had passed a bill called the Tim Cole Act, named after a young man who was wrongfully convicted of rape and died in prison before his family used DNA evidence to exonerate him and earn
him a posthumous pardon. The Tim Cole Act ensured that anyone who was wrongfully convicted would receive one hundred and sixty thousand for each year of incarceration, but Cole's brother publicly stated that awarding that type of compensation to Blair, who was guilty of a number of other terrible crimes,
would soil his brother's name and memory. It's a valid point since the money is supposed to help wrongfully convicted people to readjust to society, and there's no reason a child molestor who is going to remain locked up for the rest of his life needs one million dollars, which is why his request was ultimately rejected.
Yeah, I mean, honestly, when you look at Blair's case, a lot of states have these clauses built in that'll say if if you are a dangerous offender, if you have a record, if you have things that would have made the police more likely to include you in a suspect pool or elevate your suspects status, that those things can all chip away into the compensation decision. And so even though there are compensation statutes on the books, there's also exceptions woven in to say, oh that would take
off half of the money. Oh, this would actually exclude you from getting money. And so again I don't think anyone with Blair is going, oh, this poor man, he has to be made whole again. His family needs to be made a whole again.
But when you look.
At the laws, they're very very pro state. There to protect the Department of Corrections in the state. They are not to protect someone who's wrongfully convicted. So when it isn't someone like Blair. You look at these compensation statutes and on paper, some of them look pretty powerful, but then you'll start to see things where it says, unless it's a DNA exoneration, you will get nothing, and there's
these kind of just crazy restrictions on them. Some people walk away with nothing when truly they were not dangerous offenders that put themselves at the heart of the crime.
Quick question for you, Ash, I don't know if you know the stats on this, but just maybe in your personal opinion, what percentage of people who are wrongfully incarcerated actually get the compensation that they deserve. And I don't mean people where they've said like you are absolutely factually like innocent of this, but just those who are wrongily
incarcerated and who get let out. And I know there's different types of designations or results for that, like you are innocent, you're pardoned of the crime, and then sometimes they're just let out. What percentage did those people get compensation?
So a quick surge when you look at it, it says as of twenty twenty three that it looks like around forty one percent of exonerated individuals who have sought payment received it. Now that means that there has to be an attorney who's teaching them and saying, hey, you're eligible for it, you need to go after it, and here's what you should be compensated with.
Do people not seek after it if.
They know that they're in a jurisdiction where they are not eligible given a set of circumstances. So I think that's a misleading stat I think it's low. And remember too, a lot of people are exonerated or freed, but their criminal record is not always expunged and they're not always
released with this freedom pass. And so remember things like an Alfred plea or making an agreement with the state is part of the release of that prisoner, and so in those cases, they aren't able to come after compensation, because they'll say, we'll let you walk today. If you want to plead guilty, we'll let you walk today. If you want to take an Alford plea, you can walk today if you'll sign that you agree that you're not coming after the state. So I mean there's deals like
that made all the time. And so if eligible and they've applied for it, forty one percent, I would say a very glow percentage actually get compensated for what they are eligible for what they deserve.
It's hard to understand what Blair's motivation might have been when he decided to confess to molesting all these other children while he was on death row. Perhaps he felt there was no way his death sentence was going to be overturned, and he just wanted to clear his conscience before he was executed. I did not want to go into explicit detail about Blair's crimes on these episodes, but if you want to learn more information, go check out the article published in d magazine by Jackie Hilburn in
two thousand and one. She interviewed Blair and had to read all those letters he sent her in which he described all his abuse against children in graphic detail. And
being a mother herself. This made Hilburn physically ill. It's definitely a good thing that Blair wound up being convicted of additional crimes while he was on death row, because if he had walked out of prison after his murder conviction was overturned, I think it's pretty much a guarantee he would have attempted to harm more children, because it looks like he was one of those serial predators who just cannot stop.
Yeah, exactly, Blair is someone who has an affinity for hurting innocent children. And so when you look at this idea that he is, you know, convicted of these additional crimes, he's put in life, into prison for life. Even though he's exonerated for this murder conviction, it's still incredibly powerful to say, thank goodness someone like this was locked up right. Like you said, there's no grief loss, there's no sadness here,
there's no rallies outside saying free this man. He's innocent, you know, release him back into the community where he can be a successful member of our society. I think people were pretty quiet when Blair's conviction was overturned, and like you said, when you look there's a whole lot of def details about Blair and the death of Ashley a stealth and so for on his front, I don't think many people were very upset that he ended up serving life in prison anyway.
In most cases, I'd be pretty agast at the idea that the jury at his murder trial took only twenty seven minutes to find him guilty. But I can kind
of understand why it happened here. The jury wouldn't have known the physical evidence against him was junk science, or been aware of the credibility issues with Charles Lynch, the forensic analyst who testified against him, And even though Blair denied being a murderer, the trial did not shy away from sharing some of his other heinous crimes, which included raping his six year old half sister when he was
a teen. So I can definitely see why the jury would believe that he was more than capable of killing Ashley. It's no secret that Texas is the most pro death penalty state there is, and to sent a number of people to death row who turned out to be innocent. But that doesn't necessarily mean all of those exoneries were
good people. If you're on our Patreon pages. You might recall that Robin and I once did an exclusive bonus Minnesot about the nineteen seventy nine murder of Deborah Jackson, who spent forty years as an unidentified Jane Doe known
only as Orange Socks. Notorious serial killer Henry Lee Lucas was sentenced to death for her murder after he falsely confessed to it, but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment because the evidence clearly showed that Lucas was in an entirely different state at the time the crime took place. Like Michael Blair, Lucas was a vile individual who was guilty of other crimes and deserved to be
locked up. But no matter what your views on the death penalty might be, if you execute these monsters for the crimes they did not actually commit, that allows the real killer to get away with it.
Yes, yes, yes, Juels for the people in the back, you got to say aloud, right, it allows the real killer to get away with this. So I've often heard people when we're sitting around and we're talking and someone says, oh, yeah, did you hear there's this guy who might not have done this crime and people say, who cares, right, who cares this guy's trouble anyway, or oh man, that guy's been scum ever since you know, he's been here and everyone knows he's a bad guy.
And I'm thinking you should care. I care.
We care because if the wrong person is locked up and a guilty person is now on the streets, and with crimes like this, with crimes against children, sexual crimes against children, crimes that are going to escalate in intensity, who's the next child that's going to be hurt by
this person who actually killed Ashley Stell or Orange socks? Right, So if you do not get the correct defender, if you do not lock up the right person, even though a wrongful conviction should may get someone like Henry Lee Lucas in prison or his sentence elongated, you have a killer or a sexual sadist or someone walking around and everyone is now at risk. So all of us should
be carrying. And on the flip side, when you look at people who are executed, same kind of thing where people go, yeah, but they had done all these other things, Well, you want to make sure that our justice system is always getting it right. And with the death penalty, and things like that. If there's a chance that people get it wrong, which we know we see in wrongfulu miicture cases, you just got to be really careful with those kind of ultimate decisions because you can't take them back.
And in these situations, I often think of Stephen Avery because no matter what you think of him, he was genuinely wrongfully convicted for the rape charge from nineteen eighty five and served eighteen years for a rape he did not commit. And some people might think, well, he was a terrible person anyway, so he deserved it. But then you remember that the real rapist in that case, Greg Reallen, he wound up braping I think two or three other women. Well,
Avery was incarcerated in prison. So that's yet another example where even if someone's a bad human being, you put him in prison for the crimes that you do not commit, and the real killer, the real perpetrator, is free to harm other people. So let's go back to the beginning and see how this crime unfolded. This is another one of those heartbreaking cases in which a child was murdered after seemingly being abducted in the blink of an eye.
To recap Ashley Estelle's parents took her to a soccer tournament in Carpenter Park and only let her out of their sight for a few minutes so she could use a swing set at a playground located just a couple yards away. But even though there were literally over one thousand people in the park that day, an unknown perpetrator somehow managed to abduct Ashley and flee the area without
anyone seeing anything. This story is every parent's worst nightmare and shows just how easily something horrible like this can have happen. What's even more incredible is that a number of people were filming the soccer games that day, which prompted law enforcement to collect and extensively study their footage, but it doesn't sound like anyone captured anything which provided
clues about Ashley's abduction. One of the biggest points which was made in Michael Blair's defense is that there were no witnesses who could place him and Ashley together that day. But there were also no witnesses who could place Ashley with anyone else who might have abducted her, which is why this case is so frustrating.
You know, you got to think about what a soccer field looks like when there's a tournament going on, or there's a ton of kids and families. I mean, there's moms and dads there, and so we'd like to think that a sexual predator or a child rapist or killer is going to look like a monster from a movie, but they probably look like a soccer dad or just
somebody who's at the public park. So there's no way of saying, oh, you know, this guy was so scary looking, he was so suspicious looking, because there's thousands of people there. There are men and women and children, and so it's you would have to do something pretty grand to stand out amongst those people. Again, at the playground, how many parents were not at the field where their kids were playing and instead we're sitting there watching the playground like
a hog. Probably not many, because everyone's kind of centered around that playground, but also watching the soccer field where their other child's playing. And so I just don't think anybody had sharp eyes on the playground. What if someone walked by with a dog on a leash and just gently walked by and said, hey, you want to pet my puppy. Come when you'll come walk the puppy with me and walked off, or oh, did you see that ball over there by the woods? Come help me get
that ball in the woods. And just as they're walking by and just take this little one and walk keep walking. Who would beat their eye and think that's not her dad, you know, unless they were looking and hearing and watching that interaction. Specifically, if I just saw a little girl and a younger or average age man walking away, I would think that's that little girl's dad or uncle or
coach or something like that. So that situation is just so scary to think of from this perspective, because predators don't stand out. That's how they're successful at getting people to look the other way, or to do things under the noses of people who are watching.
Yeah, I'm guessing you ever this person was, it was probably someone very nondescript, not someone that you would just look at and say, ooh, look at that creepy guy over there. That's not someone I want hanging around children. And they were likely able to blend into a crowd, and that might be why they were able to lure Ashley an abductor without anyone seeing anything.
It's scary to think that some predators seem to be the best profilers, like they're able to pick just the kid, and they're able to blend in so seamlessly that nobody notices and nobody can clock like what their monstrous intentions are now Well, there are some wrongful conviction cases where it's obvious the authorities knew they were railroading an innocent person.
I have no problem believing that the authorities in this case genuinely believe that Michael Blair was the right guy, even putting aside his past record for crimes against children. He first showed up on the police's radar by driving by the murder scene several times. He had a flyer for Ashley's disappearance in his vehicle and a stuffed bunny, which totally fits the profile of a sexual predator using
toys to lure children. Blair's alibi on the day of the crime was that he was sleeping in his apartment alone and there was a period of several hours where no other eyewitnesses could account for his whereabouts. Blair's roommate verified that he returned home and found Blair sleeping at four thirty pm, and while the timeframe for Lair to have murdered Ashley and make it back to his apartment
by four point thirty would have been tight. It was not impossible, since forensic science was nowhere near as advanced back then as it is today. I'm sure it was easy to believe that the Charles Lynch's testimony about the
hair and fiber evidence linking Blair to the crime was legitimate. However, the one thing about the prosecution's case which I did find a bit unethical was placing so much emphasis on some clump of hairs found at Jack Carter Park and having experts testify that the hairs were consistent with Ashley and Blair. This location was two miles away from Carpenter Park, and since there was no evidence that either of them went to that park to begin with, the clump of
hairs likely had no connection to the case. If this crime had taken place in the era before DNA testing, I don't think there's much chance that Blair would have been exonerated, but DNA evidence doesn't lie. Though the Colin County District Attorney's office was initially reluctant to acknowledge that they may have convicted the wrong man, to their credit, they did finally change their tune once it became obvious
that none of the forensic evidence matched Blair. I'm sure the knowledge that Blair was going to remain incarcerated for his other crimes made the decision to overturn his death sentence much easier.
Oh.
Absolutely, And when you do have the DNA evidence, it's not guaranteed, but it's much easier to say, hey, look we got it wrong. It's not an argument at that point, and so I think it gave peace of saying he's going to get exonerated for this, but don't worry, he can't be released. But I have to go back to when you're talking about the testimonies. You know, by default, if you think about the way our justice system is designed,
it's quote innocent until proven guilty. But by the time you walk into a courtroom in a prison jumpsuit or you know you're being called the main suspect, the jury already believes that the state must have gotten it right, or you wouldn't have gotten that far because we all know of cases that should have been brought to prosecution and they weren't. And so if it makes it that far,
the jury already thinks. I'm pretty sure the state knows what they're doing, and so there is an inclination to trust everything that prosecution witnesses say, everything that forensic experts say from a prosecution standpoint, and to automatically cast doubt or lower the significance of any defense witness or defense expert that's put on the stand. And so just by the nature of our justice system, you're in trouble if
you're sitting in the defendant seat. And then here at the time, remember, we didn't know as much information about the subjective nature of forensic science, about this junk science that comes about. And even today, if you called one of us up to the stand to testify about issues with eyewitness identification, but a woman gets up and says, I'm one hundred percent sure, and she has tears in her eyes, I will never forget the face of this man,
and she's one hundred percent sure. On the day of trial, even with scientific evidence showing a jury why that's not one hundred percent, I still think jurors, as human beings and not scientists, are going to side with the emotional, the kind of normal nature that the prosecution tells the truth that the prosecution is always right and the defense is just trying to get their person off. So it's really complicated.
Is that like the Ronald Cotton case? It was it Ronald.
Cotton so great.
Ronald Cotton is one of the best best cases to look at for a wrongful conviction.
Yes, Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton.
And I'm sure even though the jury would never admit this, I bet they were influenced by the fact that all of Blair's crimes against children, his sexual offenses were introduced during the trials. So they're thinking to themselves, I'm supposed to remain unbiased. I'm supposed to only look at the evidence which alleges that he killed Ashley. But I'm sure
in the back of their mind certain things. There's no way I want to let this man back on the streets because he's obviously, even if he didn't commit this crime, he's still a danger to society. So if the killer wasn't Blair, then who really did abduct and murder Ashley? Well, ironically enough, Blair's defense team spent years pointing the finger at Josh Crowley, an alternate suspect who also turned out to be innocent. Again, I can totally see why people
would believe that Crowley was capable of this crime. He had a previous history of child molestation and had fled to Texas from South Carolina to avoid those pending charges, and unlike Blair, Crowley could definitively be placed in Carpenter Park since he was refereeing the soccer games that day. Crowley was briefly questioned by police during the initial stages
of the investigation, prompting him to immediately leave town. But as suspicious as that look, I'm sure that was due to the fact that he was wanted on other charges in South Carolina. When questioned about his potential involvement in Ashley's murder, Crowley kept pleading the fil amendment, but when all was said and done, the DNA evidence did not match him either. Strangely enough, even though Crowley was not involved in Ashley's murder, his very presence in the park
that day was another strong argument for Ashley's laws. Here was a lot to child molester who somehow managed to obtain a job refereeing children soccer games, So that was probably another sign that stronger measures needed to be taken.
It's really really interesting when you look at what sex offenders are able to do what they're able to qualify for, and then some of the things that they're not allowed to do, and some of them just are nonsensical. And then you think of loopholes and things like this where
you know, like parent teacher conferences. Right, so if a parent's a convicted sex offender and it's a direct event related to their child, open house, parent teacher conferences, whatever, they can come up to the school for a school event pertaining to their child, Well that is legitimately an event designed around children. And so there's all these very complex and you know nuances, and here you have someone who, oh, there's a child's soccer game, I'm going to referee the
children's soccer games. No hard pass. That should not be allowed. He shouldn't be allowed near the children's park. All of those things should have disqualified him from that position. But again, even though he's a dangerous offender, he was not the one who killed Ashley, and he was one of the suspects that was on the radar. I think them looking at the small list around that area of child sex offenders only is where they fell short. We said it on the last episode, But what if it was someone
not from the area. What if it's someone who had never been convicted or caught for their crimes against children? What if that's why and how they were able to escalate their crimes and get away with it for so long is because they're an established criminal who's never been caught.
So that small scope.
Yes, there's people that you should look at, But if you only look at convicted sex offenders, what about the ones who have successfully gotten away?
Yeah, because there were a thousand people in the park that day, and I do think there's a good chance that besides Crowley, there were probably other sex offenders there, and some of them probably did not have records at that point and were completely under the radar. So it would not surprise me at all if the same thing applies to Ashley's killer.
It now seems like authorities now leaned towards the real killer being a man known only as suspect number four, But since this person has been deceased for two decades, they have elected not to publicly disclose his identity without conclusive evidence. I know that following Blair's exoneration, Barry Sheck, who was quoted as saying that the apparent real perpetrator had no record, though it's unclear if he was specifically referring to Suspect number four. If that's true, then this
man obviously slipped through the cracks. There are definitely some things about him which looks suspicious as hell, particularly how he made sure to get at a burial plot as close as possible to Ashley's grave and fabricated a story about having his own child abducted and murdered in a manner which was disturbingly similar to what happened to Ashley.
All that being said, there have been a number of documented cases involving missing and murdered children in which a potential suspect popped up on the radar because they seemed to have a creepy obsession with the crime, but then it later turned out that they had no involvement. You could also apply this same logic to Michael Blair, because the only reason he even got implicated in Ashley's case to begin with was because he kept driving past the
murder scene. So even those Suspect number four seemed to have his own unhealthy obsession with Ashley, that doesn't necessarily mean he killed her, and the physical evidence does not conclusively link him to the crime.
And that's another fact they're tying a lot of these men to they knew Ashley, they went to church with Ashley, they had a familiarity with Ashley. I don't think that's what happened in this case. I think someone said, Hmm, if I want to take a child, where should I go a very populated area so that I'm not actually seen or alone with children. There's going to be so
many people, no one will be paying attention. I'm going to look for a child who doesn't seem to have any parents close by, or who seems distracted, or who looks like I don't know my type, and see if I can get her. I know the child that responds to me. And so I don't think he knew Ashley.
I think this was a crime of opportunity and something that happened very quickly, and it was an emo that he had successfully done many times, and Ashley just so happened to be there and be the right kind of kid that he could take.
Yeah, and it might be a thing where I'm going to go to a park where all these kids are, I'm going to look for one who's alone, not being watched for by any adults. And because Ashley just happened to be playing on a swing set by herself without her parents watching her, she became the wrong victim who is in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And it's so scary too to think about the fact that we know so much about these perpetrators. We think about like the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit and how they've studied all of these murderers and serial rapists and child predators and they found all these different commonalities. But just to think about for a second that we only know these things about people who were caught, those people that made mistakes. The ones that didn't make mistakes, we don't know anything about.
Yeah, And it just makes you wonder, is Ashley's killer someone who got away with it indefinitely and was never arrested for any crime because they just kept managing to get away with it. So the details about the DNA evidence are a bit confusing. It's been stated that suspect number four was excluded as the source of the DNA on the hairs found on Ashley's body and the skin underneath their fingernails, but could not be excluded as the
source of the male DNA found on Ashley's shoes. We can't even be one hundred percent certain if the DNA on the shoes belonged to the killer, but since it was not consistent with ashley father or brother, there's a good chance it is the perpetrators. But what's particularly interesting to me is that DNA profiles for two separate males were apparently found on the skin under Ashley's fingernails. So does this mean that multiple people were responsible for Ashley's murder?
This is what makes me ponder the possibility that suspect number four was involved in the crime but had an unidentified accomplice who might still be out there somewhere. Of course, the best case scenario is that suspect number four committed the crime alone. Since he's now deceased and cannot harm
anyone else, there's a compelling, circumstantial case against them. But it seems that with the evidence they have available, investigators just cannot definitively prove or disprove that suspect number four is connected to the crime. But luckily, as I'm sure you're well aware, the crime fighting technique known as genetic genealogy has helped close the books on a number of
cold cases these past several years. In some of these cases, the perpetrator was already dead, but genealogy was able to link them to the crime and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they did it. So I think the best chance of achieving closure in Ashley's case would be to upload the DNA evidence they have to a
genealogy database and see if it leads to anyone. This could be the best strategy for figuring out whether suspect number four was involved in this crime, and if there were multiple perpetrators.
Could you imagine if there were two perpetrators and you have a man who walks by and he's like, have you seen a white dog? And she's like no, And he says, oh my gosh, can you do me a favor? Can you look in those bushes over there or in the woods right there. I'm going to go over here. Can you look in the woods there and come back and tell me if you see my white dog?
I'm so sad.
And she walks towards where he tells her to walk, and then there's somebody else who's grabbing her and then they meet up. So I mean it is possible that there's a ruse of two men who are hurting and taking children and each have a different role in the process.
It would be amazing if genetic genails. She was used here.
And one last thing. Only two and a half years after Ashley's murder, another similar crime took place in Texas, which also led to the passing of new legislation named after the victim. On January thirteenth, nineteen ninety six, nine year old Amber Hagerman was abducted while she was out riding her bicycle, and her murdered body was found four
days later. As you probably know, this crime led to the implementation of the Amber Alert program, which as a means of spreading the word about child abductions as quickly as possible. Amber's murder is still unsolved, and while there is no evidence to link this crime to Ashley's murder, the fact that it took place in Arlington, just over forty miles away from Plano, has led to speculation that the same perpetrator could have been responsible for killing both girls.
But until these crimes are solved, the possibilities are endless.
It's so sad.
That's exactly what we were saying earlier. You have the risk now are these two girls linked? Are there four other girls? Are there ten other girls? How many children were hurt or killed by the person who who killed Ashley? So without knowing the right person, they were given a free pass because Blair was arrested for this crime. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
If by chance, Ashley Estelle and Amber Hagerman's killer are the same person. Amber's murder took place after Blair had already been convicted and sent to death Rose, So I'm sure the perpetrator felt more enabled thinking that they got away with it once, so they'll have no problems getting away with it again. So if you have been to have any information about the unsolved murder of Ashley Estelle, please contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any final thoughts on this case.
It's heartbreaking when you think about the grief in this case, and it's not just isolated to the horrific horror that
family experienced. Think about the grief of your child being hurt by someone and then murdered, the unfair guilt that that family placed on themselves because they were at this public facility, The way friends and family felt when they said, hey, we were there, what if we missed something right, But then this feeling that we're getting justice for her, we're getting at least accountability for the person who killed her, and feeling that we're going to go through all the
horror of a trial. Hear these horrific details, get this man put behind bars, and you step back and you start to say, now we have to.
Fight to heal.
And then you find out it wasn't him, and so that kind of you know, the how the world is unfair and doesn't work and the justice system failed you, and the fear of how many other little girls could have been hurt and who did it?
All of those things add to.
The weight of grief on the family, on the friends, on the community. And then again, like we said, we don't know, oh how far reaching the implications are here, because because the right killer knew I got away with it, I have a successful MO and this probably wasn't the first time he heard a child that he continued to likely offend after that. And so my gut turns when I think of a case like this where someone thought I got away with it. I wonder who else I
could hurt And it's horrifying. My heart breaks for everyone involved and for the community as a whole as well.
Not having that resolution and not knowing who the real killer is and if this suspect number four is indeed involved, and not having that conclusive evidence, it just leaves that gaping hole where some kind of closure or resolution should be, not closure, because we talked about that so often that it truly really isn't such thing as closure. But what I find really striking here is just this idea that Blair was driving past where Ashley's house was. He had
a flyer about her disappearance. And it makes me think how many other cases that are like this, where you've got either serial murderers or rapists, child predators, and they're studying the work of others that are like them, maybe to gain inside and information, maybe they get off on it on some level. And how many other cases have they been implicated Like we'd mentioned earlier about the Orange Socks slash Deborah Jackson case where Henry Lee Lucas had
admitted to that. And it's really interesting to think that there could be and also horrifying to think that there could be all of these cases out there where you have the wrong person incarcerated on the real killer or child abductor or rapist got away with it because the person that was maybe having some evidence to do with it, or not direct evidence, it would be maybe circumstantial things like a flyer, they were just a fan, or they were just a admiring that work, and they were a
bad person, kind of like Blair is here. It just feels like so much time was wasted because of that, and we are at a different place as far as forensic evidence goes today, so I would truly hope that that wouldn't happen in present, But the details of this case were just really mind boggling.
Yeah. I remember when I was looking for cases for us to discuss and I was thinking, we haven't done a wrongful conviction case in a while. What's a unique one that we can discuss with Ashley? And this one is stowed out from the others because we have one where someone was convicted and sent to death row for a horrific murder who is undeniably a bad person who has committed some other horrific crimes, but was conclusively proven
innocent of this particular crime. And it's just kind of a story where just so many things went horribly wrong, where even though you can kind of understand why a jury would convict Blair, because if you look at his background, you look at the suspicious things he did, you can understand why so many people legitimately believed that he was
the real killer. Yet at the same time, he kind of started this mess because he was the one who drew the police's attention by driving by Ashley's murder scenes several times and acting very strangely. And of course he was convicted on evidence that we now know as junct science. But I think that the people in power did legitimately think they were doing the right thing at the time
and that they had found the right guy. And of course it also put this whole state of Texas and their board of Pardons and Paroles under scrutiny, because, no matter what you think of his involvement in this particular crime, he got off as easy. He should have served at least ten years in jail for attempting to abduct and sexually assault and eleven year old girl, but he was released after only serving eighteen months. So that was another outrage because he was put in a position to harm
other children, even though we never should have. So all these years later, they have found other potential suspects, like suspect number four, who could be the real killer of Ashley, but they've just never been able to conclusively prove it because they don't have that one piece of definitive forensic evidence.
But then you just realize that, well, if this crime had happened today, I think Blair would be cleared as a suspect very quickly because DNA testing has advanced so much, and that they would be able to perform a proper investigation and potentially find the real perpetrator. But unfortunately, because over thirty years have passed, we still don't know who
is responsible. But I do hope that one of these days they do perform genetic genealogy, put the offenders DNA into a database, and then maybe make a conclusive match and figure out who did this. And even if this person like Suspect number four, has already passed away, at least they can say with one hundred percent certainty who the killer was and finally close the books on this one for good.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trailment cold patreon.
Yes, the trail Cold patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer the standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier three,
the ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsaved Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.
So I go to let you know a little bit about the Jules and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in the show notes.
So I want to thank you all for listening, and any chance you have to share us on social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciate it. You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass Call for warm clothing
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy