Kathy Page Pt. One

Welcome back to The Path Went Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. May fourteenth, nineteen ninety one, Vider, Texas, thirty four year old Kathy Page is found dead inside her car after an apparent crash into a drainage ditch well. The

scene resembles an accident. The evidence shows that Kathy was strangled to death and the crash was staged since Kathy's marriage to her strange husband, Steve Page, was falling apart and there were a number of suspicious actions on his part. Kathy's family believed that Steve was responsible for murdering her, but the authorities do not believe there's enough evidence to file charges and the case remains unsolved. After

that The Path Went Chile. So today we are covering a case which has been featured on such true crime shows as Unsolved Mysteries and Coal Justice, the nineteen ninety one murder of Cathy Page. However, this story has garnered some additional notoriety over the past several years because it was the apparent inspiration for the critically acclaimed film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Released in twenty seventeen.

Three Billboards stars Francis mcdormant as a woman from a small fictional town whose teenage daughter is raped and murdered, and since the local police are unable to make any progress in the investigation, mcdorman's character expresses her frustration by renting out a trio of roadside billboards which contained the messages quote raped while dying, how come

Chief Willoughby still no arrests endote. The film was written and directed by Martin McDonough, who claimed he got the idea for his story during a bus trip through the United States during the nineteen nineties as he passed by a series of

billboards in which a murder victim's family expressed her dissatisfaction with the investigation. While McDonough was unable to recall the exact case mentioned on these billboards, it seems very likely that they were in reference to the murder of Kathy Page, a wife and mother who was killed in the small town of Vider, Texas, during a failed attempt to stage her death to look like a car accident.

Now, aside from the basic premise about the billboards, the plot and characters in Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, are completely fictional and have nothing to do with this case. In the film, no one seems to have any idea who committed the murder. But the biggest source of frustration for the family of Kathy Page is that they are confident that the perpetrator was her estranged husband, Steve paye Age, and believe he was never charged with the crime because

the local authorities watched the investigation and they have been protecting him. Regardless of whether Steve Page is guilty or innocent of this crime. This is a very tragic story which has caused a lot of hurt and dissension between two families, and it's still up in the air whether there will ever be a conclusive resolution.

I already feel so much pain for both families, honestly, because you have this couple who at one point was happy and they were in love enough to get married, and then you have this quote accident where the families quite convinced that the husband actually murders their daughter, and instead of feeling like they get help and support and assistance from the local police, they're faced with this reality that there's really nothing else that's going to be done for their daughter.

To bring about justice. And when you think about it, the husband also has a family too, and that was their daughter in law at one point. The suspected killer was Kathy's husband, and that's another family son in law at one point, and so there were these really tight relationships and connections that fell apart during the estrangement. But both families are left struggling with one family thinking their sons being falsely accused of murder and another family thinking their former son

in law killed their baby. And it's devastating to feel like possibly the police didn't either do a thorough enough investigation or didn't have proper communication to tell the

family where they truly were in that investigation. And as we're going to talk about later on in these episodes, the people who have suffered the most in this whole affair are Stephen Kathy's two daughters because they've been caught in the middle of this drama between two families, and they've also lost their mother and experienced a lot of tragedy. I also wondered to either of you seeing three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. It's excellent. It is. Yes, I'll talk

more about it later on in these episodes. But it was kind of cool to find out that this case inspired it. Have you seen it, Ash, I don't think I've seen it, but now I'm going to have to add it to my mess watch list, and I'm running out of great things to watch, so this will be at the top of it. Our story begins in nineteen ninety one Invider, Texas, a small town of around eleven thousand people located in Orange County, and our central figure is thirty four year

old Lucille Catherine Page, who goes by the name Kathy. Originally born in Hollandale, Mississippi, to parents James and Dorothy Fulton. Kathy also had two brothers and three sisters. She was originally born in Hollandale, Mississippi, before she eventually relocated to Texas. At this point, she's currently living Invider with

her two daughters, twelve year old Aaron and seven year old Monica. Their house is located on a dead end street next to inter State ten, and Cathy works as a waitress at the Hofbrow restaurant in the nearby city of Beaumont. She originally married her husband, Steve Page, in nineteen seventy eight while she was pregnant with Aaron, but their relationship has not been in a good

place in a long time. After they got into a heated argument, Kathy asked Steve for a separation, and he agreed to move out of their home into an apartment. In spite of this, Steve maintained that they continued to remain cordial and friendly with each other, as he believed that Kathy was simply going through a phase in which she needed to find herself, but was willing

to work things out with him. However, Kathy's family believed the marriage had no chance of being saved and said that Kathy was planning to divorce Steve sometime in the near future. On the evening of May thirteenth, only one day after Steve spent his first night at his new apartment, he was contacted by

Kathy, who asked if he would babysit their two daughters. Cathy told Steve that she wanted to go out to a bar in Beaumont with a friend of hers named Charlotte Baringen Morgan, so Steve agreed to return to the house to watch over the kids. Steve claimed that he last saw Kathy between eleven fifteen and eleven thirty pm before he went to sleep a short time later, but sometime over the next five hours, Kathy would wind up dead under very strange

circumstances. At four twenty am on the morning of May fourteenth, a newspaper carrier discovered Kathy's black mercury tracer in a drainage ditch alongside Interstate ten. The location was only one hundred and fourteen yards from Kathy's residence, though the vehicle appeared to be pointing in the opposite direction. Kathy was lying dead in the driver's seat, so the vido of police department were summoned to the scene, and at first glance, it appeared that she had been killed in a tragic

accident. So if her car is facing away from her home, it would seem as though when she was leaving around eleven fifteen or eleven thirty, that's when that accident would have occurred, which means she would have been sitting there for five hours, almost when the police arrived at four twenty, or when someone summons the police at four twenty. So that's really scary. One hundred and fourteen yard from her house, she made it that far before she has

this tragic accident. It seems very very suspicious. Well, as we're going to talk about, she definitely did not die at around eleven fifteen or eleven thirty, because there are other people who can vouch for her whereabouts over the

next few hours. So that's the biggest hole in the accidents seen so far, is that it appears that she did return home at some point, But if she got into a crash while she was driving home, wires are car facing in the opposite direction, so that would be the first sign that this accident may have been staged. So when Detective Sergeant Ray Moseley and another investigator went to the Page residence, Steve answered the door wearing nothing but a pair

of boxer shorts. Mosley asked Steve if he is the husband of Kathy Page and whether he knew his wife's whereabouts, but Steve replied that she was not home. Before Moseley could inform him about what happened, he noticed that Steve appeared to be looking down the street in the direction where Kathy's car had been

found. After the investigator were invited into the house, Steve was finally notified that his wife had been killed, and Mosley noticed Steve go through some radical changes in his behavior, as he appeared to start crying and hysterically throwing himself on the couch, before his emotions would quickly dissipate and he would go back

to carrying on a conversation with no signs of tears in his eyes. The living room lights were left off the entire time the police were inside the house, and even when they asked Steve to turn them on, he never did. Mosley also noticed a small pile of clothes on the floor and found it odd that Steve never asked to see Kathy or made any attempt to leave and

visit the accident scene. That is incredibly odd, and the way that he reacts with such grander and such dramatic flare, and yet he's not asking the specific questions, you know, what happened to her? Where is she? Please? Let me see her? Can I go to her? You know? Can my girl see her? None of that. He's not really asking any of that, and so it's quite odd. Almost seems like he's trying

to appear as though he's not at all suspecting anything. When he shows up, you know, at the door, with his boxers on and then when they come in, he's almost alluding them by not turning the lights on and things like that. Yes, I could see he'd be in shock, but when they say, hey, turn your lights on, why wouldn't he? Is he hiding something? Are there scratches on him? Or are those clothes? Do they have blood on them? What was it that he didn't want

to come the lights on for? Could be anything right? What if there was a spot of blood on a carpet? What if there had been a fuss and maybe something had broken, maybe he had scratches, or maybe he's trying to cloak himself in darkness because he feels as though it will be harder to gauge whether or not his emotional reactions are genuine, because it seems to me personally, and I'm sure to both of you as well. We've seen

cases like this before. And when you've got a perpetrator or a potential perpetrator who doesn't ask more questions about what happened, doesn't want to see their loved one, even if it is a wife, that you are the one that's saying that she's finding herself and then you're going to work it out, but you're not trying to go and see the accident, seeing and going why why,

and like, how did this happen? Let me see her. Those are major red flags, and obviously investigators are clocking that right from the start, and especially given the relationship they currently have. Like, yes they're strange, Yes they're likely going through a divorce, but they're close enough to where they at least know they're going to co parent. They're close enough that she could call him late at night and say, hey, can you watch the

girls for me? And he said, yeah, sure, that's no problem. So even for your children's sake, you want to know those questions, and for the mother of your children, that's still someone you have a love for at this point, you know, it's not like she's taking them kids away from him and ruined his career or anything like that. I mean, at this point, they're still cooperating with one another. So again, you never know how someone's going to react to grief. So I do have to

say, you know, who knows. It could be his own grief reaction, But it does definitely seemed suspicious that he didn't follow police protocol or requests to turn the lights on. It's very bizarre that he went from zero to kind of three hundred percent, yet wasn't expressing some of the questions you typically

think he'd ask. And since he recently died, I should mention that One of the most infamous examples of this behavior is oj Simpson, who flew to Chicago after his ex wife was murdered, and the police called him at his hotel to say, I'm sorry to inform you your ex wife has died, and he says, oh my god, that's terrible. I'll fly right home. And then when the call ended, the detective said, he never asked

how she died. Don't you find that very suspicious? And that's pretty much the same thing with Steve, where he's not asking any questions about what happened to his dead wife. It didn't take long for investigators to reach the conclusion that Kathy did not actually die in a car crash, and that her so called accident had been staged. Even though the drainage ditch was fairly deep, there was very little damage to the interior or sterior of the mercury tracer and

no sign of skid marks anywhere. Kathy's feet were pushed back against the seat rather than stretched towards the petals, and even though she was not wearing her seatbelt, she remained in a reclined position in the front seat and had not been thrown forward. Kathy didn't have any wounds or injuries on her upper or lower body, though she did have a laceration on the back of her head, as well as a broken nose in a black eye that did not appear

to be caused by a crash. Even those soft drinks from a fast food restaurant were on the floorboard, the impact of the crash had somehow not caused them to spill or tip over, and Kathy's purse was sitting upright in the passenger seat. The rear view mirror had also been turned in sideways and was facing the driver's seat and touching the windshield, so it was theorized that someone

had accidentally adjusted it while loading Kathy's body into the car. When an autopsy was performed later that day, it would reveal that Kathy had significant injuries to her neck and her exact manner of death was manual strangulation. Oddly, while there were traces of bloodstains on Kathy's skin, undergarments, and inside of her clothing. There was no blood on her outer clothing, though the presence of a blade of grass on the bottom of her jeans suggested that her body was

dragged across the ground at some point. It seemed likely that Kathy was murdered at another location before the perpetrator cleaned and dressed her dead body. They then placed Kathy inside her car and ran it off the road into a ditch to give the false impression of a fatal accident. So what are we talking about here? Why are we even questioning what happened to Kathy? Because they told us what happened to Kathy, The medical examiner says, it's manual strangulation.

You can see injuries to her body, like the laceration on the back of her head, the broken nose in the black eye, Yet it doesn't look like she's fallen forward and hit the steering wheel or crashed into the windshield or anything like that. The food still standing upright in the floorboard of the car is her purse, and her physical body doesn't seem to even be slouched over

or slumped over from the impact. So I'm angry. I'm starting to think, just like the family's thinking, why is there a question mark as to what happened. At least look at the facts where she's been dragged into that car. She has grass on the bottom of her bottom of her jeans, So she has grass on the bottom of her jeans. So them saying clearly it's a murder. They told us it's manual strangulation. Who was it? Who knows? But I get what the family's saying, How dare you say

this is an accident. They're telling you that it's not an accident, The evidence is telling you it's not an accident, and yet you're telling me years and years and years later, the police still claim it's an accident. Actually, no, they actually did. They did reclassified as a homicide. I mean, the police made a lot of mistakes in the investigation, but at least at the very getting here, they did look at the facts and said, okay, this is definitely not an accident. I mean, they didn't

do much a very good job at trying to find the perpetrator. But I have seen other cases like this where they go years before changing the classification on accidents. So at least they did the right thing right away. Oh good, Okay, So I was gonna say I'm already enraged, just like everybody else would be looking at this case, because you know you're being told by medical professionals it's manual strangulation. There's no way to just say, oh,

it was a car accident. The autopsy also revealed the presence of seamen in Kathy's vagina to indicate that she had sexual intercourse a short time before her death. Investigators soon learned that Kathy's story about going out with her friend Charlotte was completely false and that she was actually meeting up with a secret boyfriend at the Best Western Hotel in Beaumont. This man did not live in the area, and it originally met Kathy a few months earlier when he stopped by the Hofbrow

restaurant while she was working there, and they developed an instant connection. Since he usually stated at the Best Western Hotel whenever he passed through Beaumont, he made arrangements with Kathy to secretly meet up there. When the boyfriend was questioned by police, he admitted that he and Kathy had sex at the hotel on the night of her death before she left at around two thirty am. By all accounts, this man was very cooperative with the investigation and passed a polygraph,

so he was cleared as a suspect. One of the oddest details of Kathy's death is that when she was found inside her car, she was not wearing makeup, socks, or any of her jewelry, including her watch, ear rings, and wedding ring. The boyfriend confirmed that when he last saw Kathy at the hotel, she was dressed in the same clothes she was wearing at the time of her death, but he was also certain that she was

still wearing her makeup and jewelry. According to those who knew her, Kathy usually only took off her jewelry when she got ready for bed, leading to speculation that she had made it home at some point before she was killed. Another surprising revelation from Kathy's autopsy is that some of the seamen found in her vagina did not have any sperm, which indicated that she had sexual intercourse with someone who had undergone a vasectomy. Well, Kathy's boyfriend never had of a

sect to me, but Steve Page had received one months earlier. When confronted about this, Steve claimed that when he first arrived at the house that night, Kathy stepped out of the shower while wearing a towel, and they decided to have sex on the carpet in the living room before she left. However, Kathy's family had a hard time believing this story, as prior to moving out, Steve had been sleeping on the couch and there did not appear to

be any intimacy left in the relationship. It seemed unlikely to them that Kathy would agree to have sexed with Steve right before going out to meet up with another man. None of that makes sense. I just don't buy it. You have Kathy who has told people were clearly going to get a divorce. She's going out to meet with this boyfriend, which is possibly one of the reasons she's pretty confident in a divorce, like, I still got it.

There's someone to try me. I have a good time with him, and I don't feel the same stress and upset that I feel when I'm around my ex husband or my husband who I'm estranged from. And if you think about this, she's asked him to watch the kids, so the kids are close by, sleeping let's say in another room or something like that, and his account is like they had this hot I can't even control myself kind of sex on the floor, Okay, as grown people, I'm just telling you,

my back hurts too much for that. I'm not having sex on the living room floor, and I'm surely not doing that while my kids are in the house. Like, you have to be more discreet even if they're sleeping, so they don't have that kind of relationship where it's this hot steam. I can't even make it into the bedroom to have sex with you. It doesn't

make any sense. It makes more sense that she gets home and she's getting ready for bed, and he's either figured out that she was out with this man or she says something like, look, I'm interested in someone else, I'm not interested in you, and he is enraged, feeling betrayed, feeling emasculated, things like that, and he hurts her. Remember she has a laceration on the back of her head, her eyes are bruised. She also

has a broken nose. So it's more likely that he beat her, hurt her, killed her, and raped her because she wasn't interested in him anymore and he wasn't going to allow somebody else to have his wife. It's almost like he wanted to stake his claim one last time by raping her and then killing her and just ending her life like that. But I'm with you, I don't think that in any world is it possible that this man that she seems to be happy to be rid of, she's told all of her friends

and family. No, this divorce is happening like it's going through, and she's met a guy she's got an instinct connection with and they're meeting up to have this exciting night that's going to be I'm sure filled with passion. The last thing that she's going to be thinking about doing is having sex with her ex husband while the kids are there. It just doesn't even sound believable. It sounds like he's trying to come up with a reason why his semen is

inside her. Yeah, and he probably wasn't counting on that because they probably would have assumed that all the semen belonged to the boyfriend until they noticed that some of it was missing sperm and that the boyfriend didn't have a vasectomy. So Steve realized, oh, I have to come up with a cover story

to explain this, and this was the best he could dream up. But of course no one believed it because knowing the circumstances of their relationship, there was no way they were having sex on the living room floor that night. The Fulton family would notice a number of suspicious actions on Steve's part following Kathy's death, though Steve and his own family would later dispute that a lot of these things even took place. According to Kathy's parents, James and Dorothy Fulton,

Steve bwonned their residence that morning to inform them about what happened. The Fulton said they immediately went over to the Page residence and when they arrived, they saw Steve walking around the living room wiping his hands with a bathcloth while dressed in red shorts and a white T shirt, and he appeared to have a scratch on his nose. Shortly thereafter, Dorothy said she noticed Steve doing

laundry and washing clothes. There had been contradictory accounts from different witnesses who were at the residence that morning who have either confirmed or denied that they heard the washing machine running, though most of the people who denied it were members of

Steve's family. According to Kathy's sister Jan Kelly, when she visited the residence, Steve made a comment that Kathy had gone out drinking and was probably drunk or taking valium when she crashed her car into the ditch, even though the toxicology report would show no traces of any alcohol in her system. Kathy did use valium, but Steve alleged on a few occasions that Kathy was also using cocaine, though he later acknowledged that these allegations were untrue and that he'd simply

made the mistake of repeating rumors that he'd heard about Kathy's drug use. I love how his immediate response is like victim blameing and and accounting and making excuses for how and why the accident happened. I don't know, it just seems like, you know, immediately when someone passes away, you don't really think about all those things. You're not sitting there going like, oh man, I know he was abused in drugs and drunk and flew into that ditch and

these kinds of things. I might ask that, like I might say, do you guys think it's possible she was drinking and driving? Do you guys think it's possible that she ingested something or took medication that made her really sleepy? But to start spreading rumors and sharing definitive kind of character attacks on her

seems really bizarre. It's okay to say what caused the accident and just you know, hypothesize like what could have happened, But it almost seems like he's trying to make sure everyone looks at Kathy's bad behavior, which isn't even truthful in this scenario, and doesn't look his direction. It's very bizarre. He has that scratch on his nose. It's very bizarre. He's washing clothes. I tend to side with the people who aren't trying to protect him, which

would be Kathy's family. It's possible they misheard something, but usually I mean, if you think you heard the washing machine running, I guarantee you the morning your daughter died, you'd say why was laundry important today? Like? Why are you doing laundry right now? We're trying to help two babies deal with the death of their mom. I'm trying to help you deal with her

death. Why are we doing the household chores right now? Oh? I've seen so many cases like this where someone who is not known for doing laundry at all suddenly feels compelled to do it. After their spouse goes missing or is murdered, they just suddenly feel this need to clean their clothing, even though that's completely at a character for them, so it seems awfully convenient.

The day after Kathy's death, one of her other sisters, Sherry Vallentine, visited the house and said she noticed a very strong smell and saw oscillating fans being used to dry out the carpet. Steve claimed he was cleaning the carpet after spilling some fish breeze on it, and said the spill occurred on the very same spot where he and Kathy had s on the evening of May the

thirteenth. There has been a lot of dispute from different witnesses about the details of when Steve supposedly cleaned the carpet, as his daughter Aaron, and one of Steve's sisters have always claimed they personally witnessed him spilled the grease, but this incident did not actually occur until after Kathy's funeral. Oddly, Steve told multiple members of the Fulton family that he did not want the police coming over to his house because they might find blood on the carpet at a spot where

Kathy had previously shaved her legs. He said he did not trust the police, believing they had previously planted evidence on some of his friends. When Steve was interviewed by Detective Moseley at the police station, he even repeated the same statement about not wanting the police at his house because he feared they might find

something to incriminate him. The police also told Steve that they wanted to form an autopsy on Kathy, but he told them that he didn't want anyone quote unquote cutting into her, so James Fulton was the one who officially authorized this. He seemed to indicate that Cathy was manually strangled by a left handed person,

and there would be contradictory accounts about whether Steve was left handed. Steve and his family maintained that he was right handed, even though members of the Faulton family and other witnesses claimed they had seen and performed tasks with his left hand. He could also be ambidextrius, where he can use both hands to

do task pretty equally. He might default to his right hand, but doesn't mean he can't do things with his left hand, and maybe since his right hand's stronger, he's holding Kathy down with that one, and he's using his left hand, which he's very capable of doing, to injure her as well.

Man, this is really frustrating. You talk about a husband who supposedly cares so much for this woman, he wants to be at least apparent with her, but also he believes here getting back together, and then all of a sudden he's like, not in this house, police aren't coming in here. Remember that one time she cut her legs shaving. Right here on this carpet is where she was bleeding, and it's right where we had sex,

and it's right where I spilled this fish grease. Very bizarre that he's trying to cover up and hide the home in general, that he's drawing attention to himself, whether he knows it or not, by having that carpet cleaned again the day after she dies. Day of her death, he's doing laundry and trying to talk about how she probably was drunk or overdose on something. And the second day he has fans oscillating all around a really strong smell where he's

cleaning this carpet because he was cooking fish that he's spilled there. And that story doesn't even check out, because even the people that are his alibi witnesses for that say, oh, yeah, it happened at the day of her funeral, which clearly was not two days after her death. Question, so where was this spot that he was claiming that he spilled the fish grease? Was it even in the kitchen? Uh? No, it was on the carpet, like in the living room, Like why would it be there?

Why why would you have fish grease in the living room. I don't understand you walking around the pan or a that of fish grease. And when you shave your legs and you cut your legs jewels, do you sit there and like with blood dripping down your legs, You're like, let's go hang out in the living room with this. You sit in a bathroom or you at least get to the kitchen and put a band aid on. You're not like, no problem, guys, I'm just dripping blood down my legs to the

carpet and I'm just gonna sit here with it. And who shaves their legs in the living room over carpet? Anyways, it doesn't even make sense. Well, believe it or not, this is not the first case we've covered in which someone has used as it as an excuse. You might remember a couple of years ago we did an episode about the murderer of Lulukor Shane, and that was another one where they found blood in her apartment and the suspects said, oh, yeah, she was shaving her legs there that night.

It's very convenient that women like to shave their legs in the living room shortly before they get murdered. It seems to be a common theme. And with twelve year old kids driving sex in the living room floor, it's just our bags can't do it. We just can't. The Fultons also noticed some suspicious

behavior from one of Steve's best friends. A private investigator named Roger Howell told the family that he needed to take photographs of Kathy's body in order to help Steve, and asked to view the body at the funeral, though they could not understand why. During a visit to the Page residence, Sherry claimed she saw Roger enter the bathroom with Steve while carrying a manila envelope. When they walked out, Sherry noticed that the envelope was bulky and made a metallic sound

when it moved. While Stephen Roger later claimed the envelope was actually a bag of candy. The Fultons have always suspected that it contained Kathy's watch, as Steve needed to get rid of it since it would have proved Kathy arrived home

and took it off before she was killed. One of Kathy's coworkers at the Hofbrow restaurant also claimed that Roger phoned her on the morning of May fourteenth to inform her about what happened to Kathy, but he specifically stated that she'd been strangled to death, even though the autopsy that determined the manner of death would not be performed until hours later. Wow, what kind of can you need

to bring in a manila bag just to just to ask people? But okay, backing up, this is what they're preparing the body two days, three days after she dies, and Steve has felt it necessary to reach out to his best friend, Roger Howell, who's a private investigator, to do things to help him. What is he helping you with? As far as you know right now, she was in a car accident. So what are you

calling a private investigator for now? If you're telling me three or four months later, the police haven't left you alone, that you're being called in every week question that they keep asking you to take polygraph tests, they keep lying to you about information that you know is not true. Yeah, do you

get an attorney? Do you get a private investigator? Sure, my gosh, sure, But before her body's even buried, before you even know the cause of death, you're going to have this private investigator or working on your behalf to quote help you. There's no help right now, just be here in present with because my wife's dead. And of course a more standing thing is that Roger knew about the strangulation before the police even dead, So you get the impression that Steve had to tell him a secret. So yeah,

so where's Roger and all this? Does he get questioned by the police later in the investigation? I'm not entirely sure. I mean, he seems to be the wild card here where it really sounds like he had knowledge about what actually happened. But he has never really been questioned or interrogated, even though he may actually be an accessory to murder. Nor would he tell the truth though, because it's clear he's going to help Steve do whatever he wants,

in fact, possibly even getting rid of a watch as eminence. Do we know anything about the phone records between the two of them, especially on the evening or like May thirteenth and May fourteenth. That's a good question because phone records do play a good, big role in this case, because we know

about some phone calls that took place during the early evening hours. But I think that if they found a record that Steve had phone er around the time that his wife was killed, I think we would have heard about it. So who knows. Maybe Roger came over to his house or something and he told him in person. So there just is in a paper trail or an electronic trail, or maybe he was smart enough to drive to a payphone,

because there was lots of payphones back then. That is true, Yes, darn't many now, So crooks are out of luck if they want to make a secret phone call. So Kathy's friend Charlotte confirmed that on the night of her death, Kathy had phoned her to let her know that she was planning to secretly meet up with her boyfriend at a hotel. Kathy told Charlotte that Steve might attempt to check up on her, so she asked Charlotte to cover

for by not answering the phone in case Steve called well. Charlotte told police that she received a call at two thirty am that morning, and when she answered it, the caller immediately hung up, leading her to suspect it was Steve. Charlotte did receive a call from Steve sometime between five point thirty and six am, where he informed her that Kathy had not yet come home, so Charlotte told him they had out together before they parted ways hours earlier.

There has been some dispute about when this second phone call actually took place, as Steve would keep changing his story about what time he made the call, providing such differing times as two thirty, three thirty, and four thirty. While this has never been corroborated, Sherry Valentine claimed that she heard from Steve's sister in law that after Kathy left for the night, Steve found a pair of phone numbers Kathy had scrawled down in a notebook next to the phone.

The first number was Charlotte's phone number and the second was for the Best Western Hotel in Beaumont. Kathy's family theorized that after Steve called Charlotte's number and discovered she was still at home. He decided to call the second number, and after learning it was for a hotel, he became convinced that Cathy was with another man. When Kathy arrived home later that morning, Steve may have confronted her about this, and things escalated to the point where he raped Kathy and

strangled her to death before staging the fake accident scene. That's exactly what happened. Yeah, yes, you have that right where Charlotte is already prepped. She knows, Hey, my husband's clearly gonna call. I'm using you as my alibi. Can you just not answer the phone tonight so that he knows we're out together? While at two thirty in the morning, if you weren't going out, that's kind of startling to get a phone call. And when he hears her voice, he goes, well, well, well, well

she's not out with my wife. Calls that other number and it's a hotel. He does exactly what you just said, Robin. He realizes she's at a hotel with somebody, and when she comes home, you know, there's a confrontation there. I wouldn't be shocked if she said something like I'm done with you. I found someone who makes me happy. You get over yourself.

I'm not getting back with you. And like we talked about earlier, that feeling of lack of control, the feeling that you're being emasculated because you didn't keep your prize and you didn't get to keep your girl, all of that would lead to a rage that I think could have resulted in the injuries you see to poor Kathy. She has the bruises, she has the broken nose, she has a laceration on the back of her head, and she's been manually strangled. That seems like someone who's acting out of pure rage.

And then to think that he would also sexually assault her and rape her. Oh, I mean, it fits exactly the scenario you just described. Of course, Steve denied any involvement in Kathy's death. When the case was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries which aired in April of nineteen ninety eight, Steve agreed to be interviewed, and he offered his own theory about who killed

Kathy. Steve claimed that he had received a number of phone threats in which he was warned that the same thing in which happened to Kathy could also happen to him. He said that a member of a prominent Italian family who were involved in the Quote Beaumont mafia, was responsible for Kathy's death, and the Vita Policeice Department when were attempting to frame him for the crime and refusing to

investigate other leads for their part. The Fulton family believed that the viter PD and the Orange County District Attorney's Office were covering for Steve and did not want to arrest him as a number of the investigating officers, including Detective Ray Mosley, knew him personally and Steve's parents were reportedly friends with the chief of police.

The viter PD did make a number of mistakes in the investigation, as they took pictures of Kathy's so called car crash with no film inside the camera, so there were no actual photos of the crime scene to be entered into evidence. For unknown reasons, the District Attorney's office refused to grant the police a warrant to search the Page residents until years after Kathy's death took place, and the search failed to uncover any evidence. During this time period, the

Fulton family noticed that whenever they placed flowers on Kathy's grave. They would always return to find them vandalized and thrown away, so they became con vince that Steve was responsible. When the Fultons hired a private investigator to follow Steve around, he managed to videotape him in the act of kicking a set of flowers off Kathy's gravesite. So Steve was subsequently indicted on the charge of desecreating a

grave and received a sentence of probation. Steve eventually moved he of state and took his two daughters, Aaron and Monica, to Tennessee to live with his sister. What a real winner, you know. I mean, I don't care how frustrated you are. You don't go to someone's gravesite and kick the

flowers off of her grave. That's just I don't know, disgusting is not a good enough word for it. But what really bothers me is is fact that they don't get a search warrant for years after Kathy's death to search the home. The reality is there was a declaration that she was manually strangled, and it clearly she did not die in this car accident. Therefore, you have a right to go to the place where you know she was recently,

which is her own home. Why they weren't able to look through that house, and why they wouldn't make that a priority even if Steve wasn't one of the people at the top of their list. I want to see what could have happened in the last hours of her life. I want to see even when she was getting ready. Could we find something like those phone numbers? Would he find something like in her diary that says I'm worried because this person's

harassing me. They didn't get to go look for any of that stuff because it would be years later. Why wouldn't they search the page home and the Best Western. You've got two men who admittedly have their semen inside of her. One of the perpetrators is likely one of those two men, and the boyfriend has basically been eliminated because of his polygraph. But still you would search that Best Western hotel room just in case he was able to pass it while

he was still guilty. But it just seems odd that nobody would ground to warrant, especially since he said that the last time he saw her she had on her jewelry, and then when her body was found, she had all that stuff taken off, like her makeup and her jewelry, which is something she only did right before bed, so it seems like she likely did go home. So I just can't understand why they wouldn't grant that search warrant.

Yeah, if they had done it right away, they might have found the watch before Roger was able to take it out and put it in the envelope, and that would have been concrete evidence that Kathy had made it home and could have potentially led to an arrest. And if they got that warrant, they might have been able to get some clothes that may or may not have had blood or bodily fluids on them, maybe some sheets, and that spot on the ground where the quote unquote fish grease was that they had sex or

she might have cut her leg with a razor. They would have had access to that, but since they waited for years, he had all the time in the world to clean it up. So Ashley, after hearing Steve's comments string his interview, have you changed your mind? Do you now believe it was the Beaumont mafia? Totally? I feel really sorry for him that he's under suspicion and he was such a great, you mean loving husband and father that he kicked the flowers off her grave. It was just a stress,

that's all. Yeah. Absolutely, it's a hotbed for mafia activity. Beaumont, Texas. Since a grand jury declined to indict Steve with Kathy's murder, James Fulton became very frustrated with the lack of progress in the investigation. So you were surmonded by placing hand paided signs alongside Interstate ten, which shared such messages as quote, bider PD botched up the case waiting for confession. This

could happen to you end quote. As the years went on, James decided to publicly express his frustration by renting a series of billboards along the interstate containing statements like quote, this is Orange County, city of Bider Here you get by with brutally murdering a woman end quote. A wrongful death suit would be filed against Steve on behalf of James and Dorothy Fulton, and one of Kathy's sisters, Diane Daegel, who was acting as the official guardian for Kathy's daughter

Monica, since she was still a minor at that time. The Fultons wanted to prevent Steve from collecting Kathy's life insurance, and the case would go through a pair of mistrials in civil court, which featured many pieces of conflicting testimony from the Fulton and Page families. While Kathy's sister Sherry testified that Steve was controlling, jealous, and abusive and would often grab or push Kathy during arguments, Steve and his family denied this, and their daughter Aaron testified that she

never personally witnessed anything like this. However, during the third trial in October of nineteen ninety nine, the Fultons finally won a civil judgment against Steve, as the jury awarded them a total of two hundred thousand dollars in damages and life insurance, with one hundred and fifty thousand dollars going to the Fultons and

the other fifty thousand going to Monica. So I'm assuming he didn't get life insurance of any kind, right, Like they got everything plus the damages exactly, Like that was part of the total, the damages and the life insurance that he was trying to get, Okay, So there had to be enough where this civil court, Remember it's a different burden of proof. You have to prove in a civil court. But it's really sad that his kids are

being called into this. They're having to sit there and when their mother's deceased, their suspect suspicion on their father that he killed their mother. Now they're having to recount was my dad abusive or not? I mean, just the trauma of that is hard and trying to think about, like, Okay, my parents fuss, but was the abusive. I just feel really sad for both the kids who are trying to defend the only parent they have left, you know, even if they're wrong in this situation, And my heart is

breaking for her family who's saying pay attention please. We're literally going to any links possible, even making hand pain and signs and putting on the side of the road saying, well, someone listened to us. And finally the civil case did get someone to listen to them. But no amount of money is going to bring any kind of feeling of justice to the family. It simply says at least Steve didn't get that too right, at least he didn't benefit

from that as well as her being deceased. But Monica got some of the money, which is the miner at the time. I'm sure Aaron was taken care of as well in certain ways by the family, but oh, it

just what a heartbreaking reality that those kids had to go through. Yeah, we're going to go into more detail about this in our next episode because Aaron in recent years has published a blog talking about all the trauma this whole situation has caused for her, and she has some pretty tough feelings not only against her father but from her mother's side of the family as well. And it's

sad. People talk about kids and you know, like they'lding on a documentary and they'll be defending the living parent or trying to understand what happened, but they're not. They almost seem naive. But I sit back and I think that's all they have left. And if that house of cards falls too, if they really come to the conclusion that their dad killed their mother and he's this abusive man, like I can't have a relationship with him anymore either.

I two parents, So I do understand the psychology and the default to trying to say, like, is there a way to explain this away or to make it where my dad's not responsible? And I think the older those kids get. The more that you know, the naive mind starts to kind of fade and some of those realities would come to pass. It's very, very sad. Why do you guys think that Monica got fifty thousand but Aaron wasn't awarded any I'm I think she was a miner. Well, Monica was a

miner, and let me just double check. I want to see how old Aaron was. So Aaron was twelve at the time of her death, so she would have been nineteen at the civil trials, so she wouldn't have been a miner at that time. But it could be because I think she was on Steve's side, like she seemed to be testifying on his behalf saying that I never personally witnessed any abuse or controlling behavior from him. So maybe that's

why she didn't get any of the insurance money. That's unfortunate, though, because the reality is she is still a child who has been traumatized by this situation and everything that Ashley said rings true. For somebody to be able to actually absorb that information and go, oh, yes, there is a strong likelihood or probability that my father is the one that killed my mother I think that you're going to fight tooth and nail on a subconscious level to prevent yourself

from believing that right. You're going to distance yourself as much as you can from that, because the reality you have to confront is, do I write off my father? Do I not have a relationship with him? You've already lost your mother. Do you really want to face a reality in which your father is guilty of murdering your mother and then you have to make a choice to cut him out of your life or not. I think it's easier to

go no, he didn't do it. You double down, And I mean, I'm going to use this example, not that I think necessarily one way or the other that Michael Peterson is guilty or not. But the staircase, all the kids there, except for Kathleen's biological daughter, all supported Michael wholeheartedly, even though Kathleen had been in their life for a very long time. I think just the idea of him going away it was just to be able to grasp that is just too much for the psyche of a young child to

be able to grasp. But also for an adult child. No one wants to believe that. And same with his family. Look, they're all coming to his rescue, saying the washer was not running, it was not on while we were there. They're trying to defend him too. I think even if you had a gut feeling that your son was responsible, you would want to do anything but look that in the eye. You would want to explain

in a way any way possible. And even when you talk about the children, you know, like the case of Gabriel Fernandez, where days before he's killed by this mother who's been abusing him for years, he's holding up a sign that says Happy Mother's Day, and he writes her a letter about what

an amazing mother she is to him. And so I really do think our brains tried to turn off the reality that the people that are supposed to love us the most, and the people who are supposed to protect us and are going to be in our life forever, that they could be anything but good. And I could see a scenario where the family is like, we know

that he didn't do it. They've told themselves this, but we need to create a scenario where the police are going to believe that there's a strong likelihood that he wasn't cleaning up potential evidence from a crime scene, thereby saying no, the washer and the dryer weren't running, and being okay with potentially fabricating something like that because they're telling themselves they know that he's innocent. They're just

helping show the police what they already know themselves to be true. Now that Stevid lost a wrongful death lawsuit, and as attempts to appeal the verdicts were unsuccessful, James Fulton felt more confident about publicly accusing him of Kathy's murder on his billboards. He soon erected a new one, which featured a photo of Steve's face and the words quote invited. He got by with murder. Found responsible for wife's death in civil court, Appeals court, upheld conviction, pleaded

guilty of desecrating her grave, criminal case, no arrests end quote. In twenty twelve, James posted yet another new billboard, featuring both Steve and Cathy's photos in it. Read quote, Steve Page brutally murdered his wife in nineteen ninety one. Viter PD does not want to solve this case. I believe they took a bribe. The Attorney General should investigate James Fulton her father end quote. A billboard was also put up in the park Invider with the message

quote Vider's garbage dump park security provided by the local police department. I believe my daughter was being raped while she was strangled to death in nineteen ninety one. The Viter police department would not accept outside help and the case is never been solved. I believe the police department did not want to solve this case. Will you be the next unsolved murder? Predators love parks? The Lighter police department did not solve my daughter's murder. Will be assisting you with any

complaints or problems with this so called park. James Fulton end quote, Wow, yeah, oh, okay, James. I mean everyone deserves a daddy like James. I'm kind of surprised he would go to this kind of links. I'd be scared of something like a libel or slander kind of case coming against my family and keeping this in court and things like that. But he wants it in the public eye, and I understand that he wants to say.

You might be looking away, you might think this is done, but it's not until you convict someone of my daughter's murder, and until you look at the evidence. Ye know, you're a father who's hearing that your daughter who's deceased had semen inside of her that has no sperm. So you know fat your son in law had sex or force himself on your daughter, but for her death or shortly after her death. And you know that your daughter

had no intention of sleeping with her a strange husband. And so the ultimate conclusion you come to is that he raped her that night and he killed her. And so if that's what you're thinking as a father, there's all this evidence that was overlooked. There wasn't even film in the camera when you were taking pictures of the crime scene. You never looked into their house, and you haven't listened to a word we've said about the way he's treated her.

He's angry. He's angry that his daughter's body was taken advantage of. He's angry that she was killed and stolen from them. He's angry his grandbabies are still in his custody. And don't think their dad's guilty. I mean, he's angry about all of this. And so it is ballsy and bold and

spicy, but wow, everyone deserves a daddy like him. Well, sadly, Dorothy fall And died in October of two thousand and seven at the age of seventy three, and another terrible tragedy would take place just over three years later, when Steve and Cathy's youngest daughter, Monica, passed away at the age of twenty seven in March of twenty eleven. Monica reportedly lived a very troubled life following her mother's death and succumbed to a drug overdose, which some

people have suspected was a suicide. The investigation remained quiet for several years until the highly acclaimed movie Three Billboards Outside Eving, Missouri, received a white theatrical release in November of twenty seventeen. Once media outlets started picking up on the fact that the movie's premise appeared to be inspired by Kathy Page's murder, interest

in the case was rejuvenated. Fider Police Chief Rod Carroll, who had only been in office for less than a year at this point, agreed to reopen the investigation, and the Texas Department of Public Safety offered a six thousand dollars reward for new information. Okay, that's amazing that they knew. Have some new blood and other department. They're saying, let's look at this case again. But how many years had it been since her actual murder? Sixteen sixteen

years? Yeah, and when you ask a cold case detective to go pick up this case file, it seems logically it's very easy to tell that Steve's responsible. But if I have to prove in the court of law beyond a reasonable doubt, they botched the investigation to a point where what evidence do you want me to prove that with? Just the semen, because it's that he

said, she said, and she's not here to defend herself. So if I don't have any evidence sixteen years later, unless someone comes forward with a confession or some kind of evidence that they've been saving, like possibly the watch that was handed to the private investigator, how would they do anything with that case at this point. In October of twenty eighteen, the case would be featured on an episode of the Oxygen true crime series col Justice, hosted by

a former Harris County prosecutor, Kelly Siegler. The episode was titled The Case Behind the Billboards and featured Segler and her team of investigators taking a fresh look at the case alongside local law enforcement. The biggest new development was when they spoke to an eye witness who told them that during the early morning hours of May fourteenth, nineteen ninety one, he had been driving down Interstate ten and saw Steve Page, whom he knew personally, walking away from the spot where

Kathy's car had crashed. However, the witness elected not to come forward at that time because he was a married man who'd been with his mistress that night and he did not want his family finding out about the affair. At the end of the Cold Justice episode, Sealer and her team would submit all the new evidence they had uncovered, including the eyewitness statement, to the Orange County District Attorney's office, but they did not believe the evidence was sufficient enough to

file charges against anyone for Kathy's murder. In June of twenty twenty one, Crime Stoppers of Southeast Texas raised their reward for information to fifty thousand dollars, which is the largest reward they've ever offered in an unsolved cold case. At the time of this recording, James Fulton is over ninety years old and claims that the billboards he's put up accusing Steve Page of his daughter's murder will remain

there until he either dies or there's a conviction. Steve is currently living in the Houston area, but after more than thirty years, the murder of Kathy Page continues to remain unsolved. So I guess you could say the path went

chili. Okay. So when you go back to this idea that there's an eyewitness who comes forward and says I saw him leaving the scene of a quote crash this evening, but I was having an affair at the time didn't want to come forward and tell them that I was out with a mistress and saw this man. Normally i'd say, eh, you know, it's an eyewitness, it is what it is. But it's not. This is a friend

or a very well known acquaintance to Steve who knows owes him. And so in that case, when you're talking about seeing somebody one hundred and fourteen yards from their house and you know that person on a personal level, and you're out doing something bad, so in your head you're going, oh my, that's odd, but I can't say anything because I'm doing something that I don't want anyone to know about. It really does make me think that his account

would most likely be truthful. I believe him, and this is just a reminder like when you look at a situation where a lack of integrity in personal relationships can have serious ramifications. Because if he would have come forward at the time and pointed the finger at Steve Page, who's a strong likelihood that the Vider police would have had to have moved on a search warrant. Oh absolutely, like if he had done it at the time, this case might have

been solved. But I can kind of understand the reluctance since they're only learning his story like seventeen years after the fact, and thinking we can't take Steve to trial based on his testimony because it took so long for him to come forward. But they did interview him on the Cold Justice episode, and even though he kept his identity secret, he pretty much acknowledged that, Yeah, my marriage ended a long time ago, so it really doesn't matter now if

they found out I was having an affair. But yeah, you almost want to strangle him though, thinking that, man, if you had not kept quiet for so long, then this case might have been solid by now. So I think this would be a good time to bring an end to Part one. But join us next week as we present part two of our series about the murder of Cathy Page. 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 with 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 Unsalved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was

the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three. So I 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 Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so they're not very many, but they're just too short to turn into a series and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope

so check out those patreons will 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 Pathwink. 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