Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the murder of Karina Holmer. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up of what we talked about in our previous episode?
Well, this particular crime took place in Boston in June of nineteen ninety six. Karina Holmer was a twenty year old from Sweden who decided that she wanted to live in the United States for a while, working as an o pair for a family living in the Boston suburb of Dover who had two children. Their names were Frank
Rapp and Susan Nickter. She would live in a loft on the weekend with the family during the week and one Friday night, she decided to go out to a club with some friends called the Zanzibar, but then she
just seemed to disappear. None of her friends actually saw her leave, and about thirty six hours later they would find the top half of her torso inside a trash bag and a dumpster located a couple miles away, and it turned out that she even sliced half right at the wrist that whoever did it went right through their spine, but the lower half of her body was never found, and it turned out that her exact cause of death
was strangulation. Frustratingly, we had so many different conflicting eyewitness accounts from the nightclub that no one could figure out the circumstances of how and when Karina left. It did sound like that she was heavily intoxicated, and the boyfriend of one of her friends she went with said that they saw her leaving in a Mitsubishi with two very aggressive guys who told him to back off, but no
other witnesses could corroborate a story. There are other witnesses who saw with a panhandler on the alley named Juan Polo, who did have a history of being accused of being involved in a gang rape and whose ex girlfriend was murdered under strange circumstances, but they weren't able to find
any evidence against him. She had also been seen talking with a man named Herb Witten, who would shoe up outside these clubs with his large job, both stressed up in Superman costumes, but they couldn't find any evidence against him either, and a couple months after that he died after slitting his own throat. Because he had a history of depression, and mental health issues, and it's been suspected that being a potential suspect in a murder might have
been his breaking point. They looked at a couple other suspects, a death metal singer named John's Whiz, though there really wasn't anything to connect him at all. All they found were some human bones inside his residence, but and he lived near the dumpster where Karina was found, but otherwise
there was nothing else on him. A couple months after Karina was murdered, there was a real estate broker named Gregory Hummel who picked up a woman from the same sands of our nightclub, took her back to his apartment and attempted to sexually assault her before she contacted the police. But otherwise they found no evidence against him either, and the case has pretty much been unsolved for nearly thirty years. They've even looked at her family, Frank Rapp and Susan Nicker,
but there's no evidence against them either. So we've had all these potential suspects but no evidence against any of them, and the case continues to remain unsolved all these years later.
Well about four and a half years ago. On episode two twelve of the Trail went Cold. Robin covered another cold case involving young female Swedish victims, and that was the unsolved murders of Marie Lillienberg and Maria Vilen, who were both killed while hitchhiking together through California in July of nineteen eighty three. Like Karina, the two women left their native Sweden in order to spend some time living and working in the United States, but wound up being
murdered before they can return home. I see no reason to believe that there are any connection between the two cases, but these stories are truly nightmarish situations for the victims' families. How can you keep up with the investigation and spread awareness about the case when you live on an entirely
different continent located thousands of miles away. Karina hailed from a small village with a population of less than one hundred, and I'm not sure if her family has ever traveled to the United States to meet with the investigators on her case. They're pretty much in a position where they can do nothing but wait, and they haven't received any
answers in nearly thirty years. I'm sure the situation is particularly haunting because Karina had been planning to return to Sweden earlier than usual because she was unhappy with her situation, and sent that cryptic letter to one of her best friends which she stated that quote, something terrible had happened, but she would not provide any further details until she arrived home. So of course you have to wonder if this terrible thing she was referring to had any relation
to her murder. This is a case where a number of individuals had been looked at as possible suspects, but there's no real evidence pointing towards any of them, So, for all we know, perhaps Koreenan was murdered by someone who has yet to pop up on the radar. It seems like there are an awful lot of weird coincidences in this story which have led the investigation in unexpected directions.
For instance, you might be familiar with the story of Rafi Kodikian and David Coughlin, two friends from Boston who went on a hike in New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park in August of nineteen ninety nine. They wound up getting lost, and by the time they were found Kodikian had stabbed Coughlin to death in what he described as a mercy killing, since his friend was badly dehydrated and suffering so much. Nevertheless, Kodikian was still charged with second
degree murder and served sixteen months in prison. Well, believe it or not, the reason this story got linked to Karina's case is because Rafi Kodikian just happened to live in the same apartment building next to the dumpster where Karina's body was found. He was even briefly questioned by police at the time, who were performing routine canvassing of
the building's residents. Of course, when Kudaiki Ain't got charged with another murder three years later, investigators checked into any possible link with Karina's case, but the whole thing turned out to be nothing more than a coincidence.
So interesting, I'd love to know more about that case where he still got charged with second degree murder. I wonder if you know, I don't know. I guess that you said he should have been helping more with his friend, who's I'm assuming dying in while they're not being found. But regardless, it's so bizarre that he's actually near her apartment right, he lives in that same apartment complex. Yet I highly doubt there's any kind of crossover there. There
are two very different scenarios. The reality is is you have a tragedy that happens to live near a tragedy, and so I think that's the only thing that really seems to tie those two together.
So before we talk about possible suspects, we have to look at the circumstances of how Karina went missing before she was killed. We know that she was parting with friends at the Zansobar nightclub and apparently became quite intoxicated before she got separated from them, and her body was
subsequently found in a dumpster thirty six hours later. Since the medical examiner believed that Karina was alive for at least twenty four hours after she was last seen, this might indicate that she was held in captivity for a prolonged period of time, possibly even tortured before she was killed. But if so, who was responsible and how did Karna
cross paths with the perpetrator? Well? One of the most frustrating elements of this investigation is that we have a number of conflicting stories about how Karina left the nightclub. Some of them placed her walking away from the club down the street, but the version that is quite different from the others involves Karina climbing into a gray Mitsubishi with two unidentified men who yelled profanities at the boyfriend
of one of Karina's friends. If this account is accurate, then this suggests that multiple people were involved in the murder, but I find it odd that there don't seem to be any other witness who could corroborate this guy's story. That's not to say that I completely discouted, as Karina had apparently told one of her friends that she was planning to go to an after hours party with an older man, so for all we know, one of the
two individuals inside the car might have been him. Given Karina as a depriated state, I can definitely see a situation where a group of men drove her somewhere to take advantage of her. But how do things escalate to the point where these predators sliced her entire body in half. I'm not sure if investigators placed much credence into the witness's story because even though he supposedly came face to face with two men who may have been complicit in
Karina's murder. The authorities had never released detailed descriptions or composite sketches for these guys. But further complicates this situation is that there were reported sightings of Karina at a twenty four hour convenience store in the Back Bay neighborhood between three thirty and four thirty am, which would have been about an hour or two after she left the club. Yes,
eyewitness is a missing person's cases are often mistaken. But since the store was located only a block from the dumpster where Karina was found, I guess you can't discout the idea that Karina walked to this neighborhood on her own. But the issue is that the lot where Karina was staying was located in the Fort Point neighborhood in the complete opposite direction. So why would Karreina be frequenting a store in this particular area.
And I'm assuming we had no cameras right at that convenience store.
No, we didn't know, Okay.
So that's difficult because we've all we've all know about eyewitness identification and people thinking they saw someone, especially after they become a.
News newsworthy individual.
But let's go back to these two guys that are in the car. One this friend is describing these two guys getting into a Minsubishi with her being aggressive with him. Is it possible there's no composite release because he's honest and he's like, look, I was so drunk. I don't know what these guys look like. I was frustrated that they were being jerks. I stumbled back into the bar. But I'm very confident that there was two men in a Mitsubishi, and that's about all I can remember. That's
a possible reason why you don't see composites. Also, it's possible that these two guys really did take her back and even together took advantage of her. But one left, and if she was kept alive for another, you know, several hours or a whole nother day, it's possible she was only with one of those individuals in maybe the apartment or home where she was taken. Let's say the other person had to return home, had to go to work,
had to go back to their family. The actual killer might have done it solo and simply taken advantage of an intoxicated woman with his buddy. And then it turned sinister after the friend left.
That is possible. I mean, I would like to think that the friend would come forward if he suspected, if he found out that this woman was killed after he was seen with a man he knew. But if it's a case where he did something wrong, like took advantage of Krena, then he would have his own reasons for not wanting to come forward. And that's why I do still think, like I said, that the scene of her leading with these two guys and things going horribly wrong
does make sense. But it's just so frustrating to me that there is just no one else who can say that, yeah, I saw this Mitsubishi, and I saw these two guys with Karina.
So let's start going through our gallery of potential suspects. It's been reported that Karina was dating a Boston police officer at the time of her murder, but this person's name has never been released publicly and we know nothing about his background. All we know is that he had an alibi and was never considered to be a suspect.
But of course, online discussions about this case have pushed forward conspiracy theories about the reason the murder is still unsolved is because a police cover up took place in
order to protect this man. Well, even though there was definitely serious issues with corruption in the Boston Police Department during the nineteen nineties, there is no evidence at all to support the cover up theory, and I'd like to think that most cops would draw the line at protecting a fellow officer who dismembered his girlfriend by literally slicing her body in half. With the limited information that we have about this policeman, I really have no reason to
believe that he's the killer. And I feel the same way about John z a Whiz, who's link to this case is tenuous, to say the least. I'm not familiar with Zowiz's work, but he is a prominent enough figure on the industrial music scene that he has his own
Wikipedia page. The only reason he even appeared on the radar is because he lived a few blocks away from the location where Karina's body was found, and he had enough weird memorabilia in his apartment and bizarre aspects of his musical act that some people thought that he might be capable of murder. But Zuwiz almost sounds like he was a victim of Satanic panic to me. He claimed that when police started interviewing him about the murders, they
asked him questions like do you worship the devil? Of course, nothing was found to implicate Zowiz in the crime, but even though his band's Sleep Chamber was reasonably popular at the time, it sounds like the combination of Zuiz's heroin addiction in him being looked at as a potential suspect and a murder caused a major downward spiral for the band, and they wound up going on hiatus for several years.
Zuiz was able to overcome his addiction issues and is still alive today, and you can actually find an interview with him on YouTube from two thousand and nine where he talks about his connection to this crime. Oddly enough, Zuiz states during the interview that Karina's boss was the one who actually murdered her. But this is not accurate at all, since no one has ever been charged with the crime and there's no more evidence against Frank Rap than any of the other potential suspects.
Was he still an addict when he made that recording, because it's not like he said, you know, in my personal opinion, this is why I think I was suspected, and then this is who I believe would have had a bigger reason to do it or you know, but it sounds like he was almost off the cuff, like I know exactly who did it. It's Frank rap and almost that he's, you know, someone with a mental health issue or a substance abuse issue at the time, and then now is sober.
I think he was clean by two thousand and nine when he did that interview. I remember seeing it, so he was going through a lot of disorders back in the nineties, but I think he was fine by the time he did the interview. And it sounds like he never specifically said Frank Rapp's name. He just says, oh, yeah, I was implicated in a murderer, but it turned out the woman's boss was the one who killed her. So I'm guessing maybe he's just misremembering or something he or
got it crossed up with another case. But obviously we don't know who actually murdered her.
It's a pretty bold thing to say, like that could be considered libelous because it's pretty easy to look up who her boss was at that time.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, and or like Robin said, yeah, and or like Robin said, it could also be the way he said it. I mean, if reading it's hard, you know, but if he did it more like Robin said, like, oh, yeah, you know I was suspected this is the guy who actually got arrested for doing it. Maybe he really thought that, yeah, in his memory he remembered someone being charged with the crime. But when you go back to to the boyfriend, I
can't imagine. And yes there's corruption, Yes, maybe someone's assaulted and you hide it. Yes, maybe you know you have some really corrupt officers who would hide a murder. But by the time your partner in crime, who's supposed to be having your back, right, your police officer partner is cutting women in half and brutally, you know, committing a crime of this nature, doesn't it make you scared to serve next to him, Like if he can do that to her, what could he do to us?
Because this is a whole nother level.
So I'm with you guys, where I think there would have been a line drawn there. I don't know that I would have covered up for something this horrific, even if I was part of a dysfunctional department. And so I think the boyfriend's got to be let off the hook, And I agree there's more of that satanic panic with Zo Whiz.
I don't believe that he.
Had anything to do with it, just a suspicious person because he was quote different and dark and disturbed at the time. He was sick and so once he's sober, I think maybe he's misremembering it.
It sounds like the way and said it, he.
Almost thought he remembered the case being cleared with the boss at the helm of it.
That's what I'm thinking as well. Though I've always wondered if he's ever going to get a cease and desister order from Frank Rapp to pull down that YouTube video.
Yeah, I'd love to watch it and see the tone because if he accuses him, I would Jules, you might be facing a lawsuit.
And Ashally, maybe you can speak to this because you understand a lot more about police departments and like institutions in general. But I know within corrupt police institutions and just within police departments as a whole, there tends to
be a bit of a domestic violence blind spot. And I know they've done a lot of departments have done a lot of work to bring themselves forward so that you don't have police responding to calls where there's domestic violence which includes a cop and then them not taking
a report or not reporting it. But I would think in this case, if one of their fellow officers girlfriends was murdered, that they would draw the line with not only just a not only a murder, but a murder in which her body was bisected and half of it was never found. I would think most people at that point would throw up their hands and go, Okay, you know there is a brotherhood here, but like this is where it stops.
Yeah, I absolutely think so. I think when you think about someone who literally becomes like a brother or sister because they are putting themselves at risk every day with you, and because people do create an air where it's normal
to be almost corrupt. If your department is right, young rookies come in, they aren't corrupt, the people training them might be, and therefore corruption becomes not abnormal, and it's not even it's like an abusive home right where you go like, oh the abuse is so normal, Like okay, we're all kind of part of it, and we're all living.
In this dysfunction.
And so some of it isn't even conscious that the dysfunction that occurs in some kinds of police departments and institutions. But you also do have that issue with domestic violence, right. There's high rates of divorce and abuse and things like that in high stress careers, and law.
Enforcement is one of them.
And so I think if you had a dysfunctional group of officers. Let's say a boyfriend girlfriend fuss all the time.
We already know they.
Have issues, and let's say she dies and the buddies like, hey, listen, man, you know we got a fight. She died, I could see corruption occurring there because they're all like, oh, man, been there, done that, been in awful fights with my wife, things like that.
Not okay, really sick.
However, again, when you look at this crime, it is not just an accident that occurred and nine when one was called, or you know they're covering.
Oh, this is a suicide in set of a murder. It's none of that kind of corruption.
This is a body is found almost discarded like an animal would be cut in and half of her body is missing, and it's so precise, it's so thought out. I would never want to serve next to a person.
Like that, especially with a weapon.
So I can't imagine another officer saying I get it, man, I understand, I'm going to cover for you. I think they'd be scared to work alongside him.
At least one officer would have cracked if that were the case, if they suspected him of doing it.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. There would have been ia all over that. At least one person would have come forward and like, look, I can't even stand for that, right.
So I guess now would be a good time to discuss Frank and his wife, Susan Niictor, who employed Karina as an o pair at the time, And even though they never been named as suspects or persons of interest, you'll still find people direct suspicion towards them during online discussions about this case. Obviously, one of the biggest unanswered questions is the cryptic letter Karina sent to her friend in Sweden, in which she wrote quote something terrible has happened.
And other letters to her family, Karina had expressed unhappiness with her own pairent job, mostly because of the workload it required, and seemed anxious to return home earlier than planned. But this particular letter suggested that something much darker was taking place. While Frank and Susan always maintained that they didn't notice anything to suggest Karina was unhappy, some online slusive speculated that the terrible thing Karna referred to might
have been Frank taking advantage of her. In fact, one prominent theory the reason Karina's body was sliced in half was to cover up the fact that she was pregnant. This wouldn't necessarily mean that Frank was the culprit, as a completely different person could have gotten Karina pregnant. If so, this would mean the crime was much more personal, rather than Karina being murdered by a random stranger she encountered
on the night she went out party. However, I can't say I've ever put much stock into this theory, because even if a fetus had been removed from Karina's womb, I'd like to think that there still would have been medical evidence to indicate if she had been pregnant at some point. After all, even though Karina had been sliced in half at the waist on the lower half of her boy, he was missing her torso was still intact.
But getting back to Frank, rapp I guess one of the main reasons people have speculated that something may have been going on with him and Karina is because he allowed her to spend weekends staying at his photography studio, which doubled as aloft, So theoretically, if they were having an affair, this would be an ideal place for them to carry it out, away from Frank's wife and children.
It's also worth mentioning that Karina was technically in the country illegally while she was working as an all pair, as the family had hired her through a rather shady Swedish agency which placed o pairs in the US without securing them a proper work visa. So if anything inappropriate was going on well Karina was employed in that household, she wouldn't have much leverage to complain to the authorities
without fear of being deported. It's also worth mentioning that there were past issues in Frank and Susan's marriage, as back in January of nineteen ninety one, Frank was actually charged with assault and battery against his wife, which prompted her to request a temporary restraining order against him. But a few months later Susan asked that the charges be dropped against Frank, as she claimed his actions were the result of issues with alcoholism and he was now undergoing treatment.
She would later say that the incident was the best thing that could have happened to save their marriage, and to Frank's credit, I get the impression that he did genuinely turn things around. I see no indication that there were any more serious issues with the marriage, and if you search online, you'll see that Frank and Susan are still together to this day.
Well, okay, let's go back to that a little bit. When you see that Frank is arrested for assault on his wife and there's assault and battery charges there, and then later she drops the charges. This is a very
common occurrence, right. You have a husband and wife who are fighting, and she's scared enough to press charges, and then she wants the charges dropped because Frank's a good man who happens to get abusive at certain points, and there's that psych of violence that occurs where she sees her husband as a dual kind of person, right, the abuser and the man who's a good father and husband
and hard worker and things like that. And so when you think about that, cycle right where she's walking on eggshells. There's an eruption, there's abuse. That's when she needs the police, That's when she calls. But then Frank's going to present as the other side where he says, I, you know, I never meant to do that. I'm so sorry, and then she welcomes him back in. That's the father of her kids, that's her stability, that's her life. And so is Frank a good man?
I don't know that. I don't know.
Goodman make mistakes and good men have trauma and issues as well. But if Frank was a systematic abuser of his wife, she would defend him even if she knew something was going on, because.
She's doing it here.
If Frank is not a good man, then you might see that he could have been doing something like have an affair right, be an abuser consistently. But again, that doesn't make him a murderer, and that doesn't make him a murderer who's going to cut his victim in half with precision. It's possible, but they don't equate, right, And I think it's important to say that you can have someone who makes really poor decisions or someone who's fueled with a mental health issue or trauma and acts out.
In a dangerous way, But it doesn't make them a killer.
So motive, yes, especially if he's having an affair, especially if things are going wrong, especially if he's worried about getting caught up in some legal issues because of having this illegal individual at his home who knows but doesn't equate. Definitely a problem with the way Susan and him have their marriage, but that doesn't make him a killer.
Even if they were having an affair. He had an alibi, and like, what are the chances that he would be able to somehow shirk that alibi and then find another location in order to do this to her body. I don't believe the pregnancy thing either, because if you were going to bisect a body to pregnancy, I don't think that you would necessarily you would know, you there would
be some clues left. I would think because her upper body was found, which would included her torso, So I would think that you would like trisect the body, right, maybe take off the upper body and then take off the torso, which would be the part that would be the most sensitive, and get.
Rid of it.
But it just seems so odd that we don't know anything about Like we know that there was other O pairs, but we haven't heard from any of these other O pairs the way that Frank and Susan treated them, have we, Robin.
We haven't. No, Like, no real diurtists come out about them, other than Frank's domestic abuse charge from the early nineties. But like I said, after he went into rehab and they got back together, it seems like they have lived a model lifestyle for the past thirty years.
It's interesting how during the early stages of the investigation, Frank and Susan told the media that they've been cleared to suspects, but law enforcement never officially confirmed or denied this, so I'm not sure if they were completely ruled out. This doesn't necessarily mean that police believed the couple was involved, as no source close to the investigation told the Boston Globe.
Oh as one source close to the investigation told the Boston Globe quote, no one's a suspect, but everyone's a suspect, which implies that they were not eliminating any possibilities. As far as Frank and Susan's alibi during that time period that Karina was killed, they always maintained that on the evening of Friday, June twenty first, they took their kids
to McDonald's and a drive in movie. This wouldn't necessarily rule them out, since Karina went missing sometime between two and three am on the morning of June twenty second, and her body was not found until the afternoon of June twenty third, But it sounds like Frank's parents were visiting for the weekend and could pretty much account for
the couple's whereabouts. I mean, technically, I guess Frank could have snuck out and killed Karina while the rest of the family were sleeping, But how would he have known where to find her? How could he predict Karina would be leaving the Zanzibar night club at that particular time. If Frank was able to kill Karina at the loft, then that would make sense since he had access to it, but there's no indication that Karina ever made it back
there after she left the club. Police even performed a search of the loft with a trained dog, but found no evidence to suggest a crime had taken place there, which you would expect if it involved a victim being dismembered and sliced in half. I guess one troubling issue which put Frank and Susan in a suspicious light was the fire that took place in the dumpster near their
condo on the night after Karina's body was found. And there's also the coincidental timing of Frank securing a permit at a nearby transfer and recycling station on the night before Karina was found, though Susan told the press that this was only done for the purpose of disposing of recycled newspapers since their Konda Minium complex did not have
recycling facilities. Since none of the burn materials were covered from the dumpster had any connection to Karina's case, it's certainly possible that the whole incident was nothing more than an odd coincidence. And really, if Frank or Susan wanted to burn incriminating evidence, I'd like to think that they would be smart enough not to do so in a
dumpster located so close to their residence. During a twenty nineteen news report on the Boston radio station WGBH, Frank and Susan commented on how frustrating it is when you type the name Frank Rapp into Google these days, many of the top matches mentioned him being a potential murder suspect rather than a successful photographer. Indeed, it is hard to imagine Frank committing such a brutal and horrific crime and then being able to live a normal life with
his family for the next three decades. If the couple are completely innocent of any involvement in Karina's murder, then you definitely have to feel sympathy for Frank and Susan as in addition to the ensuing suspicion directed towards them. I'm sure that this must have been a very traumatic event to experience.
And think about the kids that she was brought here to take care of. It had to be traumatic for them as well. And Frank's a photographer. Does a photographer know how to perfectly cut an individual in half and leave no damage to the rest of her body? Think about this, when when they discovered her torso the upper half of her body, what kinds of injuries were to the rest of her body?
She had been strangled, but I don't think they found any other noticeable injuries to her at all.
Okay, so there's no stab wounds or things like that, And It's interesting because had she gotten in a lover's coral or been in a fight with someone, I feel like that would have been evident that you would have seen much more of let's say, like she got stabbed or she had been assaulted physically over and over again prior to being strangled. Would have been the kind of the end of that fight. And it doesn't seem like her body showed signs of that. It's like someone who
knew exactly what they were doing. They had done it before, they got excited about watching her, you know, to pass away in the way that they strangled her, and then perfectly we're able to not only cut her but also then discard of the lower half without getting caught. I think this is someone who knows what they're doing because they've done it many times before, and it's not improbable that they did it after as well.
Did they do a talk screen?
No, they If they did, they've never mentioned it publicly because I didn't find that information. I mean, we know that she was drinking that night, but I haven't heard anything to check if these to see if she took any drugs.
Because what if he gave her a paralytic or something because that would explain why there would be no defensive wounds, because if she was restrained, we would likely see marks from that.
Correct.
Yes, and they said there were rope marks around her neck to indicate she'd been strangled, but no other marks or bruises or defense of wounds. So now we'll move on to discuss three other individuals who have been looked at as potential suspects because they have connections to the Zansabar nightclub, as two of these individuals were seen interacting with Karina after she exited the club on the night
she disappeared. The first one was one Polo, an unhoused panhandler who was seen singing and dancing with Karrena and an Alley while she was intoxicated, and it certainly wasn't unreasonable to suspect him since he had a criminal history and at least one rape accusation. It's been reported that Polo was questioned in relation to the murder of a
former girlfriend named Evelyn Alvarez, which took place one year earlier. Unfortunately, other than one article published in the Boston Globe in April of nineteen ninety five, I cannot find any additional information about this crime, so I have no idea if it's still unsolved. But one interesting detail in that case is that Evelyn hailed from the city of Chelsea, located directly across the Mystic River from Boston, so investigators wondered if she was murdered in the Boston area before the
killer drove to Lakeville to dispose of her body. Regardless, no evidence was found to suggest that Karina and Evelyn's murders might be connected. And while it does not sound like Polo was officially ruled out as a suspecting Karina's case, the fact that he was unhoused and did not appear to have access to a vehicle would seem to point to him not being the killer. If Polo murdered Karina,
where would he have dismembered her? And without a vehicle, how could he transport both halves for her body and dispose of them?
Absolutely, that's exactly what I thought, right. If he's unhoused, he has nowhere to take her. There's a belief that she was kept alive after she left that bar for about twenty four hours, and so she had to go somewhere. We actually have her running back in the bar and telling her friends, I'm going somewhere with this older man.
So we know that she had plans to leave, but they needed transportation to do so, right or they needed at least a place to go, and so I just don't see Polo having those options.
For her now herb Witten our second potential suspect who spoke to Karina outside Zanzibar. He did have access to a vehicle, but the fact that he was pulled over and given a ticket for speeding later that morning does
seem to give him an alibi. I can see why people might be suspicious of Witten since he lived over twenty miles away in Andover and would drive to downtown Boston with his dog and hang out outside bars and nightclubs in order to talk to women, and since he went to the trouble of dressing himself in his one hundred and twenty pound dog in Superman shirts, I could see women being inclined to go over and chat with them.
Even though there was surveillance footage of Karina chatting with Witten, this might not have any significance, as it sounds like Witten was doing this sort of thing long before this encounter with Karina. I see no indication that Witten was accused of being malicious or creepy towards other women while hanging out around Boylston Place, and it might just be an unfortunate coincidence that he was seen chatting with a
young woman shortly before she was murdered. Now, some would argue that the speeding ticket does not completely exonerate Witten, since he possibly could have had Karina's body inside his trunk while this was taking place, and thus the Eaters have never publicly released the exact time that Witton was pulled over that morning or confirmed that his vehicle was searched. But I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't, since this sounded like nothing more than a routine traffic stop.
Yeah, I don't think that Witton could could possibly be the person here. I think, like we talked about earlier in the first episode, is that he creates this kind of illusion of someone who's almost humorous and laughable, someone who's quirky because of the costumes, and would be somebody that I would want to strike up a conversation with. But when you look at the idea that he gets pulled over later that night, that clearly he's struggling already.
I don't see this as somebody who's going to have the wherewithal to them to be charming to the extent that he could lure someone away from the bar with him. I think he would send off red flags that hey, I'm maybe not a bad guy, maybe I'm not a dangerous guy, but I'm lonely. I want attention from people. I'm desperate to talk to people, and I don't think that's somebody that Karina, even intoxicated, wants to go with.
I know that it definitely raised some eyebrows when Wynten decided to take his own life in January of nineteen ninety seven, particularly since he did so by slitting his own throat, which seems like a pretty extreme method for suicide.
So did wit and kill himself out of guilt for what he did to Karna, or did he just crack from the strain of being a potential suspect and a homicide Well, after reading about Wynd's history of struggles with depression and mental illness, I am inclined to believe it was the latter. It's worth noting that even though police announced that they were looking for a man with a large sheep dog who had been speaking with Karina outside the club, and the media lad reported that this man
had died by suicide. Wynn's name was never released publicly until weeks after his death. Winn's attorney also prevented him from being formally questioned by police, as he felt that Wittin could not mentally handle an interrogation. But even though Witten was never named as a suspect or person of interest, it sounds like just being associated with this crime in any fashion took a hole on his fragile mental health, and he may have been the breaking point which drove
him to suicide. And you also have to couple this in with the fact that Wynn's own father had recently passed away, and it sounds like you took it pretty hard. It was not until the lead detective on the case, Thomas O'Leary, was asked about Witten in the June twenty third, nineteen ninety eight edition of The Boston Herald, when he publicly stated quote, he didn't do it. Indeed, one reason why it's hard to imagine Witten being the killer is
because he had a history of erratic behavior. But Karina's murder was meticulous organized crime, and it's hard to imagine Witten Orjan Polo for that matter, being able to commit a murder like this without leaving any evidence behind.
That's very true. I think that when you have this idea where even the lead detective right comes out and says, hey, Winton told me that he didn't do it right, it's hard to think about this idea that he's a ratic, and this crime clearly is not. There's not a piece of evidence that shows that somebody haphazardly did this crime out.
Of a mental health episode.
It was planned, and so I just do not think that either Witten or Polo have that ability to commit the crime. I just I don't see it. I see those two men. I see it this mysterious older man man. I see that being a much more plausible explanation, and or don't forget there is the stranger element as well.
I agree, I just don't see Polo or Witten as very good suspects. Pollo doesn't have a place which he would be able to do this act, and he doesn't have a vehicle to transport him to a place even if he did have it, And then Witten. It just sounds like it's really sad. It sounds like a sad situation of a man who was struggling with mental health issues. And I don't find it personally suspicious that he decided
to end his own life. It is really horrific to think what he went through in the moment's leading up to that, and the method that he chose is just it's awful, and I really feel for him and his family, and I hope that that dog found a good home after so Our final potential suspect is Gregory Hummel, who was not seen with Karina at Zanzibar at the time she was killed, but made the news six months later when he picked up another young woman from the same
nightclub and proceeded to take her back to his apartment and attempted to rape her. She managed to grab Humble's mobile phone and lock herself in the bathroom to call for help. But if this hadn't happened, could she have potentially suffered the same fate as Karina. Well, Humble did have a history of allegations of violence against women, There's still a big difference between beating and sexually assaulting them
and murder and dismemberment. We were unable to find much follow up information on the investigation into Hummel, only that he spent a year in jail for his attack on the other woman. And incidentally, if you search through the Boston Globes archives, you'll find Hummell's name listed multiple times in their real estate transaction section for selling houses during the mid two thousands. So it does not sound like
his jailston curtails his real estate career. But even though Hummel violently attacked a woman that he picked up his zanzibar, I'm not sure if he could be placed at that same club on the night that Karina was there. So, for all we know, perhaps investigators were able to establish that he had an alibi and ruled him out.
Yes, absolutely, When you look at this idea that he attacked another woman from the same bar that our victim went missing from, that doesn't equate to the level of crime that happened against Karina, right, That is a totally
different element and realm of violence. And so when you look at this, I think that he could have had an issue with women, but I don't again see a profession that indicates knowledge of being able to bilaterally cut her right and to dispose of a body that way, it just doesn't scream to me the same level of criminality. So assaulting somebody horrific, But when you look at cutting a body in half, discarding her, and strangling her to death,
those are not that. That's not at the same level that this real estate agent is showing in his other types of crimes.
And what do you guys think of the timing too? So, say, just for example, that a man was to do this to Karina, and we could hypothesize that there was some kind of paralytic use because there was a lack of defensive injuries, and aside from the rope burn around her neck,
there was no restraint marks. She didn't have any other abrasions contusions, So it's very possible that she could have been given some kind of drugs so that she remained calm, so that this person could potentially sexually assault her or do what they were going to do to her without her fighting back. But then in this case we see a really sloppy assault where he's incredibly violent and didn't go to any steps to use any type of drugs to subdue his victim. I just don't see the offender
connection here. It just seems like two completely different crimes.
Yeah, I totally agree, and I think that if Hummel had this incident happened with a woman that he picked up at an entirely different nightclub, they wouldn't even be attempting to connect him to this case at all. It's only because of the coincidental timing. But I do agree that it seems like Karina's offender would be the type of person that if he wanted to sexually assault a woman, he would give her some sort of drug, whereas Humble was just more violent and aggressive, and that's why this
woman managed to save herself. However, the one thing which might point away from Humble, Polo Witten, Frank Rap, or any of the other known potential suspects is the partial fingerprint which was found on the trash bag can take Karina's body. While this has never been publicly confirmed, I'd like to think that investigators at least attempted to compare the print to the fingerprints of all these other individuals I just mentioned and found none of them to be
a match. So this is why I'm inclined to believe that the perpetrator might be someone who has never been investigated or shown up on the police's radar. It might be hard to imagine someone going to the trouble of slicing a woman's body in half and then never committing another crime like that again. But after nearly eight years, we've still never determined who is responsible for the Black
Dolly murder. So, for all you know, Elizabeth Schwortz killer may have gone back to living a normal life and didn't commit any more murders. The whole crime is such an anomaly because we don't know of any similar murders which took place in the Boston area during that time period. So did that killer move elsewhere or change the remo,
or did they just simply never kill again. We have to harken back to Karina's cryptic letter about something terrible having happened, because while this might be nothing more than a red herring, it could also hold the key to the mystery. But until then we can only speculate, and since this is a cold case which may not be solved through D and April filing, it might require the
right person coming forward with information. So if you happen to know anything about the unsolved murder of Krena Holmer, please contact the Boston Police Department Unsolved Homicide Unit at six one seven three four three four four seven zero. That's six one seven three four three four four seven zero. Or if you want to send any tips anonymously, please call the Crime Stoppers tip line at one eight hundred
four nine four tips. That's one eight hundred four nine four eight four seven seven Jules Ashley, any final thoughts in this case?
You know, for me, the hardest part about this one is that her family was not here. They were not able to really get a glimpse of her life here.
In the United States.
They weren't able to understand the people she was hanging out with. And then they have no idea how the investigation's going, right, Who's this family she was with, Who's the people she was hanging around, what happened to her? When they're processing the scene and when they're handling her body and all of these things, that's just they're so removed from it that has to definitely emphasize the grief
and complicate the grief. You know, I wonder if they have guilt of saying, listen, we let her go try this new adventure, when really they should be so proud of encouraging her to go pursue a dream in America, have a new life.
It's just exciting.
And yet I guarantee you there's so much hurt and pain of saying, like, we sent her there, we let her go. It's like a parent sending their kid to college, right, and something happens, and so my heart really goes out to them of saying, look, not only did you lose your daughter, but you lost her in a foreign place where you didn't have access to It has to be
incredibly devastating. It would be amazing to know what happened here, not just for the family, but because my god, if this person has done this before, they do it to Karina, who's to say that they didn't do it after And there's other victims as well. This is a very dangerous person and they need to be caught.
You're so right, ash, and I think that in a situation where the family is in Sweden, like my heart goes out to them because I cannot imagine how awful it must feel to potentially have a language barrier. You're dealing with another country and you've got questions about the investigation, but the communication wouldn't flow easily, and you just don't know if investigators are doing what they need to do
to solve Karina's murder. And that is compounded I think by the fact that we know that she wrote that letter, and that letter indicated that something really terrible had happened, so she wanted to return home early. So for her family, knowing that she already had active plans to come home and then this happened, it's just so heartbreaking, Like she was just out there living her life, meeting other Swedish opairs and having a good time, which is what a
girl her age should have been doing. This shouldn't have happened to her, but unfortunately it did. And I think that the most likely theory in my head is probably the two guys in the Mitsubishi. It's possible that there could have been two offenders. I think you're more disarmed and you're more inclined to get into a vehicle with more than one person. If it's just one person, you think, okay, well they could do harm to me. But if there's two people, you're like, well it has to be safe.
There's more than one person, and like there's safety in numbers, So I think that she could have very easily voluntarily got into that vehicle. But I don't think that any of the suspects in this case really check out. I think it's possible that Frank could have done something to Karina allegedly that could have been that terrible thing, but like as she said earlier in the episode, that wouldn't
necessarily make him a murderer. It looks like he had a pretty strong alibi, with his family visiting, going to that drive in, and going to dinner. So I don't think that he killed Karina because and had mentioned the like how would he have known that she was there and like contacted her, and all of these sorts of details that just don't seem to add up. The police
obviously didn't want to clear anybody. It didn't seem to publicly name anyone as being cleared or eliminated as a suspect or a person of interest, so I don't think we can necessarily read anything into that. It my heart breaks. This is a really gruesome case, and it makes me think that this can have been this offender's first kill. So it's likely that maybe they're in jail for another offense, or they've gotten away with it and they've just switched up.
Their mo Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Karina's family, because this is one case where you have not seen the victim's family in the spotlight too much doing interviews. But that just isn't their fault, because they are from a small town in Sweden, and they, for all we know, just cannot afford to keep going back and forth between there and the United States to keep tabs on the investigation and spread awareness about the case and do stuff
like hand out flyers. So they've pretty much been able to unable to do anything but just sit back and wait and hope that the police find the killer. And I know when they sent to Karina on there, I'm sure they never imagined that she would become a victim just like Elizabeth Short the Black Dahlia, and that the crime would remain unsolved for nearly thirty years. And I do agree that we've had all these suspects, I don't
think any of them are particularly compelling. I do think it's possible that Frank Rapp may have done something inappropriate with Karna and may know more than he's leting on and that this could be the source of Karna's letter. But it's also possible that all this stuff is just a red herring and she just cross passed with the wrong person at the nightclub that night, someone she had never encountered before in her life, and unfortunately she wound up leaving with them and was murdered in such a
brutal fashion. Do agree that if you were to pick anyone those two men in the Mitsubi, she do seem like the most promising suspects. But of course the big issue is that we just cannot firm they existed. We only have one eyewitness who recalled seeing them, so there really isn't a lot to work with. But I am intrigued by the theory that was pushed forward that these
men may not have been just serial killers. They may have just gone too far with Korena and decided that the best way to get rid of the physical evidence and to get rid of DNA would be to cut her body in half and get rid of the lower torso so that it is never found. And that this wasn't done just because they get off on killing. They just did it to cover themselves. And then just went
on living their normal lives. Again, we just don't know, but it's just hard to imagine that someone who would be capable of something like this could just not commit any more crimes. So yeah, even though we don't have any DNA to work with or physical evidence, I do hope someday they have a major break in this case and we can find out who actually did it.
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 stand and 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 Unsoalved 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 tear three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jules and Ashley 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
