Welcome back to the Pathwin Chili, I'm Robin.
I'm Jules, and I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.
August third, nineteen eighty, Osable Township, Michigan, Twenty year old Charita Thomas borrows her friend's car to pick up her daughter from a babysitter, but the vehicle breaks down before she arrives. Witnesses see Charita climbing into a blue pickup truck driven by a white male, but she's never heard from again. Jimmy Allen Nelson, the babysitter's brother in law, is suspected of harming Sharita in a racially motivated hate crime, and even though Scharita's body is not found, Nelson is
convicted of her murder. Three decades later, however, Nelson's conviction is overturned when new evidence surfaces which reportedly implicates another suspect, but no one else is charged with the crime, and Sharita remains a missing person.
After that, the path went Chiley, So we've got a pretty convoluted missing persons case to cover today. The nineteen eighty disappearance of Charita Thomas, our future victim is a twenty year old African American woman who went missing over forty five years ago, and one theory is that her
disappearance may have been a racially motivated hate crime. In fact, over two decades after Tarita's disappearance took place, a suspect named Jimmy Allen Nelson, who had a reputation for being a violent racist, wound up being charged and convicted of her murder, even though Tarita's body was never found. However, Nelson's conviction would be overturned after new evidence surfaced which
allegedly pointed towards another suspect. Though specific details about why this happened have been sealed and kept hidden from the public. There have been a number of twists and turns in this story, and the reason I wound up learning about it is because it has a connection to a very
controversial segment which was once featured on Unsolved Mysteries. But we'll go into more details about that a little later, but let's just say this is one of those cases where I started out feeling absolutely convinced of the prime suspect's guilt before I was thrown for a loop, and I now have a lot more questions than answers.
Well, I have a lot of questions too when we start looking at this case. One we know in the American justice system, when we look at someone who has been convicted and then has their conviction overturned, that is incredibly rare, even when there is significant evidence presented in their case. So there had to be something so damning to say that there was an error. Maid's that this case was one reinvestigated whatsoever, and two a court went
all the way through with actually reversing his conviction. That's a major step in our justice system. There's cases where we have DNA matching another suspect and the person's still not released. The story just morphs to include that person in the crime. So I'd be so fascinated to know what that information is. But you said, it's been quite quiet.
The other thing we see here is that we know that she was actually getting into a blue pickup truck by a being driven by a white driver, and that that's the last time she seems to be recognized anywhere. It is scary because it does play into this idea of was this something a racially motivated crime and who was driving that blue truck? In the end, when we look, do we know if Nelson had a blue truck?
He did, Yes, And as we're going to go along, we're going to mention a whole bunch of compelling pieces of circumstantial evidence against him, where at first glance you're probably going to think this is the right guy, because regardless of whether he's guilty or innocent, it does not sound like he's a good person. Yet, completely out of
the blue, his conviction wound up being overturned. And this is very out of the norm, like you said, because it's the prosecution who takes the initiative and decides to drop the charges because of new information that they supposedly uncovered, but they have still to this day not publicly revealed
what they found. But like you said, it's just so rare that it must have been pretty compelling if they're willing to drop what looked like, on the surface, a pretty compelling case against Jimmie Allen Nelson.
Yeah, and when they drop a case, they're saying, we messed up, we did something wrong, or we failed to provide the justice he deserved. And that takes quite a special prosecutor to be willing to admit that. So fascinating and like you said, it had to be pretty darned powerful.
Our story begins in Michigan in nineteen eighty and our central figure is twenty year old African American woman named Cherita Thomas who's currently living in a apartment in the town of Oscota with her four year old daughter, as well as her fiance, William Merritt, who's enlisted in the Air Force. One of Sharita's best friends is a woman named Patricia Bates, who also happens to be one of her neighbors in the apartment building and has two children
of her own. On Sunday, August third, Patricia was planning to travel to the nearby town of Mikado to see one of her friends play in a softball tournament, and Sharita wanted to go with her, so they made arrangements for Patricia's sister, Anna Bouchard to babysit their kids. The two women, along with Sharita's daughter and Patricia's two children, climbed into Patricia's car, an AMC Matador, and traveled to Ossable Township, where they dropped off the kids with Anna.
They then stopped off at the Wurtsmith Air Force Base so Sharita could borrow some money from her fiance William, before driving to the Hilltop Bar in Oscota.
For a drink.
While there, they briefly ran into twenty eight eight year old Jimmy Allen Nelson, who happened to be Anna's brother in law, before they left to travel to Mikado for the softball tournament. After finding out that Patricia's friend was not actually playing in the game that was scheduled, they decided to grab something to eat at the Mikado tavern.
While they were there, Patricia recalled that many of the patrons stared at them and made them feel so uncomfortable that both she and Sharita stepped into the ladies room together for a moment in order to chat. When they walked out, one of the patrons shouted out, quote, did you two have a good time in there? This prompted Sharita and Patricia to leave the tavern, and while they were doing so, the bartender told them not to come back.
Do we know much about this interaction because it sounds like they're being harassed and mistreated, But do we know why they were asked not to come back in? Is this something because he's being a jerk, or he's being racist or making assumptions, or were the girls getting into a verbal altercation with people. What happened and when they reacted to these people harassing.
Them, it sounds like a speculation that this was kind of a racist area, and because Trida was black, they maybe just did not like her being in their establishment, and they were giving like the cold eye to both her and Patricia because Patricia is white, and they probably did not like the idea of a black girl and
a white girl being friends. And that's probably why they gave that sarcastic comment when they went into the bathroom together, this black friend and his white friend, did you two have a good time in there, maybe trying to imply that they felt they were lesbians or something, And that's when they started getting the hints that these people don't want us here and it's time to go.
Wow.
So it really was a racially don't come back in here, like you're not welcome here.
That's what it sounds like. Yeah, like they never explicitly said it, but the way that the entire bar stopped and started staring at them the moment that Trida walked in through the door and this is known for being a predominantly white conservative area. It seems like they just did not want a woman of color in their establishment.
That sounds terrifying. I can't even imagine you go in with your friend to grab a drink and every single person at the bar is staring at you. Of course they wanted to go to the bathroom together, and then to think that they probably are not only racist, but they're anti gay or anti LGBTQIA plus, so you have a situation where they're implying that these women didn't go to the bathroom just to seek comfort in each other, that they're gay, and then that might add just another
layer of complexity and hate to the situation. It sounds very charged, it does.
It sounds like a scene you'd see in like the Deep South, in like the nineteen twenties or thirties. But this is Michigan in nineteen eighties. So I think it kind of took them completely aback that they would go into this town that was near to where they lived, and you then just have a feeling of being completely unwelcome there and almost that their lives were being threatened.
So Treda and Patricia finally went to see the softball tournament, and after it concluded, the tea seemed that Patricia's friend played on went to the Macado tavern for drinks, and in spite of the uncomfortable situation they had experienced at the tavern earlier that afternoon, Trida and Patricia decided to accompany them there. However, sometime after they arrived, Trida said that she wanted to leave so she could get back
home before fiance returned from work. Since Patricia wanted to stay out later, she agreed to let Trida borrower car and said she would find her own way home. She also drew up a map to her sister Anda's place in Ausable Township so that Schrida could drive there and pick up the three children before returning to their apartment
building in Oscata. Trida left Macado and Patricia's mattador, and after spending a couple more hours at the tavern, Patricia was given a ride back to her apartment at around two thirty am on August fourth. However, she was surprised to see that the mattador was not parked outside, and after phoning Anna, she learned that Trida had never shown
up to pick up the children. Patricia then spoke to Triita's fiance, William, who to that Charita had not yet arrived home and he had no idea where she was. They subsequently contacted the Ascota Township Police Department to report Charita missing, but it wasn't long before they informed Patricia that her abandoned Matador had been discovered on Sunset Street in a Sable Township, only two blocks away from Anna's residence.
There was no trace of Treeda, and even though the vehicle's keys were missing, Charita's apartment keys, cigarettes, and the map to Anna's place which Patricia had drawn up were still inside. The Mattador had broken down because of a leaky radiator, and it wasn't long before police were able to retrace the car's steps to figure out how it got there.
Okay, this is really frustrating because you see Sharita kind of in this Charita. This is really frustrating because you see Charita in this kind of compromise situation where she's relying on her friend for transportation. She needs to get her kids, and still she says, Okay, I can I borrow your car? Or the friend says you can borrow my car. So she's trying to be responsible while the friend wants to stay out late. She says, I can't. I gotta go get the kids. I gotta go home
to my fiance. And so you see a woman who's making good choices that evening. And you know, if you're a young woman broken down on the side of the road, you don't know how to examine your car or fix your car. So I'm assuming we have no cell phones.
What year is this, nineteen eighty Yeah, okay, yeah.
We definitely have no cell phones back then. And so Charita is sitting there thinking, how do I get help? Well, the only way you're going to get help is to thumb down or wave down somebody and pray to God that they're able to help you. Remember, there wasn't as much panic back then because we didn't have social media in the news telling you all the time how awful
crime was. So I bet Charita really believed if I can get somebody to help me, I can get back to a place where I can contact my fiance, I can go to Anna's house, those kinds of things, And instead almost seems as if when she did trust somebody, they could have taken her life.
That definitely sounds like what probably did happen is that she just broke down it was bad luck, and tried to get a ride with someone, but it just happened to be the wrong person. But the big answered question in this case was this just a complete stranger who was just passing by there by chance, or could it have been someone who was following Tarita from the tavern and got their eye on her and then just decided to take advantage of the situation After the car broke.
Down, Investigators learn after leaving the Mikado Tavern on the evening of August third, Sharita had been traveling through Oscota when steam started leaking from the Matador's hood and it broke down at an intersection. A trio of teenage boys stopped to help her and discovered the leak in the radiator, so they refilled it with water and put some duct
tape over the hose as a temporary solution. While this was going on, the teens claimed that a man driving a blue pickup truck passed by and gave them and of a scene gesture. Charita got back into the Matador and drove away, but the radiator evidently broke down again when she was driving down Sunset Street in O Sable Township. An eyewitness would claim that he saw Sharita walking down the street away from the vehicle while steam was leaking
out of its hood. However, he then saw Sharita returned to the scene a short time later in a blue Ford pickup truck being driven by a white male. Another eyewitness would later say that they thought they might have seen a third person inside the truck, but could not
be certain. After making an unsuccessful attempt to start the Matador again, Charita and the man climbed back into the truck before it drove away at around eleven fifteen pm, and unfortunately, this would turn out to be the last time that Scharita was confirmed to be alive.
So, okay, this is interesting because you have this idea that it's possible multiple people stop to help her, and then you have this that's confirmed.
Right.
We know that those three boys were there.
Uh yeah, the teens, like they weren't involved in her disappearance, but they came to the police and said that, yes, we pulled over and helped give her water because the radiator was overheating.
Okay, so they get kind of intercepted by this blue truck, and that's where we find out this information that is very reliable, given that these boys were present at the scene and they what's said, is it those trio of boys. Had they been the only ones to arrive, she would likely would have returned home that evening and been just fine because they seemed like kids that said, there's a poor lady on the side of the road. We're going
to stop and help her. How devastating that this blue truck pulls up and most likely that entire hopeful situation turns into absolute horror.
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. Was this guy in the blue pickup truck following Treeda for a long time, like maybe all the way from the tavern, or was it just a chance encounter where the first time her truck brought her truck broke down, he just happened to be passing by and saw that these teenage boys were helping her and then thought, Hm, she's got an unreliable truck. Maybe I'll follow her for a while to see if it breaks down again. And unfortunately, it seems like that's
likely what happened. Where she needed to get some help, and even though he had supposedly given an obscene gesture, I guess treated didn't feel fearful of him or anything, because she was willing to briefly climb into the truck with him and return to the scene of her car and then drive away. So that makes you wonder could it have been someone she known rather than a complete stranger.
Doesn't it strike you both as odd that if this person's objective was to harm Sarita, that he would then drive her back to her vehicle to try to get it up and operational.
It makes me wonder if it might be a thing where he wasn't planning to kill her at first, Like maybe he thought, well, if I help her, she'll have sex with me or something like that, and then she resisted and fought him off, and then things escalated into violence. So may be a thing where he thought that he was going to take adage of her. But then after she climbed to new his truck for the second time,
something went horribly wrong after they left the scene. So a search effort was launched for Trida, but it wasn't long before investigators focused on a potential suspect. Anna Bouchard's brother in law, Jimmy Allen Nelson. As you recall, Treeda and Patricia had briefly bumped into Jimmy at the Hilltop
Bar several hours before Treeda vanished. Jimmy participated in the initial search effort for Trida, but one week after she went missing, he drew the attention of investigators when a woman came forward and accused Jimmy of sexually molesting her and also said that he was a violent racist. Indeed, a number of other people would back up allegations that
Jimmy often expressed his dislike for African American people. One of these people was the bartender at the Hilltop, who claimed that Jimmy freely used the N word and once told her quote, the only good N word is a dead, one end quote. In fact, according to Anna Bouchard, Jimmy had once gotten angry with there for allowing Charita into her home because she was black. Jimmy also happened to live on Sunset Street with his wife and children, not too far from where the Matador broke down, and he
drove a blue pickup truck. This made police wonder if Tarita's disappearance might have been a racially motivated hate crime, as she lived in a predominantly white, conservative area. Since the case was looked at as a potential hate crime, the FBI would be brought into assist with the investigation. When Jimmy was questioned, he did admit to owning two pickup trucks, one of which was a blue Ford brand while the other was red and orange, but he said
his wife was borrowing the blue one. In the end, please never did get a chance to search Jimmy's blue pickup truck because their investigation soon turned towards another promising suspect.
Interesting, Okay, so we'll talk about that promising suspect in a minute. But when you look at Jimmy, Jimmy actually already knew Anna. I mean, he knew Anna. But did he already know Sharita or is that Charita or is that somebody that he was going to meet?
He had met her before. I mean, I don't think he knew her any more than casually, because I think he'd been present when his sister in law Anna, like let Chrida into the house, and that's why he got so mad at her about it. And then he bumped into Patricia and Schrida at the bar like a couple hours before Trieda went missing. So theoretically, if he had pulled up in a blue pickup truck, it's possible that Treeda might have felt comfortable enough with him to climb
inside with him. Because I'm not sure if she was aware at that time that he had a reputation for being a racist. I don't know if he had displayed any racist behavior in front of her. So that's why at the outset it looks plausible because he owned a blue pickup truck that he could have been the guy that picked Trieda up.
Even if it was the case that he came off as mildly racist, I would think that, given the way that that evening had gone and there wasn't any other options of anybody picking her up, mildly racist would have been not as bad as what she was experiencing at the bar, and it would feel very unsafe to be alone on the road. So I really feel for Charita, especially if she knew that he was a racist, but
we can't be sure if she did. But either way, if that is your best option, it's nighttime and you're alone and you're in an unsafe situation that that is the person that you have to choose to be your like, quote unquote savior at that moment. It's terrifying.
Yeah, it's really it's really terrifying. And you have this idea that I was wondering if they knew each other, like deeply, because if they did, I was wondering, you know, did he not present that way with her, like, Oh, she's an exception to the rule, because I've met really ignorant people who will be like, oh yeah, but not her. You know, she's she's she's a cool person. You know, I'm not. I don't hate her. I just hate most of those people, right, They're just ignorant and in mean.
And so when you sit here and you have Charita and Patricia where they have bumped into him, if it's not this kind of deep familiarity with him, I wonder if she was aware of his racist tendencies, if it was just such a passer by thing that he presented as someone who was comforting and someone who was safe. But that's my first thought is that how would he be manipulating his way? Did he follow her there? But didn't we know down the road. There's another suspect you're
about to tell me about. And we know that somebody was so incredibly likely involved in this case that they dropped the conviction against him down the road. So was it not even him? And we're going down a rabbit hole trying to see how he gained access to her when it probably wasn't him.
Yeah, that's what's bizarre, because, like I said, just hearing this information now you're thinking, Okay, this has to be the right guy. Yet, for reasons that we still don't know to this day, the state would eventually drop the charges against him.
So on August thirteenth, a man named Grant Goddard broke into a wealthy family's vacation residence in Alcona County, Michigan, alongside his son Kenneth in order to perform a burglary. However, they crossed paths with the property's caretaker, George Wistmiller, and wound up fatally shooting him. At the time, Grant Goddard was already a wanted fugitive on federal charges, but after he and his son were taken into custody for wist Miller's murder, they both accused the other of being the
one who pulled the trigger. It would be Kenneth Goddard, who was ultimately convicted of the crime, but he told investigators that his father was involved in Schirita's disappearance, so they started looking for possible links. Grant could be placed in the area around the approximate time period Sharita went missing, and he owned a blue pickup truck. He also resembled the unidentified white male driver who was seen with Scharita, and he seemed to have a stronger resemblance than Jimmy
Allen Nelson. Months after Sharita's disappearance, Grant's truck was found abandoned and stripped down in a national forest in a Scota Well. Grant was eventually sent to prison for his role in George whistle Miller's murder, but it was not until nineteen ninety three when the FBI formally interviewed him
about his potential role in what happened to Sharita. Grant initially said that someone had once asked him to assist in the disposal of a black woman, but he later admitted he was lying about this because he hoped investigators would take him out of prison to help search for
her body, giving him a potential chance to escape. In addition, Kenneth Goddard also confessed that he'd lied about his father being responsible for Cherita's disappearance because he wanted to get revenge on Grant for his decision to testify against him when he went on trial for wist Miller's murder. A more thorough investigation eventually determined that Grant had an alibi on the night Jarita went missing, so he was ruled out as a suspect in her case.
Well that's a pretty deep sick twist that comes into this, right. You have a missing person that we were assuming met some type of terrible fate. And not only do you have somebody falsely confess saying that they could help you find the body, but their own son had turned against them, saying, hey, you know my dad, you need to look at him. And so both of these men are working the system
and manipulating the system. But it's so bizarre because the son's seeking revenge and trying to protect his own legal self and the dad takes it and goes with it. It's something that I've never heard of before. I've heard someone turning someone in falsely and saying, pursue this. I've heard of someone falsely confessing and saying, hey, it got me out of prison for a little bit, or you know, I got me out of jail for a little bit.
Let me help.
But together they seem so counterproductive and so kind of against one another.
Yeah, what kind of relationship would they have had, just the fact that they commit a crime together and then they totally turn on the other after they've been arrested and try to pit all the blame for the murder on their father or their son. Though I guess in the end it determined that kennetha was the one who actually pulled the trigger and killed George Wistmaller. But I don't know any details about Grant Goddard's alibi, so I don't know what evidence they used to completely rule him out.
But I think this was detrimental to the investigation because they spent so many years investigating the Guitards that they took their focus off Jimmy Allen Nelson, and this may have prevented them from exploring more compelling leads. So after Gadar was ruled out, investigators decided to take a fresh look at Jimmy Allen Nelson, who had since moved to Houston, Texas.
Over a period of two decades, Jimmy would be interviewed several times by both the police and the FBI, but provided so many conflicting statements and inconsistencies in his stories that the authorities became convinced he was involved. At one point, he claimed to have not even known treat at all, even though he had been seen at the Hilltop Bar with her and Patricia Bates on the day she went missing.
During an interview with the FBI in March of two thousand and one, Jimmy suddenly told them a completely news story, claiming that he had just seen a hypnotist, causing his memory to prove He now admitted that he was the driver of the blue pickup truck seen giving Treeda a ride before she disappeared. Jimmy said he had been at the Hilltop Bar that night when Tchorita arrived and told him that Patricia's mattador broke down on Sunset Street, so
he gave her a ride there. When they failed to get the car started, he drove Trieda to her apartment so she could pick up her keys and purse, and at her request, he then drove her to an establishment called Wiltsey's Restaurant. After dropping Trida off there sometime after eleven to fifteen pm. Jimmy maintained that he never saw her again and claimed that he never told anybody about this earlier because Chreeda asked him not to.
Okay, that doesn't seem to make sense, because supposedly these three teenage boys who were actually good Samaritans, see this blue truck come up in the middle of it, and he's saying that she comes back into the bar, asks for help. He drives her to go get all of the things she needs to actually go get her children and go back to her fiance, and that's the end
of the story. But you're admitting you were the blue truck driver, but you're not including the correct steps of what these boys say actually happened.
And another big hole in his story is that he said he was at the bar when Trieda walked there and told him that her car was broken down. But it was a great distance, something like ten or fifteen miles from the Plazer car broke down to the Hilltop bar, So there's no way she walked there on foot, and you're thinking to yourself, is this just the result of him having a bad memory, or is he completely lying? And of course he's telling a story with a lot
of holes in it. But as we're going to talk about later, the police no longer seemed convinced that he's the guy. So is he just making this up to toy with the authorities, or is just his memory bad and he's confused about what happened? Or is there a legitimately some truth here. Did he drop Trida off at this restaurant and maybe something happened to her afterwards.
However, there were a number of holes in Jimmy's story. The investigating agent spoke to the owner of Wilty's restaurant, who informed them that the establishment would not have been open after eleven to fifteen pm. When confronted with this, Jimmy said that even though the restaurant was closed, there were still employees inside who were cleaning, and he saw
them let Sharita inside. But once again, the restaurant's owner disputed this, maintaining they always closed at eight pm on Sundays and that it would have only taken the staff around forty to ninety minutes to clean before they left. Jimmy then responded by saying his memory was faulty and he could not actually remember where he dropped Scharita off
that night. Another major hole in Jimmy's story was his claim that he stopped by Charita's apartment so that she could pick up her purse, while when Sharita's fiance, William Merrett arrived till him that night, he maintained that Sharita's purse was there, and since Shrida's apartment keys were found inside the mattador, how would she have gotten inside to
begin with. Investigators would also speak to numerous witnesses who claimed that Jimmy had asked them to lie to the authorities in order to back up his stories, but they refused to do so. For example, when Jimmy frequented the Hilltop Bar on the evening of August third, the bartender was certain that he drove his blue pickup truck there, but he allegedly kept pushing her to say that he
had actually driven his red and orange truck. According to the bartender, she never saw Jimmy drive his blue pickup at all. Following Sharita's disappearance, as he apparently kept it in his backyard surrounded by two or three feet of firewood. He sold the truck sometime during the nineteen nineties and once told the bartender that the police would need a
warrant if they wanted to search it. In addition, the bartender said that Jimmy seemed to mellow out with his racist attitudes after Sharita went missing and started speaking with and being more cordial towards black people.
It's like he was manipulating the entire situation, like, let me change my approach and my social mask that I wear that I'm not racist, that you know, I don't have problem with any anybody, no matter what color they are. And he's actually going and asking people to change their story.
Very very frustrating, and it's kind of unsettling that that blue truck wasn't searched, that those teen boys when they came forward and said, hey, there was this blue truck and they linked Nelson to it, that there wasn't an extensive examination of the truck, because I wonder what they would have found and what could have been processed decades later. Even if it couldn't have been tested back in nineteen eighty.
Yeah, and that's why it's kind of frustrating that that whole lead with the Grant and Kenneth Gadard popped up, because they started putting all their focus on them, even though it's unlikely that they were responsible and if Jimmy was, If Jimmy really was the one who was responsible, he would have had ample time to cover his tracks and
dispose of evidence that could have implicated him. The authorities became interested in a deer hunting camp that Jimmy had owned, which was located in Huron National Forest on the edge of Oscata. Simmy just seemed to abandon the camp and stop using it. After Treda vanished, they decided to perform a search of the property, which would lead to another surprising development. Now, remember how I mentioned during the intro that this case had a connection to a controversial story
from Unsolved Mysteries. Well, in two thousand and one, the show produced a segment about a dog handler named Sandra Anderson and her Doberman pincher, Eagle. Anders's job involved training dogs for search and rescue work, and Eagle was a cadaver dog with an amazing sense of smell who supposedly had a special ability to sniff out human remains. There were already several documented cases of Eagle uncovering bones which
had been buried at hard to find locations. So in April of two thousand and two, the FBI in the Oskota Township Police Department decided to enlist Anderson's services, as she had Eagle perform a search of Jimmy's deer hunting camp and Huron National Forest. Well, sure enough, on the second day of the search, Eagle uncovered some human remains, and everyone initially believed that Treeda had finally been found.
But there was one problem. Sandra Anderson turned out to be a complete and utter fraud.
I remember this case of Sandra Anderson, not necessarily the investigation of this property, but I remember her being exposed as a fraud and that she was leading and planting evidence, leading the dog to certain places, and she was doing it to get a reputation, to gain notoriety, but was linked to so many different local and federal cases devastating. So she's actually involved in Charita's disappearance.
Well, she participated in the search effort, and it was actually Charita's case which led to Anderson being caught and exposed as a fraud. I'm sure you were going to give a shocked reaction when we told you what happened next, But it sounds like you're already familiar with this story.
Yes, I just remember her name because I remember taking a course where we looked at subjective of sciences, and you know, they call them junk sciences, but they're in some cases, like odentology, when you're looking at bitemarks, right, there is some type of scientific backing, but it does require a human eye and subjective analysis of those scientific elements.
And so, but when you look at cadaver dogs, there's been a huge exploration as to what extent is the human being at the end of the leash or directing that dog? Are they influencing that investigation? And it becomes much more tempting to kind of mess with those results. So you got to tell me more because I know her. I do not know this case.
Whenever Eagle dug up human remains during search efforts for missing persons, DNA testing would often reveal that the bones did not match the victims. On the day Charita's remains were supposedly found, a Lescota police officer named Mark David was bothered by an incident where Anderson searched a creek and found what appeared to be a knucklebone. Well, David had searched that same creek only moments earlier and found nothing, and also thought that he had seen Anderson putting one
hand behind her foot before she uncovered the knucklebone. The following day, David voiced his concerns with a lab technician who decided to keep a close eye on Anderson, and it wasn't long before the technician caught Anderson pulling a bone out of her boot and placing it in the creek. Anderson was subsequently arrested by the FBI, and a search of her home turned up a number of human bones
which she had stolen from a medical examiner's office. And, as you probably guessed, DNA testing would reveal that none of the bones found during the search of the deer hunting camp belonged to Sharida, as they had been planted there by Anderson. She subsequently pled guilty to planting evidence and making false statements and received a twenty one month prison sentence. So if you've never seen the unseld mystery
segment we were referring to. There's a good reason for that, as they elected not to air it again on television following Anderson's arrest, and it's currently not available for streaming on their official channel on Amazon Prime or YouTube.
This is crazy, Okay, So I don't remember her pulling a bone out of her boot. I knew that she had planted stuff, or that she had directed the dog to certain locations, but she literally stole human remains from a medical examer's office and is on the scene pulling them out of her own belongings and putting them into the ground and then saying, I think we found something.
That's pretty much it. Yeah, like she had been done a whole bunch of these searches before where Eagle had miraculously found human remains, and she was getting all this adulation because she had trained this expert dog who had a gift for finding victims. But it turns out she had been planting them there the whole time, and this just happened to be the first time she got caught.
How did they not know so that these are just like random body parts? How did she ever get fame when they end up never linking back to the person they're looking for.
Yeah, like you think they get suspicious where it's like, well, we're looking for a specific missing person, but every single time we find bones belonging to a completely different person in the same area, Like, what are the odds on that? But I think this is when it was starting to come apart, and I think the police were keeping a closer eye on her to see if she was like planting these.
God blessed with that rate, you would think like almost every square mile you go there'd be some random body parts located somewhere. You know, like, hey, no matter where we look, we're going to be able to find some kidaver let's bring in the dogs.
Yeah. And can you imagine though being treated Thomas's family when this happened, because for about a day or two, they were under the impression that they had found remains which might belong to her, and then they're finding out, Oh, the search effort is being led by a complete fraud and these bones don't belong that they were stolen from
a medical examiner's office. So I'm sure that must have been a devastating roller coaster ride to think for a a day or two that you finally have found Charita and now known that it was just a complete fraud anyway, In spite of the setback, investigators did not take their focus off Jimmy Allen Nelson and gradually build up a
case against him. The Iosco County Prosecuting Attorney's Office reviewed all the interviews Jimmy gave to law enforcement over the years, and since two of the interviews have been conducted while he was under oath, the authorities believed there were enough conflicting statements and proven lies to press charges. In April of two thousand and four, Jimmy was arrested in Houston and formally charged with multiple counts of perjury as well
as one count of obstruction of justice. After he was extradited to Michigan, Jimmy was released on an electronic tether to await trial, which meant he could not lead the state. So he stated his son's house in Osable Township Well,
even though Treeda's body could still not be found. The Iosco County Prosecuting Attorney's Office believe they had a strong enough case against Jimmy to take him to trial for killing her, so on December the twenty eight, he was rested and charged with second degree murder, as well as additional counts of perjury, making it twenty two perjury counts against him in total.
This is a pretty bold move when you look at the prosecuting attorney's move here, because while you do have some strong circumstantial character evidence, the idea that Charita had actually been killed and that we know how, we know why, we know anything about her actual murder is a massive question mark for a jury. You know, they didn't investigate and explore the evidence that could have been left in his truck. They didn't have any kind of forensic support
for this claim. They basically have three teenage boys saying a blue truck pulled up with a white man, and you have a lot of choppy back and forth stories that make him look really unreliable and very probable as a suspect. But we have a standard beyond a reasonable doubt. And if you told me, you know it is possible that Charita's alive, it's possible that it was a different blue truck, a different man. Those questions are seem to
be very much in this case. I'm surprised they would not have waited for more evidence before moving forward with this trial, and yet he was still found guilty.
Yeah, that's what's weird about this case is that I don't know if there was additional evidence that they didn't release to the public. But when you hear about his arrest, you're like, well, I'm not sure that's really enough to get a conviction. Like, they have some conflicting statements. They have evidence that he may have committed perjury, but there
is still plenty a reasonable doubt. I'm not sure if there was anything conclusive to prove that he actually committed murder because they still hadn't found Triita, there was no physical evidence. No, there's a witnesses who saw a man in a blue pickup truck, but none of these witnesses positively identified this guy as Jimmy. So it did seem
like they were jumping the gun. But obviously, as we're going to talk about on our next episode, since Jimmy's conviction was later overturned, obviously the case against them was not as strong as they initially thought. So I think that about brings an end to Part one. Join us next week as we present part two of our series about the disappearance of Tree to Thomas.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these 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 dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon, on 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 want to let you know a little bit about the jewels 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 past call for warm clothing.
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy