Welcome back to The Path Went Chili for part two of our series about the unsolved disappearance of Marie Blee. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up on what we talked about in our previous episode.
I sure will, but before I do that, I just want to give a shout out to a nice little website out there called feedspot dot com. They have recently put up a list titled the top twenty family friendly true crime podcast on the web, and they were nice enough to put The Path Went Chili on there, and they sent us all an email to let us know, so we greatly appreciate that. I think this might be the first time that The Path Went Chile made a
list on the internet. So, and it's nice that they call us family friendly even though we're talking about gruesome subject matter. But we still greatly appreciate it. So be sure to check out their website feedspot dot com. So, getting back to the Marie Blee case, This took place in November of nineteen seventy nine in the town of Craig, Colorado. A fifteen year old Marie Blee went to a party and was accompanied by an eighteen year old friend from
high school. Named Monty Doolin, even though they were not exactly a couple as far as I can tell. But Marie never came home, and when her parents tried to report her missing to the police, they just said that
she probably just ran away and return home eventually. But then a few days later, Monty Doolan sent in a fake ransom demand for five thousand dollars for her return, and when he was caught, he eventually said, oh, I just did that to give the parents hope that she was still alive somewhere, but I don't actually know anything about her disappearance. And of course he got charged with
a misdemeanor for the whole thing. And of course the police didn't really they do much of an investigation for years. They didn't really like to look at it seriously until
nineteen ninety nine, twenty years after the fact. And by that point, when they tried reinterviewing a bunch of witnesses who were at the party, they all kept giving like conflicting stories about Marie's whereabouts because their memories were foggy, so it's tough to determine the exact last time she was confirmed to be alive, but multiple witnesses said that she was last seen in the company of three men, Monty Doolin and two friends of his name, max Abel
Garcia and Steven Skufka, And of course they've all denied any involvement in her disappearance, but Monte Doulin and Steven
Skoffka had a history of troubles with the law. I know that Monty was charged with attempting to sexually assault another young girl a couple months before Marie's disappearance, and Steven Skuffka got charged with a bunch of drug related crimes and was pretty much told when he went to prison that if you tell us what happened to Marie, we will reduce your sentence, but he refused to say anything, and he served his time and then died from a fall down on the stairs after his release from prison.
So police have pretty much said that as long as it wasn't murder, then if there were any charges related to Maurice's disappearance, if her death was an accident or something, the statute of limitations has expired, so if you come forward, we will not press charges against you. But this has not led to a resolution. Everyone has continued to remain silent, and we have now almost reached the forty five year anniversary of Marie's disappearance, and sadly, she is still a
missing person. So, as you probably know, I've covered a number of cold cases from the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties involving missing teenagers, and whenever I researched them, it's usually inevitable that I'll let out a huge sigh once I learned that the police initially wrote off these victims
as runaways. We mentioned this on a respective podcasts several times, but sadly, there was once a time when, unless direct evidence existed that foul play had taken place, law enforcements to fault attitude for a teenager or young person going missing was that they ran away, thank you. Only this
attitude is not as prevalent today. But it's always heartbreaking to look up a missing person's case from three or four decades ago and realized that it could have been solved relatively quickly if law enforcement had been on the ball, and the Marie Blee case was a particularly egregious example of this. We have a fifteen year old girl who by all accounts was a model teenager, who was very close to her family, but when she didn't come home one night, the local police told her parents that she
probably just ran off and would return home shortly. But of course that idea is completely shot down when the Blee family received a ransom call from Marie two days later.
Even though the ransom demand turned out to be a hoax, the fact that it was perpetrated by one of the last people to see Marie alive should have been a major red flag for investigators, but sadly it sounds like they were much more concerned with red tape rather than red legs, as the jurisdictional issues really hampered the investigation, and it seems like no one wanted to take full
responsibility for handling the case. To be fair, of different law enforcement agencies decided to form a jurisdictional task force in nineteen ninety nine. They seemed to take the whole thing very seriously and were quite dedicated about finding out what happened to Marie. Given the circumstances, they probably did the best job they could. But the big problem, of course, was that twenty years had passed. This sounds like a case we're interviewing key witnesses and investigating key suspects as
quickly as possible was crucial. It seems pretty obvious that something happened at the party Marie attended which led to her disappearance, but getting a couple dozen people to accurately recall their memories of this event two decades after the fact was a challenge, to say the least. If these witnesses have been interviewed while their memories were still fresh, there might have been a clearer pitchure of what took place.
When you exactly when you look at this idea that at the time we know, the last person to really be seen with her, he had picked her up for a party, is the one who's making this ransom call. And it's pretty clear that Marie goes to a party where she's one of the younger attendees. There's well over I believe they said one hundred people coming and going from this trailer park area, and literally Marie's telling her friends,
go leave me, I'm gonna hang out here. If it was my guess, she's a young girl with older people who are doing adult things like drinking, doing drugs, and she's feeling like she's validated important, she's getting attention from older people, and so I would not be shocked if one or all three of the suspects that have been discussed were present at the time Marie was injured and or killed and they all know exactly what happened but aren't speaking.
Yeah, because all three of those guys who were a couple years older than her, like she was fifteen and they were around eighteen, nineteen years old, and she probably thought that was cool at the time. I'm with these older boys who were paying attention to me. But when you couple with the fact that she had never been at a party like this before and there was drug use and alcohol loose than a use, then you can see how things might have gotten horribly wrong.
When I was going through our first episode, I was listening and Ashley said that Marie felt like similar to what she said today validated and that she probably felt special. And the way that she described it I think would speak to most women that have been teenagers at some point, Because when I listened to her say it when we
recorded it, it was different. But when I listened to it after the fact, it really hit me in the gut because she so succinctly and so perfectly summed up what it felt like to be a teenage girl and to be hanging out with these older guys, and how validating it can seem. You do feel smart, you feel pretty, you feel special, and it's probably exactly how Marie was feeling, hanging out with these older guys, not knowing the danger that lurked. So let's start from the beginning and try
to figure out a timeline. We know that Marie attended a day that night with Monty Doolan, who subsequently drove her to the party at the Shadow Mountain Village mobile home park. What's interesting is that even though Monty has been referred to as Marie's date in some accounts of the story, it's not exactly clear what kind of relationship
they had. We do know that Monty was an eighteen year old high school graduate and that Marie was three years younger than him, though I don't get the impression they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. Would Their age difference becomes a much bigger red flag when you learn about some of the other crimes that Monty is alleged to
have done. So Monty's story is that he last saw Marie at the party sometime between one point thirty and two am, after she told him she was planning to get a ride home with another guy whom she never identified. Even if by chance, Monty is telling the truth, it still doesn't reflect well on him since he was leaving a fifteen year old girl alone at a party which was mostly attended by older guys whom she did not know, and there were supposed ample amounts of drugs and alcohol.
On the surface, it might also not reflect well on Marie's female friends that they left her at the party once they became uncomfortable, But in their defense, it sounds like they did everything they could to convince her to
leave with them, but she just refused to go. Even though it sounds like Marie was a good kid who never caused her parents any trouble, even good kids will sometimes decide that they want to rebel every once in a while, so Marie may have decided that she wanted to kick back and have fun at what was likely her first grown up party.
Jules, like you said, I think we've all been there, done that. I was a huge nerd and a great kid, and I remember my friends been like going to a place like a fraternity party or something like that, and I didn't know anybody except my girlfriends that I went with, and I remember distinctly saying, oh my gosh, so and so is giving me attention, like seriously, you've got to go, like let me be or they'll say, hey, Ash, we're leaving, and I'll be like, I know, I'll get a ride home.
I'll get a ride home.
Because we quote know all these people even though I don't know anybody, you know, they're all acquaintances somehow, and it's so naive and in many ways ignorant, but I simply just didn't know. At the time, I felt like I was a grown up, I'm smart and aware of my surroundings and made a really dumb decision and thank god nothing happened. But I wasn't the only one of my friends who did that. It was commonplace where we'd say, come on, we're leaving, and someone would have a reason
why they didn't want to go with us. And so you can only do so much. And I do have an issue with the young man who drives her to the party though, and Manty's saying, hey, I was responsible enough to come pick her up.
But then this fifteen year old little girl.
I just have zero responsibility towards her later in the evening and supposedly leaves and doesn't know what happened to her. It just seems bizarre. But then he wants to implant himself in the investigation. I can't stand his character in this story. I would truly love to rewind time and have them hone in on him more and investigate this more at the time it occurred. Because so much time passed, it just it's very difficult to get people's recollection back and.
People to come forward. It's just tough.
The story goes at the host of the party, Michael O'Brien, was only planning to hold a small get together, but everything spiled out of control once word spread and dozens of other people decided to crash the event. O'Brien always insisted that he only provided beer to the guests and that he never saw any drugs, but other witnesses have
claimed there was drug usage there. But when you consider that anywhere between fifty and one hundred people attended this party, many of whom are likely high or intoxicated, it's easy to see why investigators have had a difficult time constructing a concrete narrative for all the events. There really is
no official last confirmed sighting of Marie that night. We've got sightings of her at a convenience store, but it's not clear if these sightings are accurate or at what point during the night they supposedly took place, And there's at least one siding of Marie at an entirely different party I know. One of the most prominent theories is that Marie succumbed to a drug overdose, but we can't
even be certain if Marie took drugs that night. While she was allegedly seen doing drugs inside the bathroom of the mobile home, others insisted that she remained outside the entire time she was there, But overall, it seems like one consistent eyewitness account, which investigators seem to put a lot of stock into, is that Marie left the party with three men. This is a part of by the fact that three specific men have been publicly named as persons of interest.
Again, there's no way to know that without having her body, without having concrete evidence of what occurred, Because Marie could have been fifteen and naive and silly and used drugs with these adults. Wanting to fit in. But she also could have gone and said like, I'm just going to be here. I'll have my faculties to me. I'm not doing any of this stuff, so I'm not quote doing anything bad, but I like the attention and I want to be here with these people. And so we just
don't know if she did, you know, try drugs. But if she did, keep in mind, this would, to our best knowledge, be the first time she's done so. And so is it possible that people took advantage of that and knew, hey, that she's never done this almost a joke of how much they could give her, or she doesn't understand how much she's taken and she justs too much. So it is possible that she easily overdosed with it
being her first time using. Also very possible she's sober and decides to leave with these three guys who quote care about her and they had other nefarious purposes in mind.
Yeah, given that she had a great reputation with her parents and never cause them any trouble, I am willing to wager that she had probably never done drugs before that particular night, and if she did, she could have had a bad reaction and wound up overdosing. But I think if that is what happened, that only a limited amount of people knew about it, because I think that if she had overdosed at the party in front of fifty to one hundred people, that someone would have talked by now.
Anyway, the three individuals who have been named as persons of interest, which will come as absolutely no surprise to you, Ash, are Monte Dulan, Steven Skufka, and max Abel Garcia. So we know quite a bit about Doolan and Skufka's backgrounds, but not much is known about Garcia, aside from the fact that he eventually moved to Portland. It seems like investigators don't necessarily believe Garcia had direct involvement in what happened to Marie, but at the very least they suspect
that he knows something but hasn't talked. What we do know is that both Doolan and Skufka had their fair share of run ins with the law, and Skiffka's criminal
history is particularly extensive. What's particularly interesting is that Skufka was facing a twelve year prison sentence for various offenses and could have potentially shaved time off that sentence if he'd been willing to cooperate with investigators and reveal everything that he knew about Marie's disappearance, but Skufka didn't provide
them with any information and took the full sentence. Now it's worth noting the police had stated that if Marie's death was the result of an accidental drug overdose and one or more individuals attempted to cover the whole thing up by disposing of her body, then they would not face prosecution for it, since over twenty years had passed and the statute of limitations on those particular crimes had expired.
So if Skufka had admitted that Marie overdosed and he played a role in covering it up, he would not have received any additional jail time for his involvement, and he probably would have had his sentence for his other charges reduced. But since Gefka remained silent, that says to me that either a he legitimately didn't know anything, or b what he did know about Marie was so terrible that he felt like serving twelve years in prison was
still a better option than coming clean. Of course, Skufka had died of an accidental fall down the stairs a few years after he was paroled, and his mother maintained that even though he was not a perfect individual, he was unfairly implicated in Marie's disappearance. She's always insisted that her son came straight home from the dance that night
and never even attended the party. But of course it's not unprecedented that parents might be willing to lie for their children and give them a false alibi in order to prevent them from potentially going to jail. In Skiffka's defense, Michael O'Brien, the host of the party, also claimed that Skifka was never there. But could he really be one hundred percent certain? Remember, between fifteen and one hundred people were in attendance, most of whom were uninvited, So could
O'Brien accurately recall who was or wasn't there. I know that Skiffka allegedly made some comments to incriminate himself in Marie's disappearance over the years, and other witnesses did recall seeing them together at the party, So I'm not sure Skefka would have been named as a person of interest by law enforcement unless they were absolutely certain that he
was there. What is still not clear just how much culpabilities Skufka and max Abel Garcia might have had in regards to what happened to Marie.
Okay, was he actually responsible for her death? Maybe not. He did have the party that night, and I don't necessarily think he can truly be relying on for who was at the party or not. Like you said, fifty to one hundred people when he was expecting a small gathering, There's no way he knows all of them. It's very possible that a friend shows up with three acquaintances that he has no idea their names or where they're from.
And so I think the party gets so large and drugs and alcohol are present that there's just not an opportunity to say I'm one hundred percent sure he was not here, especially when you have other partygoers saying that Marie was there, He was there, right, All these different people were there. I just don't think that you can trust the mother's statement. And I just don't think Michael O'Brien can be confident of who was at his party.
Think of those high school parties like I can remember back, and they're be parties where there would be a house, and then it would extend to like a bonfire, and it would be pitch dark outside, and there might be between fifty and one hundred people. And if you would have asked me the next day who was and wasn't there, could I accurately report most of the people probably, But
all of them I don't think so. I think that when you involve drugs and alcohol when it's dark and when not all of the people can fit in the dwelling, and we know that they can't because it's a trailer. So I just think that O'Brien could have missed seeing Skuffkap because other witnesses reported seeing him at the party with Marie, and especially when it looks like we've got multiple people reporting that correct.
Robin, Yes, definitely correct. A couple of people saw him there and talking about the issues with his alibi and how his mother said that he arrived home that night. We talked in our last episode that Skuffka said that he attended the dance with his sister, the same dance that Monty and Marie had gone to, and Skuffka said, well, it was boring, so we just decided to go home
and we spent the rest of the night there. But we mentioned our last episode, that's kind of odd that he would go to a dance with his sister, because it's very uncommon for people who are teenagers in high school to attend social events like dance with their siblings. But his sister and his mother backed them up. But can we really one hundred percent rely on them.
I would love some context as to why he went with his sister, Like did his sister not have any friends and the mom said, if you're going to go to the dance, you have to bring your sister. Or did he have no women or young women that were interested in him and so he decided to go with his sister. I just can't see an explanation. Just make it make sense.
Now. Manty Doolan. On the other hand, where do we start with this guy? Regardless of whether he is innocent or guilty of what happened to Marie, he pretty much flushed any sympathy away when he phoned up Paul and moanably two days after their daughter went missing and made a five thousand dollars ransom demand. Now, sadly, this is not the only case I've seen which some cruel Hoaxter contacted the family of a missing person and provided them
with a phony ransom demand. But these acts were usually done by strangers who just wanted to make a quick buck or a craving attention. But not only did Monty Doolan go out on a date with the victim on the night she went missing, but he took her to the party where she disappeared from and was one of the last known people to see her alive. Needless to say, it's pretty unsettling that he would decide to toy with
Marie's family like that. When Monty was caught, his reasoning was that he fabricated the whole thing in order to give Marie's parents hope that she was still alive. But that defies all logic, and I'm sure it was incredibly stressful for Paul and Mona to believe their daughter had been kidnapped, forcing them to put together five thousand dollars
in a short amount of time. I do can see that Monty likely wasn't trying to extort the bleaze and had no intention of collecting the five thousand dollars, but I do suspect that he was making a deliberate attempt at misdirection and wanted to lead everyone down the wrong trail. Monty knew that the last place Marie had been seen alive was at the party, and if he made everyone believe that she was kidnapped for ransom, then he probably hoped investigators wouldn't put too much focus on what might
have happened at the party. When you consider that the local police initially wrote off Marie as a runaway and had not even launched a proper missing person's investigation before Monty made his phony ransom call, then it seems like this was a desperation tactic on his part, and I don't believe he would have attempted something like that unless
he had something he wanted to hide. But the big question is was Manty trying to hide the fact that Marie died of an accidental overdose or was it something a lot worse.
Also, when you think about the idea that he says, hey, I was doing it to give them hope, you're at the jerk who took her to the party, so the parents already placed responsibility in you. Why you would then reinsert yourself into the situation. Wouldn't you want to kind of disappear and back away like you're known to have been with her that night.
You're known to have been seen with her.
And you were actually responsible for the young lady you went and picked up and delivered to this party.
And so you would think he would be very.
Self aware of Oh my goodness, that really makes me number one suspect.
I'm going to try to.
Just carefully back away. If he truly had nothing to do with it. Now, if he had something to hide, like you said, then trying to throw the police off of his scent and say, hey, there's this crazy person who wants money from the parents, that might make more sense. I don't see him just doing it on a whim, because if he has any sense at all, he knew I'm already.
In the mix of suspects.
I've got to keep quiet, keep my head down, and hope it passes because I didn't do anything. When you have a guilty conscience, I feel like you continue to try to cover for yourself and it makes it work.
Sounds like an incredibly impulsive choice made by somebody who was hoping to benefit financially off of the c that he likely committed.
Yeah, definitely, And I always wonder how this investigation would have gone if he had not made that ransom call, because the police weren't doing anything at first. They just said Marie was a runaway and probably wouldn't have looked into anything at all until this incident raised some red flags. And if they had just interviewed Moni and he says, oh, yeah, I was at the party and Marie was there, but I left and she said she was going to get a ride with someone else, and I don't know what
happened to her afterwards. Perhaps they might have looked at him in an unflattering light because he left Marie there, but they wouldn't have thought of him as a suspect. But because he inserted himself into the investigation and toyed with the family, that made him pretty much the number one guy from the very outset and made everyone believe from that point on he must know something about Marie's disappearance, and he's trying to deflect.
Well.
Monty's connection to this case became a lot more troubling when he was charged with first degree kidnapping in twenty fifteen for allegedly luring another teenage girl into his vehicle and sexually assaulting her in the year prior to Marie's disappearance. Yes, the charge against Monty was eventually dropped, but it sounds like this was due to a technicality, not because he
was proven innocent. For all we know, the alleged sexual assault could have played out exactly as the victim described, but because the statute of limitations had expired, Monty could not actually be charged with sexual assault, and the best
investigators could hope for was a charge of first degree kidnapping. However, if the victim did originally climb into Monty's vehicle of her own free will and he let her go after sexually assaulting her, then it would have been hard to prove if his crime met the legal definition of kidnapping.
I think one of the main reasons that Colorado's fourteenth Judicial District attempted to indict Dulan on this charge after so many years is because they were hoping it might help pave the way for uncovering his potential involvement in Marie's disappearance. Since the Casey Gainston was dismissed, this never came to fruition. But if the allegations against Monty in the sexual assault case are true, then I can see
a similar situation unfolding with Marie. Perhaps Monty tried to sexually assault her as well, but she fought back against him and things escalated to the point where Marie wound up being killed. We have learned that Monty served time in jail for a completely different sexual assault, but we've been unable to find any specific details about that particular case. But this pattern of behavior does lend a disturbing amount of credence to the idea that Monty could have killed
Marie because she resisted his attempts to assault her. When you consider that Manti was eighteen and Marie was only fifteen, and they were attending a wild party with drugs, alcohol, and a lot of males who are older than her, then you can see how this would have been a recipe for disaster.
Absolutely, And you think about this idea of what if he wasn't actually attempting to kill her, but he's sexually assaulting her, and let's say, is strangling her because she's screaming, or covers her mouth because she screaming, and he accidentally suffocates her or hits her head against something because he's, you know, being rough and trying to take advantage of her.
There's a million ways that a sexual assault could quickly turn into a murder that was not pre planned, and or there could be such a panic after the commission of a sexual assault, there could be a purposeful murder
to cover it up. So there's multiple scenarios if he was going in, especially like with the wolf pack mentality, if all three men helped isolate Marie, there's a very strong possibility that she was hurt during an attempted sexual assault and then we have to kill her, or now we have to kill her so that she won't talk.
A very very dangerous situation when you get to that point and you realize, Okay, she's going to ruin my life, or she's going to tell on me, or you know, people are gonna know what happened.
A lot of times.
People will panic and you have this, you know, either an incredibly brutal assault or a homicide. And I think that's a very probable impossible for what could have happened here.
Yeah, it definitely would make sense, particularly when you look at his alleged previous assault, which took place about a year earlier. I mean, in that particular case, he did let his victim go even though she could have implicated him. But I get the impression that she decided to stay silent for many years and did not come forward until decades after the fact, and that's why they arrested him in twenty fifteen. So he may have thought that the
same thing would happen to Marie. But perhaps she said I'm going to tell on you, I'm going to go to the authorities, and that's when they decided that they had to kill her. I mean, it might not have been Monty's idea, but maybe one of his other two accomplices, Skufa or Garcia, if they were involved, decided that it's too much of a risk to let her go, and
that's why she wound up dead. Now, personally, I have my doubts that Marie's actual death took place at the party, as there were between fifty to one hundred people in attendance, and I don't think that many people would have been able to remain silent for over forty five years. But I'm sure there might be quite a few people out of that party who know or at least heard about what happened to Marie, even if they did not personally
witness it. Remember a few months after she went missing, the police received an anonymous phone call from a man who claimed that at least eleven people, including his own two children, knew the truth, but were too afraid to come forward. But once again, I have a feeling that only a small handful of individuals were actually present when
something happened to Marie. While there were so many contradictory and jumbled statements from eye witnesses who were at the party that night, investigators do seem to believe that one of the most likely scenarios is that Marie left at some point alongside the three primary persons of interest Monte Doolin, Steven Skofka, and max Abel Garcia.
I believe the.
Most common situation that would have occurred here if all three men are involved, is that they see Marie as this vulnerable young girl, and they really do enact the quote wolf pack action plan, which is, hey see that girl over there, Wanner, y'all help me isolate her. So they go over, they buddy buddy with her, they kind of get her away from her friends, which we know they successfully did because she tells her friends leave, I have people I'm hanging out with I have a ride,
just leave. So they isolate her away, They make her feel really special. They oftentimes, like you said, remove her from other people being there. So maybe they get her in a car, or they take her into the woods or something like that, and then one or all of them sexually assault her, and then it only takes one of those people to panic for there to.
Be a murderer.
Again, if Marie's death was the result of an accidental drug overdose, and the only thing those three men did wrong was justpose of her body, then they were in no danger of being prosecuted after a certain amount of years because of the statute of limitation. Of course, some people never want to admit that they were responsible for something like that, even if they know they're unlikely to
receive any punishment. But I can't overlook the fact that Steven Skufka had the opportunity need to make a deal and shave time off a completely unrelated prison sentence in exchange for sharing everything he knew, yet he still declined. As you well know, there is no statute of limitations on murder. So if Marie was the victim of a homicide, then I can see why certain people have continued to remain silent after all these years and might still be
afraid to come forward with information. My personal theory is that Monty Dulan was likely responsible for Marie's death, and that even if Stephen Skyfka and max Abo Garcia were not directly involved, they at least know what happened and assisted with the cover up. Since Skufka is now deceased, the one thing which could still potentially break this case wide open is if Garcia finally decides to talk and
reveal what he knows. In retrospect, given what we now know, it seems like law enforcement could have potentially solved this case within a week of Marie's disappearance, after Doulan was arrested for his extortion attempt on the Blee family. If law enforcement had put more pressure on Dulan or some of the other people who attended the party, they might
have been able to uncover the truth. But because of the different sheriff's offices seemed to be immersed in the jurisdictional red tape at the time, this opportunity slipped through their fingers.
Yep, it's politics and a lack of motivation. Again, at the time, it was not uncommon for them to say, she's a young kid who went to a party and she didn't come home. That's clearly a girl who's being young and silly and is going to be back home soon.
You know.
To their credit, that actually wasn't uncommon at the time. Right People would hitchhike, people would do all kinds of things. But Marie's family immediately said, something's wrong. She has never been that kind of kid. We need your help, and they just stuck to their you know, the traditional story instead of saying, you know what, let's give them a little bit of our resources and see what happened. Let's go talk to the people that were at that party and see did she leave with somebody.
And had they done that?
Like you said, Jules might have been very easily soft, But unfortunately, you get one shot and if you do not execute that opportunity, you lose your chance to really get the most valuable information. What is really interesting in this case is, like you said, there has been so much time that passed that many people could come forward
and not get in trouble. But the moral weight and the way that I guarantee you they feel like they'd be publicly shamed for assisting in a cover up or hiding a body or those kinds of things would almost be as brutal is sitting through a murder trial, because I think even though legally it's not as severe, if you think about I helped bury a fifteen year old little girl, my goodness, right, this is how many years later?
Forty five?
Yeah, forty five.
So these are individuals that might have been eighteen or nineteen and high at the time or whatever, and now they're in, you know, approaching sixty, their grandparents and all kinds of things. So it'd be pretty intense to come forward and say, oh, yeah, I actually helped bury her.
Yeah. We talked about this in our last episode. The potential social stigma, and theoretically for someone like max Abel Garcia, like he may not have directly killed Marie, he may have just been present when her death took place and
assisted with the cover up. But even though he's probably would not face any criminal chargers or spend any time in prison for his involvement, he would probably be shunned and like have serious damage done to his reputation because unlike Monty Doulin and Steven Scuffka, who have extensive criminal histories. I don't hear that about Garcia. All I know is that he moved out of state and has been living
a normal life. And even though he's probably like in his sixties now, I could see him not wanting to uproot all that to finally come forward and to admit his complicity in the death of a girl that took place forty five years ago. Anyway, Paul and Mona Blee have worked NonStop at keeping their daughter's case in the spotlight and searching for answers these past four decades. But they're both now in their eighties, and I'm not sure how much time they have left to cover the truth.
I mentioned earlier that they are no longer interested in seeking justice and putting the responsible party behind bars. They just want to find out what happened to Marie and bring a remains home. Sadly, this is far from the only missing person's case in which I've heard of victim's family say something like this, as the uncertainty of not knowing what happened to your loved one is pure torture.
We've just passed the forty five year anniversary of Maurice's disappearance and it still seems like there are people out there who probably have the answers, and all it would take to bring full closure to this case is for them to come forward. So if you have been to have any information about the unsolved disappearance of Marie Bleed, please call the Route County Sheriff's Office at nine seven
zero eight seven nine one zero nine zero. That's nine seven zero eight seven nine one zero nine zero, Jules Ashley. Any final thoughts on this case.
It's pretty much the same final thoughts for all of these where you sit back and you say, look at who the champions are.
In this case, it's Paul and Mona Blee. They're in their.
Eighties, like you said, and they've continued to carry the torch and advocate for their little girl.
They knew Marie.
Better than anyone else. She was fifteen, She did a lot of fifteen year olds. Do they go out to a party to be with quote friends. You trust that the people there with are going to help get them home safely, and Marie never came home. They knew the moment that happened that something was wrong, and they have spent forty five years continuing to advocate for just peace of mind and having her remains back in their care.
That's pitiful.
And add on top of it what they went through, not just with media coverage and things like that, but this ransom call that they get a few days into it and they desperately scramble to gather the five thousand dollars, only to find out it's a hoax by someone who calls himself one of her friends. There's a lot of trauma at it on top of already your daughter disappearing.
For a parent to not know what happened, I would need to have her body back, and I would need answers because my imagination would get the best of me. So my prayer would be these parents get those answers before they pass away. And while they might not, I have no doubt they'll be reunited with her in heaven pretty soon.
I truly hope that Abel Garcia decides to come forward sometime in the future to be able to give Paul and Mona those answers about where Marie is. And I just keep coming back to the fact that when given the opportunity to share the information about Marie's death, and you know, if it was an accident and they disposed of the body. They likely would have had to have
let law enforcement to Marie's body. But there must have been something about her body or her bones that made Steven Skifka uncomfortable that may have pointed to murder and not an accidental death, and they keep going back to that. So I just don't think that it was an accident.
I don't think that it was an overdose. I think that Ashley's explanation of this, like they basically whooked packed her and Monty Doolan sounds like he was the ringleader, but it sounds like Abel Garcia and Skiffka were responsible as well, because I'm just amazed at how Skiffka took that full sentence and didn't try to even lie and say some kind of explanation for what happened it wasn't true, just so he could get a lower sentence. He just clammed up.
Yeah, I totally agree with you here that I do think that this was not an accident, and I think that the truth of what did happen to Marie is so horrible that it'll explain like why all the people who are involved have stayed silent all that time, even though, like you said, Steven Skiffka could have shaved time off his prison sentence, But as you know, there's no statute of limitations on murders, so I have a feeling that if he had come clean, he probably never would have
gotten out of prison because what he did to Marie was so horrible. But yeah, this is just a tragic case.
We've gone over how it could have been solved back in nineteen seventy nine, if the police had been on the ball from the very beginning, if they had pushed Monty Dueling harder after he made the fake ransom call and interviewed all the witnesses who were at the party, whetherough memories were still fresh, and not waited twenty years to do something, we may have had someone crack or provide some piece of evidence or a key piece of information that led to the recovery of Marie's remains and
the people who killed her being brought to justice. On our last episode, I shared a story that shortly after I released my Trail Went Cold episode about this case six years ago, I went to crime con and these people came up to my booth saying that they know Paul and Mona Blee personally and said, they were such nice people and have fought valiantly for so many years trying to find answers about what happened to their daughter.
And there was even one incident where police were acting on a tip that Marie's remains were buried in this mine in this remote area, and they performed to search, they found nothing, And it cost Paul to break down and say, why isn't someone telling me what happened to my little girl? Because, like we said, they don't even care if the perpetrators go to prison after all this time, they just want to recover their daughter's remains and give
her a proper burial. But because people have remained silent and the original investigation was batched so much, that hasn't happened. So yeah, the Bleaese are still here as far as I know. They have not passed away yet, but I do hope at some point before they leave, they can finally get answers about what happened to their daughter.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feat 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 UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jeweles 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 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 appreciated. 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