Welcome to this week's edition of The Path Went Chili. We're getting close to the holidays, and as you can imagine, because she has a newborn baby, Ashley is quite busy preparing for Christmas. So for the next couple of weeks, it's just going to be Jules and I and we'll follow our standard format where I tell her all the details about her case and she gives off her live reaction. And today we're going to be talking about a case that is nearly solved but not quite as kind of
a unique situation. Have you ever heard of the murder of Roger Dean.
I don't think so. Well.
I covered it on The Trail Went Cold about five and a half years ago, and it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, and it was nearly four years ago when they finally had in rest in the case. But there is still hasn't been a trial or a conclusive resolution, though I'm hoping there'll be sometime in the future. But there have been so many wild twists and turns throughout this case that I thought we should do a series of episodes on it and discuss it. Well.
I'm excited to hear all about it. There's a possibility that I may have listened to your episode that many years ago, but all the other episodes that I've listened to since and every other case. It sort of is like makes everything so convoluted in my mind that once you get into it, maybe I'll recognize it and maybe I won't.
Yeah, I'm thinking there is a possibility you may have heard it, but since I released it five and a half years ago, you may have forgot it. But it may come back to you when I start sharing all the details. So, this particular crime took place in Littleton, Colorado, in nineteen eighty five. The victim was Roger Dean, who was fifty one years old and was the co owner of a food brokerage firm which sold food products to
a grocery chains. He lived in the Lone Tree subdivision with his fifty year old wife, Doris Gene, who went by the nickname DJ. They've been married for twenty six years. At this point, they had a twenty four year old daughter named Tammy, who has since married and gotten away, but the couple have recently dealt with a lot of trauma.
They had a twenty two year old son named Troy, who was killed in January of nineteen eighty three when his car got into an accident at a train crossing, and this was particularly difficult for DJ because she actually lost both of her parents in a car accident way back in nineteen sixty nine, so losing her son in
that fashion brought back so many terrible flashbacks. And around this time period, DJ had also discovered that Roger had been having a secret affair with his secretary, but he apologized and assured her that the affair was over, and because they had been through so much trauma and lost their son, DJ pretty much decided, Okay, this is a bad obstacle, but we're going to move past and make it work. So she ultimately decided to stay with her husband.
My heart goes out to DJ, that is a lot to deal with. It's enough of a tragedy dealing with the loss of your parents, but no parents should ever have to deal with the loss of a child, especially in a similar accident slash tragedy such as like being killed at a train crossing. It's there's no words to describe how awful that must have been for her. And then the cherry on top of it is to find out that her husband Roger is having an affair with
his secretary. People always want to make it black and white when there's an affair, like oh, he cheated, so leave him. But it isn't that simple when it comes to marriages. There's a lot of other factors that go into the why, and couples can grow apart, and sometimes an affair can be a catalyst for people growing closer because they recommit to that relationship.
That might have been what happened. I don't know when exactly the affair started, but if it started after Roger lost his son, that that could have been a contributing factor where he was dealing with so much trauma and grief that he had to see companionship from another woman. So maybe that was DJ's rationale, saying that he's suffering too, and he did this because he needed someone else to turn to. So I'm willing to forgive him and move on.
Often with the death of a child, you see the dissolution of a relationship, and I think it's just because each person is on their grieving journey and it will either bring you closer together or it's going to tear
everything apart. And I think potentially in this case, maybe the fact that he had this affair was his way of acting out, his way of expressing his grief and being self destructive in that kind of a capacity where he was risking his relationship and then maybe being able to dial that back and go, wow, I'm not only hurting this person that I love, DJ, who I've committed my life to, but I'm hurting myself and maybe we really want to give this a try and actually commit
to each other. So I think that in all of that grief and pain and betrayal in this case, sometimes something beautiful can grow out.
Of that, and as possible, that could have happened, but unfortunately DJ's trauma would only get worse because she would wind up losing her husband as well. So I'm going to describe the events of what happened here. On November the twenty first, nineteen eighty five, DJ woke up and
took a bath shortly after seven am. I think she assumed that her husband had gone to work, But then when she got out and was drawing herself off, she heard Roger call her into their bedroom, and she was shocked to see a male intruder there wearing a ski
mask standing behind Roger with a gun. He ordered Roger to tie DJ up with some rope and blind folder with duct tape, and after she was placed on the bed, the two men exited the bedroom and she thought she could hear Roger and the gunman getting into some sort of argument, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. And then a few minutes later, the intruder returned to the bedroom and she could hear him frantically searching through the doors and he was yelling at DJ, how much
money do you have in your savings account? And DJ did answer. He went into the hallway, and then she soon overheard the gunman yelling at Roger that he owed them money, and Roger responded by saying that he had thirty thousand dollars in his account. So the gunman told Roger that we're both going to go to the bank
to get it. But it wasn't long before DJ heard a series of gunshots, and after hearing the sound of someone fleeing the house, DJ finally decided to flee the bedroom while she was still blindfolded and with her hands tied, and she managed to make it downstairs and egsit the house and By this point, a neighbor came out and was able to untire and remove the duct tape from her eyes, but then she was horrified to discover that Roger was lying on the front lawn with six gunshots in him.
Oh, poor dj I can't even imagine how awful it would be. You get out of the shower, you think your husband's gone, you're surprised by your husband, and then you see a masked intruder. And it seems as though they're arguing as if potentially they know each other, especially if the intruder is saying that Roger owes him money, but it seems a little odd. He's got thirty thousand dollars in his account. Why would he not pay this
person if he did truly owe the money? And then we think that they're going to go to the bank, but then we hear gunshots. So what could have happened in the interim. Was it that Roger chose to fight back, and maybe the gunman panicked and just emptied the clip into Roger rather than really thinking about, Hey, I need him alive.
Yeah, that's going to be one of the most ambiguous things about this case is whether or not Roger and his killer knew each other, and they would find out that one of the bullets Roger had was in his arm, and they discovered that the first shot that was fired off the bullet ricocheted off the banister and struck Roger in the arm, and I think Roger was able to flee and make it out the front door, and that's when the intruder fired five more shots into a which
ultimately killed him. And he also had some tape wrapped around his ankles, which suggested that maybe the killer was planning to bound him and maybe take him in the trunk for a trip to the bank. And then Roger tried to escape, and I'm thinking that if he really was planning to get money, that maybe he was only
planning to fire a warning shot. But then when the bullet rick hacheded off the banister and hit Roger in the arm, he realized, Okay, we can't go to the bank and withdraw money if he's got a gunshot wound in his arm, and that's why he decided to kill him and flee the scene without getting any money.
What a bizarre scenario. So there's only one person and you're planning to do this whole we're going to go to the bank and take money out, You're gonna have to go to a teller to take out thirty thousand dollars. You could just go to an ATM and be like, oh, yeah, I want to withdraw thirty thousand dollars. Like that's not going to work. You're probably only going to be able to take out a couple grand and then you're gonna
have to go to a teller. So either this person was like, we're just going to go to any ATM and we're going to take out a couple grand, what would be his motivation in not saying something to the teller or not signaling somebody something because you don't have another individual who's going to stay on DJ. Right, it would be one thing if you were like, I've got my buddy here and he's watching DJ any wrong move and she's dead. But that didn't seem to be the case.
He was just going to bind her and put tape over her eyes and leave her.
Yeah, that's the thing that doesn't make sense because we have seen a lot of other plans like this where one person will remain buhind at the house with the victims. Love one or their family and say that I will kill you if you try to go to the police or tell anyone at the bank what's going on. But
this was committed by one man. And another thing that strikes me weird is that this took place at seven am, and from my experience, banks generally don't open until at least eight nine o'clock, so it just seems way too early to kidnap someone and take them to a bank to withdraw money from their account.
I feel like banking hours have got better in the last ten years, but I feel like, I don't know, in nineteen eighty five of their baby, but yeah, but still I think that the banking hours weren't as good because I think when I was a teenager, it was like you'd be hard pressed to get into a bank before nine am. So yeah, seven am seems like an odd choice. And I don't know how many ATMs there were at the time, and like what their limit would
have been to take out. But I just I don't think that anybody can go to a bank machine and get out thirty grand I just don't think that there's that much money in these machines that they would allow anyone individual to take that much out.
Oh, definitely not. And if you try to withdraw that much in cash with a teller, it's a long process, I think. I assume you have to sign forms or something like that and wait for them to count the money. So it's really not an easy thing to do if you're trying to get someone to withdraw the money against their will while their wife is tied up at home.
But as we're going to talk about, people have wondered if there were ulterior motives to this whole crime, and that this whole withdrawing thirty thousand dollars from the bank was just some weird cover story. So it would turn out that the attacker removed his mask at some point and left it behind at the house. Of course, since DJ barely got a look at the mass gunman before the duct tape was put over her eyes, she wasn't
able to provide much of a description. But there were a bunch of people in the neighborhood who said that they saw an unfamiliar car parked next to the road down the street from Roger's house during the early morning hours, which they thought looked out of place, but they weren't able to give consistent descriptions, as some people thought it was a nineteen sixty eight Pontiac, some people thought it was a nineteen seventy six Oldsmobile, So there really wasn't
much to go on, and so they really didn't know who did this, So of course they started looking into Roger's background, and what was weird is that the police began to wonder if this might have been some sort of staged kidnapping gone horribly wrong, because even though Roger had been tied up with ropes, they discovered that twine fiber was embedded in only one of his wrists, and even though he had been wearing contact lenses that morning,
they actually found Roger's glasses in the bedroom and they were covered in duct tape, even though there didn't seem to be any reason for Roger to put on his glasses in the first place, and I don't think DJ said he was wearing his glasses when he came into
the bedroom that morning. And it was also Roger's standard work day routine to leave at around six six point fifteen, so it was very out of the ordinary for Roger to still be there at seven am, and neighbors would report seeing Roger drinking coffee inside the garage near seven o'clock by while lifting up the garage door, which seemed very out of character. And he even found his full coffee cup just lying on top of some newspapers on
a trash can in the garage. So it almost appeared that Roger was expecting someone to show up, and that maybe he was planning to like stage a kidnapping or something like that, or maybe he was planning a secret meeting with this man, but for whatever reason, things went horribly wrong and he wound up getting shot.
This is so strange the fact that he wouldn't tell DJ. If you were going to be bringing somebody to the house and you were going to be meeting them enough so that you're going to have the garage door open, you're waiting, you're late to go to work, it sounds like you definitely have something scheduled, you're expecting someone. Why wouldn't you tell your wife? That's a big question. And even just to say, like, hey, I'm gonna be late
for work, someone's gonna be popping in. They're just gonna be coming into the driveway or the garage, like you're not going to see them don't worry about it. And if you see an unfamiliar car in the driveway, don't panic. I would think that you would want to say those things,
like I live in a condo. But if I lived in a house and my husband didn't tell me those things, I would be really bothered by that, especially if you're showering, you're thinking that you're alone, and then you could just walk out and there he is, like, I don't know, it just seems a little odd.
Yeah. This is the part of the story that no one has ever been able to figure out, is like, what were Roger's alterior motives? Because I know that DJ said that they heard an argument about this guy saying that Roger owed him money. So maybe he was expecting this guy to show up to the house and he was going to pay him, or maybe say I'm going to pay you later or something like that, I just need time to get the money. But why would he
do that while DJ was home? I know this was time so that this meeting could have taken place while DJ was in the bathtub, So maybe he was hoping, well, this guy will show up, we'll talk in the garage, and DJ we'll never know. He was here, But why wouldn't you set the meeting somewhere else? Why would you set it up at your own house? So it just does it just seems weird that he would have this
secret meeting and not tell his wife about it. And if it was so secretive, why even have it at the house to begin with.
Yeah, and in nineteen eighty five, it's not like you're going to get like a last minute text from someone and be like, Hey, I'm going to stop by. Can we discuss this thing that we've been discussing. I really need a face to face with you, because you'd have to call somebody's landline and like schedule something way beforehand
without that technology. There there's no chance that it was just this last minute thing that just like slipped his mind that he couldn't tell DJ teams really strange, and you've got to wonder why, Like maybe they did have some kind of business dealing and who knows what could have transpired. Maybe he did owe him money, maybe not. Maybe there was just a miscommunication and things didn't go forward the way that that other individual thought that they should,
and so he was demanding money. I don't know, Like I can't think of what Roger's motivation would be and like why he would go to work late. It seems like there's something planned.
Well, here's where it gets weird, because, as you recall, DJ said she heard Roger telling the gunman that he had thirty thousand dollars in the bank, and they would eventually discover that Roger had a secret bank account and that he had secretly transferred thirty two thousand dollars from his company's bank account and deposited it in this private account. And DJ didn't even know about it. She didn't even
know that this account existed. So you have to think since he mentioned that specific amount thirty thous and that maybe there was something weird going on, and that this could have been like a stage kidnapping where he would pretend that this guy kidnapped them and force them to
withdraw the money. But then Roger would just keep the thirty two thousand dollars for himself, claim it was stolen, and that when he told the story to the police, DJ would pretty much act as his witness because she saw the gunman and she was tied up all that
all this was going on. But the problem is that I can't think of a motive for why he would do this because obviously, if you're transferring this thirty two thousand dollars to a secret account, nobody knows about it, so why would you pretend that it's stolen to cover for it? And it just seems like a lot of trouble to go to for just thirty two thousand dollars, because if you have it in your company's bank account, then why are you just going through this whole charade?
So I know that there was something going on because of this secret bank account, but I don't know if i'd buy this whole staged kidnapping theory gone wrong.
Let's say that's like what like seventy five thousand in today's money around there. I'm just gonna pull a figure out of nowhere. It seems like a lot to go through for seventy five thousand dollars. I don't know what his financial situation was, but I could see a world where if you were embezzling money, you're starting to freak out every single day that that is going to get
traced back to you. And so I could see a scenario where he kind of constructs this whole plan where he's going to have this narrative that he was kidnapped and the money was taken and that's where the money went. Okay, I could see that. But then you have a guy that you hire, I'm assuming somebody you know, I would guess, and then you have him bring a real gun that actually has bullets in it, Like, why would you even need to load the gun if this were the case that's true?
Yeah, like the guy obviously he fired one shot that hit Roger in the arm, but you don't need to bring a loaded gun to begin with if you're in on it together, so you could just stage the whole thing. So yeah, And I don't know why things would go so badly that this guy would just suddenly decide to kill Rob without getting any money. So it could be that the thirty two thousand dollars is just red hairing. It has no relation to the case. And they never
actually accused Roduler of embezzling it. I mean it was his company. He took it out of the account, but they didn't find out any evidence of the eddy of financial problems or that he was doing anything illegal or stealing money, so that the whole plan there doesn't seem to be any real logical motive for it.
But if you've transferred that money from your company into your personal account, I would think there's a potential for insurance fraud. You would be claiming some kind of insurance on that thirty thousand dollars and expect that to be recouped if somebody held you for ransom, because if you're going to have some kind of business insurance that I think would protect you in a scenario such as this, So I could see that being a motivator.
Yeah, that's true, where he pretends that the thirty two thousand dollars is missing while holding on to it, then gets an extra payout from the insurance. What that would be like maybe sixty four thousand dollars in total. And is it really worth all this trouble? It's I mean, even in today's money, that would be what like over one hundred thousand dollars. I mean, do you really need to go through all this trouble?
I mean, I have no idea. It just depends on what his financial situation was at the time. And it doesn't seem as though, aside from the affair that he had, from what we know about him thus far, that he acted impulsively or erratically. Do you know any other incidents besides the affair that would kind of paint him as somebody that would potentially just make rash decisions and act on impulse.
Not really like all they really have in the background is his affair. I mean, it is kind of sketchy that he would transfer this money without telling his wife about it, but there's no evidence that he did anything impulse of like steel money or anything illegal. So he had an insurance policy on himself for DJ and his daughter Tammy, So of course they were thoroughly investigated, but
they were eventually cleared as suspects. So obviously, like an insurance policy, was not a motive for his wife or his daughter to have them killed. But they did find out that even though Roger had told his DJ that his affair with the secretary was long over, they had apparently been seen together the week before Roger's murder, even though he had assured her that he was going to stay away from her, and I'm pretty sure that she
was no longer working for him as well. And they would try to question the secretary and her own son, and apparently they were very uncooperative and left town a short time after the murder took place, and police just says we have never really officially ruled them out of suspects, as evidence of their involvement was described as quote unquote inconclusive.
But it's kind of interesting to find out that the secretary had a son, because obviously this crime was committed by a man, and you kind of wonder, could this son have been motivated to do something like try to steal money from the man that had been having an affair with his mother.
It's possible too that if you were to stage something like this, I mean, it's I guess both scenarios are possible. He could have conspired with his mother to legitimately try to steal money from him, because potentially he blew her off after and I don't know if she got fired because of that, which is sort of like you have an affair with your boss and you get fired, where's HR department? Because that is the legitimate reason to buying somebody.
But okay, so either their affair is still going on and it's one big conspiracy and they're all in it together, or he truly did blow her off after and really try to make things work with DJ and maybe she was better about it and she told her son about it, and they're like, well, he's a perfect mark, and who knows. Maybe she met up with him to try to get some information and discuss a potential meeting and that's when her son showed up rather than her or something to that.
I mean, when you see the whole scenario of Roger standing in his garage expecting someone, it could be a thing where the son privately contacted Roger and says, I want to speak to you about what's been going on with you and my mother, and he says, okay, let's do it privately in the garage. Well, DJ's in the bath and he's not expecting this guy to show up with a gun to try to have him killed and have money stolen from him. But again, if Roger wanted to do this, I would think he would schedule a
private meeting somewhere else away from his house. So the case would remain called for nearly five years they didn't have any strong leads or any strong idea of who the perpetrator would have been, but then it would be escalated to the next level. On July the twenty first, nineteen ninety when DJ received an anonymous letter in the mail written by someone claiming to be Roger's killer. And
here's a quote from an excerpt of the letter. Quote, I didn't kill you, even knowing you could be a witness if we were ever caught, but that will never happen. By now you should realize that I'm one of the two persons who sees your lone Tree house with order to kill Roger if he didn't pay his debt. You were right with one of us end quote. And then he demanded ten thousand dollars and said that if DJ did not pay, he would go after her daughter, Tammy.
That sounds pretty messed up, yes.
And now you can imagine the trauma because Tammy is like her last surviving member of her family, because she's lost her husband, she's lost her son, she lost her parents several years ago. And what's interesting about the timing is that when Tammy got married, she had moved away to Arizona. And I don't know if her marriage ended or something, or if it went wrong, but shortly before the letter was sent, she had actually returned back to Littleton,
Colorado to be closer to her mother. And the writer also provided a lot of details in the letter that suggested that he knew Tammy personally had been stalking her. Here's another excerpt, word for a word quote do you know that I had met your daughter Tammy on a few occasions. I have followed her to New York, Arizona and Costa Mesa. She is a very attractive blonde and a good model. Do not make me kill her. Your son is dead, your husband is dead. Do not risk
your daughter. She is the last one left. If you go to the police, I'll wait until they can no longer protect her and kill her. End quote.
My god, poor DJ, Like, what an awful letter to receive, and what a creep this is giving, Like Watcher Vibes meets Long Island serial killer who would call the siblings of his victims and like terrorize them. It's just retraumatizing DJ over and over again. And Tammy must have been like, is my life in danger as well? Yeah?
Exactly. And the timing of it, it just makes sense because you're wondering if this guy was so desperate for money, like why would he wait nearly five years to send this threatening letter to DJ? But I think he specifically waited for her to return from Arizona to Lyttleton, thinking that, well, if she's in another city, it'll be harder to threaten her. But now that she's closer to her mother and she's a lot more vulnerable, this is when I can make
this extortion attempt. And he gave space instructions for DJ not to call the police and said that he would be in touch with her in six days. But in spite of this, DJ and Tammy were just so terrified that they contacted the Douglas County Sheriff's Department and the Denver branch of the FBI and turned over the letters so that they could be put under surveillance.
Well, fair enough, I would be doing the same thing. I feel like, please have the police have a car out there, the FBI, everybody, because what if this person decides to act. And DJ must have been living in this perpetual state of fear. Every single person that she loves has been torn away from her, every single person.
I can't imagine how that would feel. You would have difficulty getting close to anyone new, I would assume, because you would likely think that, oh, everybody who gets close to me dies.
Oh exactly, And she's already been living this way for five years because she knows her husband's killer is still out there, but enough time is fast that she's probably gotten more comfortable thinking, Okay, well, at least he's long gone and he's not going to come back after me.
And then all of a sudden, she gets a threatening letter and this person is saying that Roger owed me money, so you are obliged to pay me one hundred thousand dollars, which seems weird since Roger had pretty much said I will give you thirty thousand dollars the first time around, and then this guy suddenly ups the amount so he once DJ contacted the FBI, they started putting taps on her phone and he started calling her and saying that
because of Roger's debt, you owe me this money. And it took a while before they could coordinate it because he would call her like a few times to threaten her. And I think it was finally weeks later where he finally provided instructions for where to drop the one hundred thousand dollars.
And so obviously did they go ahead with this plan where they were going to do this like fake drop.
Yes, yes, they finally did it. It was on August the nineteenth, which would have been I think nearly a full month after he originally sent the letter, and he told her to drive to a phone booth out of supermarket located twenty miles from her home, and of course the FBI set up a surveillance operation, and after she arrived at a phone booth, DJ waited around a while until he called her on the phone booth and gave instructions to take the money to an apartment complex in
downtown Denver and leave the money in an alley behind the building. So of course DJ went there. She dropped bundle containing one hundred thousand dollars before she left, and the FBI kept their eyes on the money for a long period of time, but of course no one showed
up to collect it. But shortly thereafter, well DJ was still out, Tammy received a phone call from this guy who started screaming obscenities of her angry because I guess he had noticed that the FBI was on to him, so he was so angry, saying, your mother did not follow instructions and because of that, I'm going to kill you. And then he gave one more call to DJ, saying that one of these days, your daughter will be dead. I know you're under surveillance now, but they can't protect
you forever. It may not occur for six months, it may not occur for six years, but rest assured that sooner or later I will kill you your daughter. And after this call ended, this was the last time she ever heard from him.
Well, that's terrifying, and I mean sooner or later we all die. So when he's saying it might be six months, it might be six years, it's like, I don't know if you ever have the intention of doing this. If you're saying six years, I think you were just hoping to get a very quick payout here. But I still, if I were dj would be incredibly terrified. Every single day, I'd be wondering if my only surviving child, Tammy was still alive, to the point where it would be overprotective
and probably crossing boundaries. So I can imagine it changed the relationship between Tammy and dj.
Oh pretty much because it was shortly after this when this was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Because the murder was bad enough, but this whole extortion attempt added a bit of additional urgency, so they finally said, we have to get this on national television. We have to get this guy.
Because both DJ and Tan were interviewed and they were both saying that they were just living in constant terror, in fear knowing that this person was out there, and it said that they were going to like killer at any moment. They did what they could to try to track down this guy. I know that when he made his phone calls, they were always done at phone boosts, but whenever the FBI went to the phone boost the
person would be gone by then. But at the outset, at least they seemed inclined to believe that the caller was the same person who had killed Roger and was just coming back years later in an attempt to make some money. And what's interesting is that when this was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, Robert Stack said that this throwaway line that investigators have considered the possibility that both a woman and a man are involved in this whole scheme.
And when I watched it, the Unsolved Mystery segment did not mention Roger's affair with his secretary, so I had no idea why they mentioned a woman and a man. And it was later when I researched this for the podcast episode. I was like, oh, okay, so they suspect that it might be the secretary and his son, and that even though they left town after the murder, they may have decided to go back and get more to try to get some money.
I mean, I think it is really odd too when you look back and you think, you guys just escaped town, and I mean, maybe one of them would have, but the son seems to be of an age that he's not necessarily living with his mother. So the fact that they both high tailed it out of there after being uncooperative with authorities does look really sketchy exactly.
And this is what's interesting is that at first they were inclined to believe that the extortionist was the same person who killed Roger, But as time has gone on, it sounds like law enforcement have come to believe that the extortionist was just a greedy opportunist who didn't kill Roger, but knew about the crime and was trying to take advantage of DJ in order to score some money. And apparently he shared some details in the threatening note which
were not accurate. Like all the details that he shared, most of them were public knowledge. There wasn't anything exclusive to suggest that they had inside knowledge of the crime. And they also said some things about how I left my bag behind, I attempted to steal your jewelry, and I haven't heard anything about the killer having a bag or attempting to steal DJ's jewelry. So that's what they've described as inaccurate details that suggests that this was not
the real perpetrator. This is someone who's heard about the story in the news and was just trying to take advantage of DJ.
And likely just singled her out and was like, what is the most hot button issue for DJ that would make her most likely to pay what is most precious to her? And the answer is obviously Tammy, her one remaining child. So to act like the attention is focused on Tammy and that he or she is stalking Tammy and that her life is in peril, then I could definitely see a scenario where a very panic loving mother would try everything to come up with that cash because
she wants to protect her baby. Luckily, it was just a hoax and nobody armed Tammy. Nothing had happened to either DJ or Tammy. But what an awful, awful thing to do to a surviving wife and surviving daughter of a murder victim, to terrorize them that many years later, when hopefully they've had some kind of resolution in that
they're moving forward with their lives. They don't know who did this, they don't have the answers, but time does heal some wounds, and that you can learn to live a life, and that life will be different than the life that you had before. But then when you have somebody come in and re traumatize you and really make you live every single day of your life as if it could be your last, but not in a good way,
in a way that you fear violence upon you. That is just the type of thing that makes me sick to my stomach to think that those two women had to deal with that after they lost Roger. It's just it's too much.
Oh yeah, And it just dragged on for so many years, and even after it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, it still didn't pave the way for an arrest. And it's still never been conclusively established if the murderer and the extortionists are the same person. But unfortunately, the statute of limitations for the extortion charges have expired, So if it was an entirely different person than the killer, then this person is never going to be charged for it because
of the statute of limitations. So they essentially traumatized this poor woman and got away with it.
That's too bad the statute of limitations on certain crimes. It's like, what are we giving people awards for getting away with crimes so that they never have to be charged. It seems wild to me, like certain crimes where if you don't figure it out within five years, then you can't charge them. I don't know where they came up with these.
I mean, I can understand it for certain crimes, but this is a pretty serious one where you're threatening a woman's life and trying to extort around of money. So you would think that they would like still charge someone if they act conclusive evidence, even if it was many years later, But unfortunately that's not the case here. So that brings an end to part one of our series about the murder of Roger Dean. So join us next week for part two of our series.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier three,
the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved 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 case is 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 Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check out those patreons.
We'll link them in the show notes.
So I want to thank you all for listening, and any chance you have to share us on social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly 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