Welcome back to the Path Went Chili, and once again it's just going to be Jewels and myself doing our next series of episodes because, as you probably know, Ashley has started a new career as a teacher, so she is quite busy right now. So we're giving her a break and we're going to go back to our format where I share the details of a case with Jewels that she's not familiar with, and she will give off
her reaction to all the information I share. So, Jules, have you heard of the murder of Ronda Hinson?
This one isn't ringing any bells for me?
Okay. It was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and I covered it on The Trail Went Cold all the way back on episode number four, which would have been nine years ago. And I remember in twenty nineteen, an independent journalist named Larry Griffin started publishing a new series of articles about the case in a North Carolina based publication called The
Wilkes Record. And this was a major deep dive involving tons of research where we learned pretty much everything about Ronda's life, the other people in her life, and the case. And I learned so much more new information about this case that I did not know before, and I figured I'm going to have to revisit this one sometime on the trail went cold. But the problem is is that a series of articles just kept going and going and going, and he kept publishing new ones, and he made it
all the way to part eighty nine. There were literally eighty nine articles about this and it did not conclude until twenty twenty one. I did finally revisit this case on a Patreon exclusive bonus episode I released in December of twenty twenty three, but I wanted to go back to it now, and I've thought it would be fun for us to discuss the case.
Wow, that's so in depth.
That sounds like Tim and Lance's coverage of Mara Murray just so right into the minutia.
Exactly like you pretty much learn everything about Ronda's life. And of course it caused me to look at this case in an entirely different life because the Unsaw Mystery segment they produced in nineteen eighty nine barely even scratch
the surface of how crazy this case was. And of course there's no way I'll be able to share all the information from his articles on this particular series of episodes, So I'd encourage if you want to learn more afterwards, to seek out Larry Griffin's like eighty nine part series of articles about the murder of Ronda Hinson.
I love when a journalist really sinks their teeth into a case and they not only provide the necessary nuance, but more contextual clues about who this person was, whatever potential entanglements they had, their relationships, what their job was like, what they liked, what they disliked. I love getting that really holistic viewpoint of who a victim was, so we can really truly understand who they were in their life and how this certain thing happened to them.
And I think so.
Often when we look back at you know, probably you look at your earlier episodes when there just wasn't the material for some of these cases, and you're looking at unsolved mysteries, you just you miss out in a lot of nuance.
It's true, like it becomes pretty obvious as we as we're going to talk about this that Ronda's personal life played a big role in what happened to her, and that now that we've got the full context, it's now seems we have a very solid theory about what might have happened. So the case takes place in nineteen eighty one in Burke County, North Carolina. Rondi Hinson was nineteen years old at the time and was living in the small town of Valdis with her parents, Judy and Bobby Hinson,
and she also had a younger brother named Robbie. And after graduating from high school, Ronda did not seem to have much interest in attending college, so she got a job working in a clerical position at the Hickory Steel Company, which was located in the town of Hickory, about fifteen miles from her home. And on the evening of December the twenty second, Ronda decided to attend a workplace Christmas party which was being held at the Hickory American Legion Hut.
And as far as our parents knew, she was probably going to be spending the night with a friend because she had a shift at the company the following morning and wanted to save herself the drive and if you watch the Unsolved Mystery segment, Judy Hinson talks about how at one am she was suddenly awoken from her sleep, having what she described as a eerie premonition, and she
had this feeling that something bad had happened. So she got her husband, Bobby up and asked him to check the police band and he started hearing reports about a shooting that occurred, even though no details were broadcast, And sure enough, a couple hours later, a pair of detectives would show up at their home and inform them that Ronda had been shot. So this was a pretty eerie premonition.
That is intense.
I can't imagine what it would feel like to think that, or to I feel in your bones that something like that is going to happen, and then your logical mind is telling you this isn't going to happen, like you're
not right, you're not correct. But I think that whether it's mother's intuition, or whether it's some kind of otherworldly thing that we have yet to explain, or it's quantum entanglement where you know we are connected to those who are close to us when it's from a DNA type of a bond, or you could say that everybody is connected if we are going to ascribe to the Big Bang. So there's lots of different ways to look at why somebody gets a premonition in how it could actually come true,
or any other type of psychic phenomenon. But that is pretty mind blowing for me when that happens in a case.
Yeah, and you can understand why this would be a case that Unsolved Mysteries would want to feature, because they not only feature true crime, but they also looked at the paranormal. And this wasn't the only case where someone said that I had a weird feeling or I had a weird premonition that someone I loved was going to be harmed, and then sure enough it actually came true. But here it was particularly shocking because this was a small town in North Carolina, which was not known for
violent crime. So one of the odds that you would just be waking up with this bad feeling in the middle of the night about your daughter and then a couple hours later discovered that she had been murdered. So it turned out that Ronda had not decided to spend
the night at her friend's house. She was planning to drive home, and her car had been discovered in a ditch on Mineral Springs Mountain Road at about one point fifteen am, and it was only about a half mile away from her parents' house, the driver's side door was opened, the engine was still running, but Ronda was lying dead on the ground a few feet away from the vehicle. And it turned out that she had been killed by a single gunshot wound, which had been fired from a
high powered rifle. And incredibly, it turned out that the bullet had traveled through the car's trunk, through the back seat and the driver's seat before it pierced Ronda straight through the heart and her lung, killing her instantly. Because she was found at the side of the road with her arms at her side, they figured, no, there's no way she could have crawled out on her own because
she would have been killed instantly. So they figured that someone had to have gone over to her car after it crashed into the ditch and removed her body and placed it on the road. But it was just so freaky because it looked like a shot that likes some high powered assassin would have fired. Because one of the odds that would have traveled through all these obstacles and get Ronda like point blank in the heart.
I think it comes down to that question, is it because somebody has this incredible level of skill, or is it just one of those low probability shots that just happened in this case.
Yeah, and that's the big mystery here about whether this was premeditated murder or a freak accident, because obviously a nineteen year old girl is not going to be someone that you would picture being shot by a sniper from
an elevated position and in a professional assassination. So it just seemed like it might have been dumb luck, that maybe someone was just playing to fire a shot at or a scare or something like that, and just by a freak accident, it traveled through the trunk, the back seat, the driver's seat, and then got her right in the heart.
Yeah, that's awful. I mean, she didn't have any connections to anyone who was in the military or who had any great deal of skill with a rifle. I mean, this is South Carolina.
Correct, North Carolina, North.
Carolina, one of the Carolinas.
Okay, so people there, I don't know how much of a gun culture there is, but I feel like there is a gun culture. Would I be correct in saying that.
Yes, Because they felt that the murder weapon was a hunting rifle, and hunting was very popular in that particular area, so it did not seem out of the ordinary that she would know one or more people who would have owned a hunting rifles. So at the time, it didn't really stick out that there was anyone that seemed like a likely candidate to have fired a shot like that
at her. So when you looked at the route from a Hickory to Bald's, what she would need to do is travel west on Interstate forty and then use the Exit one twelve off ramp to drive onto Mineral Springs Mountain Road where she was found. And the off ramp was located next to a bridge which ran over the road and Ronda's car was only two hundred yards away
from it. And an eyewitness would come forward and say that sometime between twelve fifteen and twelve thirty am, about forty five minutes before Ronda was discovered, they were driving under the Interstate bridge and noticed a blue Chevrolet containing two white males park there. About twenty five to forty minutes later, another motorists claimed that they were driving on
Mineral Springs Mountain Road. It was a truck driver named Reggie Smart and noticed what appeared to be a Chevrolet vehicle speeding away from the scene, and it appeared to be blue or gray, and he described it as having a bumper that looked like it was messed up and
had damage to it. And then almost immediately thereafter, Smart said that he drove past Ronda's Datson while it was in the ditch and noticed an unidentified man standing by the driver side door and a woman who appeared to be slumped over the steering wheel in the front seat.
And then shortly thereafter he drove back, he passed by what appeared to be a dark transam, which likely belonged to the man standing next to Ronda's vehicle, And at the time Smart just thought this was a couple who had been drunk or something like that, so he didn't think it was anything serious. But then when he found out that Ronda had been killed at that location, he instantly contacted the police and they placed him under hypnosis
to see if he could remember any more details. But even though he was certain he had seen a man pulling Ronda out of the front seat, he did not get a good look at his face to provide a description, but it seemed obvious that the person who did this was probably the person who shot her, because otherwise, why wouldn't they have contacted the police.
Yeah, that I can't really think of any other explanation for why somebody would pull her body from the vehicle except for to see if she was indeed alive, to
see if they could render aid. And imagine if you had, by accident shot her and then you go to the vehicle and you realized she's dead, like there's absolutely nothing that you can do to help her, and maybe somebody just went into self preservation mode, going, no, one's going to understand why I'm randomly shooting at vehicles, trying to scare people, just trying to have a I don't know,
quote unquote good time. I don't know if that's what this person or people were doing, but I could see that law enforcement would end up charging them with men's slaughter potentially. So if you're looking at jail time, I could see pulling the person's body from the vehicle and going I can't do anything for them, and then panicking and leaving, Or if it was somebody who had intentionally done it, maybe you're going to see if this person
is alive. But I think that you could see that without having to pull them from the vehicle, So that makes me lean towards that it was an accident.
Yeah, And that's why opinions were sharply divided for many years, because if it was a premeditated murder, it's a huge risk to actually go up next to the vehicle and handle her body. Because as we saw, Reggie Smart passed by and saw him and this person and was just very lucky that he didn't get a good enough look
to provide a description. And I think that a person would only do that if they were surprised that Ronda was killed, that they fired off a shot but wasn't intending to murder her, and then just had to go over and check. And once they realize, oh my god, she was killed, instantly I have to high tail it
out of there. And the whole description of the two men seen in the car, it's interesting how Reggie Smart saw the car matching that description, the white or sorry the gray or blue Chevrolet speeding off while this second man was standing next to Ronda's body. So they wondered maybe they were sitting in the car together and one of the guys decided to high tail it out of there, while the other person decided to stay at the scene and check if Ronda was still alive.
That's possible, and I could see a world where if it was their objective to end her life, that you would want to go and verify that you.
Did indeed do that.
So I cannot see pulling her body out of the vehicle, because you could check a pulse. You can see if somebody is deceased by just checking a pulse, by seeing are they breathing, checking for breath, without hauling them out of the vehicle. So that step is like the one step that I'm like, oh, I don't know, But if you were trying to kill her, then I could see wanting to verify that you did indeed finish the job.
Yeah, and that might be what happened that maybe just if it was a premanitated murder one of the people, maybe because they had their own vehicle, this dark trans am, they just wanted to double check while their accomplice just sped away from the scene.
Can you imagine though, if it was indeed, if that is indeed what happened, You're there checking to verify if you were successful at killing somebody, or you accidentally killed somebody, and your buddy's just like deuces seal you later and speeds off.
Yeah, that would be pretty shocking, So I can only imagine that they had quite an argument or so if they were in on this together. So, of course, because Ronda had been killed, her parents started like looking back and trying to think if there were any strange behaviors that might have given some hints about who would have
had a motive to kill her. And I know that to Ronda always used to drive everywhere on her own, but in the weeks and months prior to her death, she started telling her father to accompany her whenever she took trips into town, and during one of these trips, Ronda suddenly told Bobby that she had something bad to tell him, which he probably wouldn't like, and Bobby said urged her to come clean, saying, whatever it is, just tell me, but Ronda said she would think about it
and never did tell him what was wrong. And a short time later, Ronda had a conversation with her mother, Judy, and she randomly decided to ask if it was ever okay to date a married man, and Judy told her that it was not okay because it would only lead to people getting hurt. But Ronda pretty much ended the conversation, never provided any context about why she asked this, and they never found any information that she was having an
affair with a married man. But of course people started to wonder because of this, we question, in this weird conversation with her father, was there something bothering her and was there someone out there who might have had a motive to Harmer.
I would say, based on her actions, it's pretty easy to deduce that she felt like she was in some kind of danger, because I can remember being a nineteen year old girl.
You love your independence.
The last thing that you're going to do, unless you feel unsafe, is to ask your dad to accompany you everywhere. I would say that is extremely atypical, especially since it was a new thing that she was doing. And then to ask that very specific question about a married man, I would say that there's a very high probability that she was sleeping or it had a relationship with a married man, because otherwise, why would you ask that question unless you were thinking about doing it.
Yeah, And that's what they wondered, is that maybe she hadn't actually gone through with it, but she was thinking about it. Maybe she had a crush with another married man she knew. But of course you feel so bad for Judy and Bobby in these situations because after she's killed, they're just kicking themselves saying that I really should have pushed her harder about this, maybe we could have prevented
her death. But at the time they just wanted to give ron to some space and pretty much said, well, well, we'll let this go, and if ron wants to tell us something, she will, and they never dreamed that she would wind up dead a short time later.
Yeah, you've got to feel bad for the parents, especially your father, because I can't imagine you're told I've got something big to tell you, but she doesn't share with him. That is going to literally haunt him for the rest of his days, because every day you're going to kick yourself and go.
Why didn't I push harder? Why didn't I ask her?
And the answer is probably she wasn't ready to share that information, or she would have shared it with him already. And as sad as it is, you can't change what
wasn't shared in the past. And I just I feel so deeply for them because to have your nineteen year old daughter taken away from you is difficult enough, but when you couple it with the mysterious circumstances, asking about the married man having her father accompany her saying there's something big that she needs to tell him, and then she's just she's gone.
It's so sad.
It is. And this is not the only cold case I've seen where parents said that their child was exhibiting strange behavior and making cryptic remarks prior to their death, and of course they wish they had done things differently and pressed them harder about it to find out what
was wrong. But of course, hindsight is twenty twenty. And there's another strange event that happened because in the weeks leading up to her death, Ronda started growing paranoid and suffering from insomnia, and she would often get up in the middle of the night to compulsively take showers. And when her mother asked why she kept doing this off and Ronda simply said that it was because she quote
unquote fell dirty. And of course, after her murder, police officers were telling her that this is behavior that is frequent in sexual assault survivors, where sometimes they will just feel a compulsive need to take showers because of what they'd experienced, so of course now they were wondering if something like that might have had in to Ronda, and she just never told them about it.
That hit me like a punch in the gut, like personally, because I myself, I'm a survivor of sexual assault, and so I know that feeling that you said, and on like a.
Cellular level, that visceral feeling of.
Feeling dirty, needing to feel clean, and needing to wash one's self to do so.
So I completely can identify with that.
And I can't see any other scenario where somebody would say I feel dirty unless they made choices that they weren't happy with. But to me, it speaks to very high probabilities that there was likely some type of sexual assault. Maybe somebody was threatening her or making her feel unsafe and in doing.
So, there was a sexual assault.
Because oftentimes it's not necessarily about the sex, it's about the power. So if somebody's trying to intimidate her, it seems like that could be a tool I wish to do.
So, Yeah, we're gonna be talking more about this later. How it's never been conclusively proven if Ronda was sexually assaulted, but we will find out that there was someone in her personal life who sounds like they could have been
capable of doing that. But of course, sadly, back in nineteen eighty one, there was just not as much understanding about sexual assaults, so I don't think it even occurred to Ronda's parents until after they were told by police that this was common behavior, And of course they wound up like getting angry with themselves again saying that they should have pressed Ronda harder about it, but they just never imagined that she would wind up dead in a
very short time. So, like I mentioned earlier, the case was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries which aired in November of nineteen eighty nine, and all the information I've just shared with you is all the information that was presented in that segment. But as we're going to find out, there's a lot more that they didn't reveal, which will cause you to look at this case in
a different light and offer a lot of insight. It would turn out that some latent, unidentified fingerprints have been found on the window of the driver's side door of Ronda's vehicle, which did not belong to her or anyone else. For her family, but in the nineteen nineties, Ronda's parents learned that the police had lost this windshield and the fingerprint evidence, so unfortunately it's never been matched to anyone.
And they did DNA testing on her sweater in two thousand and seven and found traces a male DNA which did not match anyone else from her family either and has yet to be matched to anyone. But they figured that the DNA was probably left there by the person who handled her body and left it by the side of the road.
Well, it's always nice when there's DNA, and at least moving forward, there's a potential that it could be linked through genetic genealogy or by some other means, so at least there is a profile there, So there's a potential that if that person ever gives their DNA or a family member does, that they could be identified.
Yeah, it's been reported that there's only one person that has ever been ran against the DNA. It was a young man named Brian Lohman, who had asked Ronda out on a date shortly before she was killed. But of course the DNA did not match, and Brian is not considered to be a suspect. But surprisingly it has not been run against anyone else, even though, as we're going to talk about, there's some other people in Rhonda's personal life that it should have been compared to because there's
a good chance it might match them. So it might just be a thing where maybe they have asked other people but they've refused to comply, and because they're not technically a suspect or a person of interest, the police have just never collected their DNA.
So they haven't put it into a database.
Not that I know of. No, surprisingly, I mean maybe because it's kind of a small town police department, But obviously I can understand them not doing it in two thousand and seven. But now that we're in twenty twenty five and we have genetic genealogy and DNA could be matched to anyone, is surprising that they haven't done more with this evidence.
I feel like they have the answer to the likely who could have potentially done.
This in their evidence.
If they actually pursued this and did the testing that they needed to do, put it into a database explore genetic genealogy, they likely could.
Find an answer. Just like with you and all of your list Verse top.
Tens, with the John and Jane does, and like nine of them have got their identities back now exactly.
Yeah, like so many cases that I've written about ten years ago have wound up being solved, and a whole bunch of John and Jane Doees have been identified because of DNA. But though, as we're going to talk about, I should add the disclaimer that it's never been conclusively proven that the DNA belongs to the person who killed hers, So it is possible that even if they did match it to someone that it wouldn't be enough evidence to
prove that they conclusively committed the murder. But we'll go into more of that later on.
Do they get into what kind of DNA it was like, if it was like spit or semen or blood or skin cells.
They didn't really go into details. I am assuming it's probably touched DNA. I don't think it was spit or anything like that. That maybe just when they handled her body they left her DNA on the sweater, And of course back in nineteen eighty one they wouldn't have been thinking about that.
But was touched DNA even a thing in two thousand and seven, I.
Think it was. Yeah, I can't be one hundred percent sure, but I know that DNA testing has advanced so much that maybe if they did further testing on the sweater, they could find better DNA evidence.
Okay, So, according to Perplexity, touch DNA also known as trace DNA, began to be used in forensic science in the early two thousands. The concept of analyzing DNA from skin cells left behind by touch was first explored in the late nineties, with genetic profiles from finger marks being described in nineteen ninety seven by Ravan or Shot. However, it wasn't until the early two thousands that touched DNA became a widely used tool in forensic investigations. So, yeah,
that checks out two thousand and seven. It is likely it could have been touched DNA. I was thinking that, like touch DNA wasn't until like the twenty tens, so that it must have been fluid, and it's hard to explain away fluid. But then again, you also can't put
a date on that. Somebody could have some kind of fluid on a sweater and if you haven't washed that sweater, and you could have worn it like six months ago not washed it, warn it again, and that DNA is from somebody that you came in contact with months.
Ago, that's true. I mean, for all we know, she could have gone to the Christmas party and dance with someone, and that person could have left their DNA on her sweater. So you just can't conclusively prove that the DNA was left there by the killer, because anyone could have touched that sweater over the course of the night, or even weeks or months earlier. So when I first put together
my trail went Cold episode. The last source I use was an article that was published in December of twenty fifteen, around the anniversary of Ronda's murder, and at that time they interviewed Judy and Bobby Hinson, and they both had devisive opinions about how this crime was carried out, because he was certain that it was a planned, premeditated murder, but Bobby was leaning towards it being just kind of a freak accident where someone was firing off a gun
that night, wasn't intending to kill anyone, but just by a force of nature, it just wound up passing through the trunk of her car and hitting Ronda in the heart.
And he was hoping that if someone did that that they would come forward and at least admit what happened, and I have to admit that at the time I put together my podcast episode, I did lean more towards this being a freak accident because they never named anyone as a suspect or person of interest, They never revealed any information about Ronda having anyone in her personal life
who had a motive to kill her. And also the fact that we have description of two cars that were seen next near the murder scene, the gray or blue Chevy and the dark trans Am. So I'm thinking to myself, if Ronda had any friends or acquaintances who drove vehicles matching that description, we probably would have heard about it by now. So that's why I was leaning towards the idea that a stranger did this, and I kind of formulated a theory. Have you ever seen the Brad Pitt Cate Blanchett film Babel.
Yes, that was exactly what came to my head when you initially were explaining the case.
I'm like, isn't that like the plot of Babel?
Yes? Great, great minds think alike, that's cool, that's cool that you've seen it. But yeah, I mentioned it during my original episode because as you're a call, there's a storyline in there about these two kids in the Moroccan desert who decide to fire off a rifle from a high cliff, and by a freak occurrence, the bullet winds up passing through a tour bus that's like several miles away and why owns up seriously wounding Kate Blanchett's character.
And of course these boys panic because there's a police investigation trying to find out who the shooter was, even though they were just playing firing off the rifle and just never dreamed that it would pass through this bus so far away. So I was thinking it was a similar situation with Ronda's killer, that maybe they got drunk.
We're firing off a hunting rifle from an overpass just for the hell of it, and then by a freak occurrence, the bullet passed through Ronda's trunk and wound up killing her.
Yeah, that was exactly where my mind went, and I thought this has to be an accident, because if it wasn't an accident, even if you are this highly trained sniper, you're working with a lot of variables when you're shooting through a vehicle. I would think that you would likely make at least two shots just to make sure that you hit your target. And are we going to assume that this is a highly trained sniper, I mean probably not.
Even if they're a hunter, I would still think that you might want to take more than one shot if that was your intent.
Yeah. Well that was my original theory and kind of a spoiler alert, but I'll say that I've now changed it. I'm still not sure if this was a murder and accidents, but I don't believe it was done by a complete stranger, because now I have learned about someone who may have
had a motive to do this. So in that same article from December of twenty fifteen, it mentioned that Ronda had a boyfriend at the time, which I did not know it was not me during the unsawd mystery segment, and had mentioned that he was attending North Carolina State University in his freshman year but had recently come home from the holidays. And it was not until I read Larry Griffin series of articles that I finally learned more information about him, and a number of red flags went up.
His name was Greg McDowell, His father, Charles McDowell, was a pastor at a local church, and Greg and Ronda have been together for about two years at that point, and even though they seemed like the perfect couple at first, a lot of people thought that Greg was starting to
become more controlling and possessive of Ronda. He loved to obsessively write notes to her, but then would get frustrated if he felt that she wasn't reciprocating his feelings enough, and Judy noticed that as the relationship went along, Ronda's
behavior began to change. She started doing worse in school, and when Greg went off to North Carolina State University and Ronda remained in town, he frequently phoned and wrote to her, and things got really bad right before the holidays because he had been he'd always been very critical about Ronda's weight, and then wrote her a letter saying that by the time I come home for the holidays,
I want you to lose a few pounds. And it also turned out that Greg's mother, Betty McDowell, worked at the same employer as Ronda, the Hate Grey Steel Company, and she apparently told her son, don't worry, I will take this opportunity to keep an eye on Ronda. While you're at university, so number of red flags there.
This is disgusting the fact that you've also got the mother enlisted to help, quote unquote keep an eye on Ronda. What are you keeping an eye on? Making sure she's not flirting with other guys, making sure she's the appropriate amount in love with you, making sure that during lunch she's eating a calorie reduced meal so that she can lose weight. I hate when any man or woman, or anyone tries to interfere with somebody's body autonomy and tell them that they need to be a certain weight in
order to be attractive. People, especially women, feel enough pressure from society to look a certain way. They certainly don't need a partner like McDowell who's going to be saying you need to lose weight and also pushing his emotions on her in like this very controlling manner that if she doesn't reciprocate that, she somehow isn't a good partner. And it's like, we all have to come to whatever emotional feelings we have within a relationship in an organic manner.
You can't be forced or coerce by another person, because that isn't a true emotional evolution and the fact that he's trying to force her emotions to evolve.
You just can't.
That isn't a genuine connection, And it feels like there's some kind of coerceive control going on here.
Oh definitely. And the more I tell you about the McDowell's, as we go along, you'll realize that they were a pretty weird family in general. And I mentioned earlier that Ronda just didn't have much interest in attending college. I think she was just excited to stay in her hometown where her first job, and people now in retrospect think that she was kind of excited to have some independence because she figured, well, Greg will be away at school, I'll finally get to work my own job and have
some freedom and independence. But of course he was constantly checking on her and was pretty much using his own mother as a spy, so that made her get even more unhappy, even though like they were barely seeing each
other anymore. So I know that Ronda initially said that she did not really want to go to the Christmas party, but people became a parent that she really did want to go, but she wanted to go without Greg because he figured that if he came along, he would probably boss her around, embarrass her, and prevent her from having a good time, So she ultimately put her foot down and said, I'm going to the Christmas party, Greg, but I want you to stay home, and that apparently made
him quite upset. So on the night of December the twenty second, while she was getting ready for the party, Ronda received several phone calls at home from Greg, and while her parents did not know the content of these calls, they said that none of them last longer than three minutes, and it appeared that Ronda was going out of her
way to prevent them from overhearing her conversations. But from what they did here, Ronda's parents felt that Greg was doing what he could to make Ronda feel bad for not inviting him to the party and trying to ruin her night.
I love that she didn't invite him to the party and was like, you've got to say this one out. I want to have fun, but it just sucks for Ronda that his mother is there and like keeping an eye on everything that she's doing. I can't imagine what that would feel like that like you're finally you have this financial freedom, you have this freedom in having this job and you're really excited about it. Sounds like a decent job, and yet you're being spied on all of
the time. You've got these watchful eyes. Any conversation that she has with any male in the work environment, I'm sure is going to be scrutinized heavily by McDowell's mother. I'm I just I feel like you would just feel so trapped, even in this situation where he's so far away at university. You've got all this distance, but yet you don't even have the freedom that should come along with that.
It's true, yeah, so, And I don't know the timing, but it would be crazy if it turned out that Betty got the job at the steel company after Ronda did for the express purpose of keeping an eye on her. And makes me wonder too, because it sounds like Greg's father was also controlling and probably didn't want his wife working, so she might have actually been allowed to get this job just so that she could keep an eye on Ronda. It was just a very weird situation.
Do you feel like Ronda was working her way up to dumping him?
I think so. Yeah, And as we're going to talk about, there been speculation that maybe she did eventually tell Greg that she was breaking up with them, and that this could have set him off on this particular night.
Because I feel like, if you're going to tell a guy that he can't come to a Christmas party with you, just in my own personal opinion, I would be pretty ready to dump them at that point. If I don't really care about their feelings and them coming to a party that should be for me and then my significant other and it's like, no, sweetie, you can sit this one out, I would be ready to be like, see
you later. This relationship isn't working for me. I feel like she's just taking baby steps in order to get to that point.
That's what I'm thinking as well. Like, she never told anyone that she was planning to break up with Greg, but I could see a lot of warning signs to indicate that she was going to do this in the
near future. So, like I mentioned earlier, after the party, Ronda was planning to spend the night at a friend of hers named Sherry Pittman because she lived in Hickory and Ronda had to work the following morning, so she figured she would stay there in order to save herself a drive, but according to Sherry, after Ronda drove her home, Ronda went to the phone and had a conversation with someone, and it turned out it was probably Greg, even though
they never actually heard the conversation. But according to Sharry and her mother, Ronda just suddenly changed her mind and said, I'm not going to spend the night, I'm going to go home now. And Ron then said that she had spoken to Greg and he was extremely angry, so she just didn't want to stay there and would go home instead.
And this is a very important detail because other than the Pittmans, Greg would have been the only one who knew that Ronda would be returning home that night and driving that particular route where she would get off the Interstate and go down the off ramp onto Mineral Springs
Mountain Road back to her house. When Greg was initially questioned by the police, he said that when he received the phone call from Ronda, he initially thought that she was calling from her own house, but then he later changed his story and said that, oh yeah, I knew that she was calling from Sherry's house. And that seems pretty damning because once again, there would have been no one else who knew that Ronda would be on that particular road at that particular time of night.
Yeah, so the probability that it's some stranger seems extremely low. And the fact that he freaked out about her staying at Sherry's I can only imagine how that conversation went, like, you're probably with a guy. You're probably just hiding that, and you're cheating on me, and you know, how dare you? You better get your ass home type of a situation. And then I can't think of any other reason where she'd be like, oh, it's just easier for me to go home than have to deal with all of this
from him. Because if it was just you're staying at your girlfriend's house and he wasn't accusing you of any of that stuff, then I wouldn't see it being such a big deal. But I'm sure that he was just making a big deal about it because at that time of the night to actually get up and drive home, you were probably really worried about some kind of nuclear fallout from.
Him, exactly, Like, it's so impractical to drive fifteen miles back to your parents' house when you could just get up the following morning and go to work. In the same town. But one theory which has been pushed forward is that, even though they can't confirm this on this conversation, there's a possibility that maybe Ronda was going to arrange a meetup with Greg somewhere later that night, and maybe she was finally going to break up with them, but
that's when things escalated and when horribly wrong. So, like I mentioned earlier, after Judy had that weird premonition and woke up in the middle of the night and her husband checked the police band and heard about a shooting, they decided to call the Pittman residence to find out if Ronda was there, and were surprised to learn from Sherry that Ronda had changed her mind and decided to go home, which got them very worried because it only takes fifteen miles to get there and she should have
been home by that very point. So they decided to call the McDowell residents to see if Greg or anyone else from the family knew where Ronda was, and the call was answered by Greg's father, Reverend Charles McDowell, and he told Bobby that he would go out and look for Ronda, and sometime later he came across Ronda's vehicle on Mineral Springs Mountain Road, which had now been courted off as a crime scene because they found her body.
At this particular point, Ronda's family had not been notified about what happened to her, so Charles volunteered to accompany the two detectives to the Hintson residence, where they were
finally told that Ronda had been murdered. Shortly thereafter, the Hinson's decided to call the McDowell residents to notify Greg about what happened, and then Charles got on the line and suggested to Greg that he and his mother should come by the Hinson residence to see him there, and they soon arrived, but Judy and Bobby would later say that Greg appeared to be freshly showered and shaved, which they found very unusual because he had claimed that he was woken up in the middle of the night by
their phone calls, so there's really no reason he should have gotten into the shower and shaved after being informed that his girlfriend had been murdered, and then he apparently spent the next several hours sitting on the bed inside Judy and Bobby's room and he never spoke to them, and he only got up a few times to go into the bathroom in order to vomit.
Oh, it's so difficult to understand how somebody is going to respond to grief. And I know there isn't one like a one size fits all, but I will say that it is very odd that he's freshly showered and probably selling of Irish spring or whatever. And you know that smell like when somebody's just freshly showered, and like it lasts in the morning, but like if it's six hours later, even four hours later, that smell of soap or unless somebody's using cologne or whatever has likely dissipated.
So I would say that.
Their observation that he showered recently is probably accurate. And you'd have to then wonder, why are you trying to wash away evidence and then sitting in isolation and not talking. Are you trying not to incriminate yourself? Are you feeling guilty?
And I would say that the vomiting would back up the fact that he likely maybe he didn't intend to kill her, maybe he did intend to just scare her and in the end he killed her, But he had to have known that there was a possibility that he could have injured her, and then dealing with the ramifications for his choices is leading him to be physically ill.
Yeah, I mean, people deal with grief in different ways, And just because he didn't want to speak to Ronda's parents does not necessarily mean he's holding back and incriminating a secret. But the fact that he didn't just cry but then wound up vomiting is a sign that, like, he was feeling physically ill over the whole thing, and you would think that that would be the result of guilt rather than just grief.
I mean, I will say too, just to play Devil's advocate, I've been so upset in scenarios where I've been physically ill and it's not over grief. It's over something that's been done to me. So there is a possibility, but I would say that in most instances it would come
from people probably feeling sick about what they've done. Like you hear about people getting sick at murder scenes, right, vomiting after they've done that, because it's just your body has this visceral reaction to committing this egregious act against another human being. Unless somebody is like a stone cold psychopath and they have absolutely no feeling about it. But
I would just say that it does seem odd. But again, like we both mentioned, people respond to grief in different ways, so we're looking at it through the lens of all of these other weird behaviors that he's exhibited leading up to her death, and now we're seeing this in the aftermath.
So it looks odd.
It does. Yeah, like this on its own wouldn't be very incriminating, but when you combine it with some of the other strange behavior from Greg and his family, you can see why this is considered to be suspicious. So that brings it in to part one of our coverage about the murder of Rond Hinson. But join us next week for our coverage on part two.
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Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy