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In nineteen ninety two, a star clerk was found shot to death in broad daylight at the Boot Village in Saint Charles, Missouri. Nothing was stolen and there was no sexual assault. This bizarre and seemingly isolated murder was quickly connected with others in Indianapolis, Wichita, Terre Hate, and Raytown. The media dubbed the suspect the I seventy serial killer. He has never been captured and the story quickly fell out of the media's attention, but the cases never went
cold for the officers in those cities. In twenty twenty one, with the advancements in DNA, Saint Charles Police Captain Raymond Floyd launched a task force, bringing all jurisdictions together along with federal agencies, to take one final crack at solving the crimes. The task Force selected Bob Ciphers of KMOVTV to follow them along city by city in the hunt for the killer. Ciphers Anda's KMOV crew produced a seven part award winning series called Chasing the I seventy Serial Killer.
Their work led to national exposure of the case in People magazine and on the Discovery Channel, winning an Edward R. Murrow Award and being nominated for an Emmy. Dead End Inside the Hunt for the I seventy Serial Killer follows on the work done by the Task Force with the important goal of keeping the story alive in the public eye. New evidence, never before available to the public is revealed here with the hopes of triggering a memory or revealing
a new lead. The task Force may be closed, but the drive to find this killer is alive and well. The book that we're featuring this evening is dead End Inside the Hunt for the I seventy Serial Killer, with my special guest investigative journalist and author Bob Ciphers. Thank you very much for this interview and welcome to the program. Bob Ciphers.
Thank you, Dan, I appreciate it very much. Really on behalf of the police departments that are working this still after all these years. Incredibly grateful for you for the podcast to get the information out. We think it may be, you know, our last chance after all these years, and we're really grateful, Thank you, thank you.
Let's get to right to this incredible story. It starts in nineteen ninety two with a murder at boot Village, Saint Charles, Missouri Police Department and Captain Raymond Floyd. And this is he writes the forward to this book and tells a little bit briefly about the case and what happened to it almost too soon, almost right away, but tell us about the decision to get together again and re examine this case, and how you became involved in this extraordinary investigation.
Yeah too, full bear. Captain Floyd worked in a town called Troy, Missouri, about thirty miles outside of Saint Charles when this occurred, and he always watched the case. He was always interested in the case. It wasn't his case. And then years later he gets high by Saint Charles and right away he walks in and says, hey, can I help launch something to take a crack at this one last time a task force? And he got the okay. At the same time, I'd been writing long form, magazine
style cold case stories for the CPS television station. Came moving in Saint Louis, and I think Ray saw what I was writing. We did not know each other, but when they got the task force together, they wanted to have a media person tell their stories and follow them along for the full process, not just come out and do a one and done that day thing. And Ray asked me to come out. We got to know each other.
We talked. He asked if I was committed to doing it, and I said I was because I was there that first day in nineteen ninety two when Nancy was killed. And just like Ray followed the case all these years, so did I. And we were at match made in Heaven. And for the next year I went everywhere with them and did everything I could, and that's led to the book.
Tell us about, just briefly the murders that occurred in order you talk about Nancy kits Miller was the first, But tell us about the events because we're talking about a short order rampage of about a month. So tell us what happens first with Nancy kits Miller.
Well, it was a Sunday afternoon in May. It was a beautiful day. I was working in the Newsroalm City, but the location was, and the time of day was was a brand new shopping center and a very public place right off the highway and inner State seventy in the middle of the day. I knew there were hundreds of people out there. It's the last place you'd think of for a homicide. I grabbed a photographer and said,
let's go. This appears to be unusual. We get out there and boy, the parking lot is swarmed with new stores and people, like I say, it's a beautiful day. We stake it out. I find a police officer I know later to try to get the scoop on what's going on, and he's shaking his head at me, like, Bob, this is a bad one. You know. What do we have here? Robbery in the middle of the day, He says, no. I said, is it a sexual assault? No? Oh? I said, well,
what's happened here? And it's like, we don't know. Somebody just walked in and shot her and left for no reason at all. And as the years went by then that just became stuck in my mind as an unusual case. I followed it from that point on.
You take us to the case of Susan foul full dour and in Indianapolis. Tell us about what happens with Susan fall Dauer and the particulars of this murder.
Well, Robin was first, and that was so bizarre as we went there to meet with the Indiana Appolis Police department. The scene where she was killed was at a Paliss shoe store which is now our Batteries plus store. So you can picture the small square building, just a few parking spots in front, and it was literally connected to a speedway gas station, just a little bit of room in between. You could I walked the steps in like
you know, twenty seconds. It was nothing. And again and middle of the day, all those people at the gas station coming and going, the killer walks into the Pali's shoe store and leaves. There's no robbery, there's no rape, there's nothing. That was the first killing and police were just dumbfounded, like what's the motive here? How did he get away? How did nobody see him? It became so bizarre. Where does he park a car? You know, it became
so bizarre. They wondered if did he just pull into the gas station and start pumping the gas and walk next door and kill her, and then come back and unload the gas and get in his car and leave. I mean, the timeframe was so tight, there were so many people around, and again middle of the day, it just didn't make sense with no motive. That was the first homicide.
When police believe that it may be associated with the robbery. You site that there was very little money taken in that first robbery.
Right So, there's a woman working at the gas station next door to named Lucretia Gullet, who I tracked down. She got a phone call from the shoe store manager as she was leaving her shift around three o'clock in the afternoon, saying, Hey, I'm trying to reach my manager next door. She's not answering the phone. Can you go over there and make sure everything's okay. Lucretia goes next door and sees the cash register is open. There's nobody
in the store, but money is not taken register. Again, it doesn't make any sense, and that's the way it's going to play out at all these scenes. But it's please show up and they're looking for motives right away. You know, a woman killed in a business in the middle of the day. They're looking for a robbery initially, but that's not matching up at all. Between two o'clock and three o'clock that afternoon, Lucretia Gullet is about to
get off work. She's the register worker at Speedway gas station, and she gets a phone call from the regional manager of the Ayles's shoe next door saying, Hey, I can't get a hold of my manager there at the office. I've been training to get her for an hour. Do you mind popping over there making sure she's okay? And Lucretia, you know, walks the twenty steps and looks inside the shoe store and it's basically empty. The cash register is open, there's nobody behind the cash register. Money is in the
cash register. She finds a woman and a child there trying to get a pair of shoes on, but she realizes something is not right, and she asked those ladies to leave, and she calls the cops immediately, no idea what has happened here, And the police arrived right away and they found Robin Fuldauer's body. She'd been shot in a back room. Again. No robbery, no rape, no witnesses, no getaway. Middle of the day, very busy area, gas
station connected. Did he pull in and get gas and walk next door and shoot and kill her and go back to his car and pull the tank, pull the gas can out and leave. Where's to get a a vehicle? There were only a few parking spots there. It was just it was off the wall, bizarre.
I asked the question about robbery. What was unusual about if if robbery was any part of the motive, a robbery gone bad, what was one of the circumstances that police noticed right away?
I just think when they walked in right away for a business homicide, the first thing they're thinking is is a robbery? And that was ruled out immediately once they realized there was money in the cash register and it appeared nothing had been taken. And then the second thing you're going to look at is what was she? Was she raped? Was there a sexual assault? No, there was
none of that. You know, you know, you start going down the list of what the possibilities were, just like it came in Saint Charles later, just like it came in with Gita and Tara Hate and Raytown. The things that make usual sense in these things were not happening here, We're not happening and that really started raising some red flags for police.
Tell us about what police do and then what do police learn?
Shortly after, well, I guess of all the bizarre things that happened in this case was right after the Indianapolis homicide. A couple days later, we're in Wichita. I mean, you don't make that drive by accident. This is going across the country. This is going I think six seven hundred miles right. And at Wichita there's a man looking at it's a wedding store, tuxedo store. A man wants to go to a wedding that night at seven o'clock and he needs a cumber bund. The store closes at six.
He calls the store and says, listen, I'm running five minutes late. I'll be there at six oh five. I need a cumber bund for a seven o'clock wedding. Do you mind staying open for me? Two women inside, Patricia Smith, Patricia Majors. They say, yeah, we'll stay open, come on buy. So six o'clock hits. They're ready to close, and they wait a couple minutes, and sure enough, a man enters the store, but the man is not looking for a
cumber bund. The man is a killer, yeah, and he takes the women into a back room, shoots him and kills him, doesn't take take any money. There's no sexual assault, and he prepares to leave the store, and then guess who comes in the man looking for the cumber bund. Well, now we have an eyewitness. Now there is between the dead bodies and the door where the cumberman is, and there's this thirty seconds of life changing things happening for
a lot of people here. The killer tries to get the cumber bun man to come on back to the back room, says he won't hurt him. The comber man sees a gun inside a wedding veil, senses something is wrong and chalks his way out out of the store and flees. A lot happened there. But we have two dead bodies. Again, we have no robbery. Again, we have no sexual assault. But the police aren't putting this together yet.
Indianapolis has their own case. There's no reason to think of Wichita case, seven hundred miles away, two days later is their case. But it was.
What happens next The police obviously investigate. They have leads, they have some witnesses. They believe that maybe the perpetrator. But as they proceed, where does the killer go?
The killer turns around, He goes back to Indiana. And this is why the FBI profilers in Chuanticle believe the killer came from the Indiana area, because their profile is for serial killers. They always wind up back at home home. He leaves Wichita, comes right back to Indiana, Indiana, and goes to Terre Haute, and he kills again again. There's no robbery again, there's no rape this time though. The victim is a male and not a female. However, the male's name is Mick McCown. He had long hair, he
may have had a ponytail. The store's name was Sylvius, a female brand. And he's in the store for a short time and perhaps he sees that McK McCown is not a female. He does not have a forceful take her to the back room like the other women. He shoots Mick McCown on the spot, leaves him for dead, and flees. Doesn't take much money again. However, at that scene, one thing is missing Mick McCown's wallet. Now, please don't know if the killer took the wallet or if Mick
McCown had left the wallet someplace else. They couldn't find it anyplace else. The families said he always had it. If that wallet is missing, it's a key piece in this case dan because back in the nineties, DNA was simply semen in saliva. He's just walking and shooting somebody and leaving. He's not leaving semen in saliva. But now DNA, thirty years later, with technology that has advanced to what's
called touch or handler DNA. So if he pulled Mick McCown's wallet out of his pants, let's say they were in there and police still had those pants. If they did, there'd be some fingerprints, if you will, or some DNA handler DNA on those pants. So a few months ago, I'm out golfing with Brad Rumsey, who's the lead detective on the case for Tara Hope. We're talking about the DNA, and somewhere in the middle of the dance, saying, boy, it would just be great if we had those pants
after all these years. Brad just looked at me and smiled, I got him. I got them.
So there's a hope there. Let's get back the changes. Let's get back to the narrative. Let's get back to Raytown, because this killer isn't finished.
No Town is a very sad case, but maybe the one that leads to the resolution of this if it's all said and done. It's a shopping center, an older strip mall, not like the one in Saint Charles for Nancy Kitts Miller, and a well dressed, preppy looking man, probably a little more uppstyle than that shopping center might usually receive, walks right up to a video store and
stares in the window like he's scoping it out. And the owner of that store, a man named Tim Hickman, comes and looks in the window, looks out the window and sees the man staring at him, a well dressed man, a young, preppy looking guy, and they stare at each other. Tim says, for probably ten seconds, he's wondering if the guy's coming in. You know, why is the guy just staring through the window. It's a video store. Do you
want to move or not? Well, the man then leaves, he doesn't come in, and Tim thinks nothing about it, and thirty seconds later in the store, right next to him, on the end of the strip mall. He hears pop pop, pop pop, and he realizes what is that? Is that a shooting. Tim runs quickly next door and sees the woman's body, Sarah Blessing, laying in a pool of blood.
She's been shot. And he quickly then turns to the end of those buildings and sees the same man who he saw staring in his window, running quickly up a very very very steep hill to get away. So Tim Hickman eyeballs this guy. He's seen this guy. He stared at this guy. He still sees this guy's face and his dreams every night. And thirty years later and meeting Tim and asking him about that day and what he saw, he can barely speak. He can barely describe it without crying.
It's heartbreaking. You talk about victims besides the people who've lost their lives and the family members who are left grieving. Tim Hickman has been affected by this, too, shaken by this, but he's got this picture in his mind. He has seen and stared down the killer.
Let's talk about this task force that is organized, this group of specialized investigators detectives who is brought into this investigation along with yourself and what is the first order of business.
Well, we brought in all the detectives retired who originally handle the case, the new detectives to handle the case now FBI, DNA ATF and went city to city trying to put the brains together and find some common denominators. They wanted to get up to speed on technology. Ray Floyd organized a computer system where now all these cities kept their own private portal web page were when tips come in and phone calls come in each day. If something comes in in Wichita, they see it in ray Town.
Same with Indianapolis to Saint Charles or whatever. They're working as the team now instead of their own individual departments chasing down a case, but they're staying on it. There's a woman in Saint Charles named Kelly Rhodes. Kelly was just a baby when this was happening thirty years ago, and she has one job every day, and one job
only this case. And as I was traveling on a media tour a couple months ago when the book was first launched, I was in one of the cities on a cold, frozen day, and who pops in there but Kelly Roads crossing state lines and Kelly Rose is eight months pregnant. And I left there shaking my head, thinking, you know what, what an incredible message. If the public knew, here's this case thirty years old, here's a detective who just wasn't even a baby. Then she's handling it. Now,
she's eight months pregnant. On this cold winter, icy day, she's traveling across the country to swap notes with one of the homicide scene detectives. They are not giving up. They are full on this boy. It's just an honor to meet some of these people and see the determination. If the public knew, they would be so proud.
Let's get to how police take a look at whatever evidence they do have. What I'm talking about is ballistics, the composite drawings that were made. There are at least a couple of witnesses that talk about something specific of red hair for the perpetrator possibly, so tell us about what is gained or not gained from composite drawings and also what do they determine from ballistics.
Let's talk about the witnesses first. There's two. There's the cumberbun Man and there is Tim Hickman. The cumberbun Man has been so emotionally hurt by what happened at this scene. He immediately has had health issues and mental issues, and the police departments have said he's really not of assistance to them. It's very sad. It's just again like Tim Hickman, what a scene can do to you to your mind. Although he had a composite sketch he gave the police originally,
it's really been of no help since then. So Tim Hickman in ray Town is your best witness as far as the composite sketches AI has given the police department or has produced a new composite sketch for them. The man is basically described. If you look at these sketches, Tim Hickman has the best word. You know. He was a preppy looking guy. And this is going to appear again later in the Brosman killings or other things the
police departments look at. A man was arrested for some killings in it the Internet and Greenway a couple of years ago serial killings, and police were quickly looking to see if this could be a suspect for them, and he was not. But the real key for the evidence is the gun again we talk about this story made no sense with the robberies and the no rapes. The gun is just the off the wall story here. The
killer's gun is a called an irma workie. It's a nineteen eighteen German military war target pistol that barely functioned one hundred years ago. It's not the kind of gun you'd take on a murders free It's not the kind of gun that's been you'd buy in the back of somebody's trunk on the bad side of town to go kill somebody. Where do you get this gun? A German Navy target pistol, Where do you get this gun? Police think this gun had to be handed down like a
family air room. The killer must have had a grandfather, a great grandfather somehow in the German service or something, and they're hoping that somebody knows somebody or hears something about boy I knew a guy that had this goofy gun. You look at this gun, it's not the kind of gun you've ever seen before. It's so rare. But once we had the killings in Indy, Wichita tear a Hote, they still hadn't put two and two together. Each city just had their own homicide saying ballistics, but they didn't
know that. Once Saint Charles hit, that's when they put the ballistics together. That's when I got the first call thirty some years ago, Bob, come on out here. We got something on this gun that you're just not gonna believe. And I get out there and it's like, you got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. This can't be the gun. It was hard to believe, but it was.
You talk about the gun some more in this book, about the almost a foot long barrel on this thing, and then also the characteristics of this gun reputation and what it had a reputation for, notoriously for.
Well, it jammed all the time. It just didn't work. And you know, when I was told about the gun, there was some debate in the police department. We're not going to release We're not going to release this to the public, and you know, I wasn't going to burn the police department or impeded investigation. At the same time, journalistically, I kind of took the position of, Hey, I think this information has to be out. I mean, this is your big clue somebody. The gun is so rare. You
get this out to the public. Somebody's going to know something about this gun. You got to get this out. They didn't want to. They thought that would affect the investigation, and I never I never put it out out there. My bosses knew I had something on the case, but I wasn't going to burn the police. And we waited, and I know they debated then about the gun. I
think they listened to me. They didn't really care what I said, but it sparked debate, and after a while they did decide to release the gun, and as soon as they did, the murders stopped. And at first we thought, well, if nothing else, we stopped the killings, But then we realized we've lost our best lead. Though if he'd have kept if he'd have kept killing, somebody would have found more ballistics, some more witnesses or whatever. So that was a tough one, and I think police looking back think
they made a mistake. I don't think it was a journalistic mistake. I think the public had a right to know. The people were fearful at that time. I remember driving up and down Highway seventy. This is before you see electronic signs on highways and there were posters that were stuck on exit signs and on telephone polls and at gas stations, look out for the Ice seventy killer. Here's our composite sketch. Public was in a panic, and I
think they had the right to know. But the killing stopped at least three year until they may started again in Texas.
Now you talk about one police officer, detective in particular, saying this is a mistake because now you've alerted the serial killer that you know about his weapon, and so all that killer has to do is change weapons. Tell us about the first crime in Texas, where it occurs, and the particulars that lead police to believe that absolutely it's related to the I seventy killings.
Yeah, the lead detective from Indianapolis that state is the lead detectively been in a retirement in all these cases, man named Mike Crook. Mike. Then, when we didn't know if Texas was the same, same exact thing off a highway, guy thirty five in the big cities Dallas and Houston, in and out of stores, no rape, no robbery. Boy, it looks the same, but the gun is not the same. He's obviously if it's him. He's changed guns. Mike Krook went to the Thomis side scenes, all the scenes in Texas,
and he says he believes it's just his feeling. It's the exact same it's the exact same guy. A lot of police officer us don't believe it is. It's truly a fifty to fifty split. It's hard to say. There's just no concrete evidence that it is other than it certainly looks to be the same. He killed two people in Texas, Mary and Glascock and Amy Bess, and then he went to Houston and tried to kill Vicky Webb. Thought he left her dead. Thought he did it. If
it is the Saint seventy guy. If not, there's another person there doing the same thing. But Vicky survived.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop for a second to hear these messages. Now you talk about September twenty fifth, nineteen ninety three, the first crime with Mary Ann Glascock, who's a fifty year old fifty one years old, and she has a little antique shop. And tell us though of all the things that are put together, at least circumstantially, that are so similar to the I seventy murders.
What to police and yourself being part of this investigation, absolutely know about the particulars that are so similar.
These shops are all the same. They're small, little antique type stores or specialty stores, a wedding store or shoe store. They're not big, blockbuster stores. They're individual, small stores with one woman inside. In most cases, the Tara hate was two women, but one of them was in the back room when the killer came in. They believe he thought there was just one woman in the store. So there was always a small shop right by the highway, very busy area town, mainly in the middle of the day,
except for whichitah women working alone, usually with brunette hair. Again, no robbery, no rape, no way to get away. We talk about the getting away. I back to Saint Charles and Bogey Hills, where I said, couldn't have gone out the back door instead of about the is he parking lot? The back door is a golf course. I just can't believe the man's running through it. The number work he gun and a Sunday afternoon with a bunch of golfers and carts, so he didn't and the police there say no,
he bought, he came out the front door. He walked in the front door, all these places, and he walked out. He had to have the woman alone, obviously, so he had to look at the store for a few minutes or scope it out and make sure no customers were there. And he was in and out in a matter of moments.
What did police consider in terms of the reason why there was this big expanse of distance between crimes in this rampage and when you consider moving to Texas.
Yeah, I think if you talk to the police departments again that are fifty to fifty split on whether it is the Ice seventy killer. A couple things come up. One, he took a year off. What was happening in that year in Quantico? Where I talked to the profilers, and again there's a tough case to profile. There's usually rape, there's US Lear ROBERTI, there's US leomotive. You know, they know why Jeff Dahmer was picking up boys, son of Sam, even had his dog talking to him. But they couldn't
get this narrowed down. So when you're talking about distance of the cases here, it's like, do we have any profilers of serial killers that took a year off and started again. No, so as they're building the profile, everything's different. But okay, let's say he did take a year off and start again. What was he doing in that year? Police even looked at Fort Leonard Wood was out as a military complex in that area, to see if if
he could have been deployed for a year. They checked jail records to see was somebody in jail for that one year that got out at that time, and started tracing those They picked up the telephone and called sixty five thousand people and checked every hotel record for anybody who was in these cities on these dates when people were murdered, to see if there was any trace there. One of the people they called to say, hey, where were you? Can you explain yourself? Was Kevin Costner.
Wow.
It just became really, really bizarre. And then the police said, you know what is We're trying to track both of these scenes a year apart, Texas and I seventy if we could find somebody, anybody the face of the earth, who was in more than one of these towns on these exact days. Say you were in Wichita the day of that killing and you were in Dallas the day of that killing. If we could find one person, we might have our killer. They found one. They tracked him
down in Chicago. Boy, they went in there to talk to him.
Wow.
But I'm told they were one hundred percent convinced that was just a coincidence. It was not him. So what happened in that year? Where did this guy stay after the killings? No records of hotels, no records of campgrounds. They think, well, he's a trucker, he's sleeping in his truck. You know what, these parking lots at some of these places, like in Indianapolis or which Chita, little teeny, you can't get a semi truck in these parking lots. Again, nothing
made sense for the police. It became an impossible task for the profilers.
You talk about the second murder or at tempted murder in November one, nineteen ninety three, in Texas. Amy Vess tell us about this harrowing survival story.
So sad Yeah, So sad Amy was shot and left for to dead, and all she could do is crawl. This was in Dallas area. The second killing there after, Mary An Glascock. All she could do was crawl in her blood to a telephone in dial nine to one to one, and police have that record to show you how dedicated, and she died shortly after to show you how dedicated these officers are. Back in Saint Charles, the police officer working the case who's now retired is a
man named Pat Mcerrick. Pat calling ninety one one in his desk drawer. It's not past case, a completely different state across the country and there when he's working the I seventy case all these years, day after day, and he says, sometimes they get new bosses to come in and say, hey, there's new stuff. Lay off this thirty year old case for a while. Pat pulls the tape out of his drawer and says, I got something I want you to hear, and he plays Amy begging for
her life, begging for an ambulance. And Pat's boss has always said the same thing, We're sorry, stay on it, never give up.
That was what happens to Amy when she's she makes a nine one one call.
She makes the call, but the ambulance comes to get her and she passes away. She doesn't survive the killing. The second of two in Texas very similar to Marianne glass Cock. Clearly there's no doubt that the Maryanne Glasscock killer appears to be the Gamy best killer. Now the question is down in Houston, is that killer, whether it's I seventy or somebody else, a copycat? Is that the person that tried to kill Vicky Webb? Tell us about Vicky Webb.
She has a gift shop and she has you spoke to her, so you have a detailed story of her horrible experience.
You know, you work thirty five years in television. You cover a lot of crimes, You need a lot of devastated families. You do a lot of interviews for me, Hundreds, if not thousands. Vicky Webb will never be forgotten by me. You talk about in a incredible woman. Whoever tried to kill her, whether it's the guy's seventy killer, somebody else comes into her store, she's ready to go on vacation. That's a Saturday again, middle of the day, little gift shop off the highway, and he shoots her and leaves
her for dead. But as he's leaving the store, he notices that she's still barely breathing. He comes back and he puts the gun to her head again and pulls the trigger, but the gun jams. Now there's no ight outside and he flees. Vicky Webb is alive, barely. Customers come in, they find her, They get her to the hospital. She goes through months of surgery. It's touching go she lives. She's scared to death. Somebody's tried to kill her, and the kill her attempt to kill her knows she's alive
if they followed her story on the news. She has survived a miracle. Vicky goes into hiding. She's not even talking to the police department, so she doesn't want anybody to know she's alive. She gets divorced, she leaves town. She's moved around the country. She might as well be the unibomber. She's hiding as best she can. She's gone from state to state numerous times, and she's not done anything talking to anybody. And I knew as I was pursuing this, I just thought, even with the police, I'd
ask him what about Vicky Webb? What about Vicky? Where's Vicky? Nobody knew where she was, and I thought, well, I'm going to try to find her. A common name. But I went through every Vicky Web, I can find in the world who was around that age thirty years ago. I knew how old she was now. I went through
divorce records, I went through new marriage records. I knew she sold the house, and I went through real estate records, and I wound up with a list of about six hundred potential women who used to be Web who were now somebody else. And I just started making cold calls. You know, it's what journalists do. And you know how it is. You get a call on your cell phone or your house phone, and if you think it's a salesperson,
you hang up. You don't even answer. And I give credit to Cambill BTV for allowing me the time to go sit in the corner in a room and make a bunch of phone calls every day. And literally weeks went by and I'm just calling fifty people the day, getting nowhere. Hello, my name is Bob Cypher's. Click, I am Bob Cipher's I'm a news reporter. Click, I am Bob Ciphers. I'm a news reporter looking for Vicky Web. Click. And finally one day, I you know, I'm not almost
in a comatose state. I made so many calls and I call, hello, this is Bob Ciphers. I'm a news reporter from Cambill b I'm looking for a woman named Vicky Webb. And there's nothing on the other end. And I say, I'm looking for the woman named Vicky Webb who was shot and left for dead and Houston thirty years ago. And still it's quiet on the other end, and I went I thought maybe they hung up. And I said, ma'am, are you there? And then I hear
I'm here, and I'm thinking, could it be? And I say, ma'am, is this are you the the key web I'm looking for? And again it's quiet, and then she says, I probably am, And it was like wow, I mean literally chills went through me. And that doesn't happen after you covered these things for thirty years. And I found her, but that was only in the first base. I had to get her to talk to me. That took time, and she had to learn to trust me. I told her what
I was doing. I had her look at the at our website of all the stories I'd already done, not just on cold cases, but on the on the on the seventy K I gave her police numbers of all the police officers I've been working with around the country, from the FBI to the Task Force. I asked her to call anybody and check me out. And it took time. You know, we became texting buddies. We text back and forth, Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, how is your vacation?
And then finally, out of the blue, I get a text one day. I look at my phone. It comes in from Vicky and it just says, let's do this. And it was like, here we go, Here we go. If I called the Task Force Raymond Floyd and I said, I've got Vicky Webb, and it was like, what, I've got Vicky web and flew to VICKI and what a remarkable woman. Again, I've met so many people in my life, so many news stories. Just what a remarkable woman. And her position is. She suffered long enough, she's been hiding
long enough. He's had thirty years to come after her. Maybe he's dead. She likes to think he's dead, but if not, the time has come for her to help solved this case. And if he's alive, she wants him arrested and caught, and she wants to stare him down in court. And her killer might be the Ice seventy killer, it might be somebody different. Either way, somebody tried to kill her twice.
Before we get into a little bit more about how Vicky Webb tries to help and is still trying to help, let's get to discussing the case which happened ten years after the I seventy killings and Billy Brossman.
Yeah, I think that's going to be that's going to be the story that decides this. And in my opinion, so ten years more go by after the Texas killings, and now we're into two thousands and right back in Tara Hate, one mile away from where Mick McCown was killed at Sylvia's store a little again, a little, small, little nicked store. A man enters a liquor store. He's alone. Rossman's working behind the camera. Now there's security cameras behind Billy Brosman's head and Nick in the liquor store. We
didn't have those back in the nineties. And the man walks in, a very preppy looking guy. He goes to the back and pulls out a six or twelve pack of beer, brings the beer to the counter to pay for it, and instead of pulling out his wallet, he pulls out a gun. He marches Brossman to the back of the store around the corner, shoots him and kills him, does a celebratory dance, and then flees the store. He
doesn't even come back to pick up his beer. Yeah, he doesn't come to the cash register to take any money. So what's his motive. His motive, just like the I seventy motive, just like the Texas motives, was not robbery, was not rape. It was the thrill of the kill. Was the game. It was. The chase was to catch me if you can. But now please have security video, Dan. Your listeners can google Billy brospin video on YouTube and they can see it a homicide right before their eyes. Wow,
it's amazing, and now please have this. And they put the video on TV. In Tera Hote for weeks, not one person recognized it. But that told the police something, that told them that their killer was not from Tera Hate for nobody to recognize, so they start looking elsewhere, and now they start having some people come forward. They don't know each other, but they all say the same thing. They say to the police. You know, I really can't make out his face. He's a preppy looking guy. But
years ago, we'll get this guys away. Years ago I dealt with this guy was a preppy looking guy. We used to make fun of him because he always had his pant legs rolled up. And on this tape there's this preppy looking guy that's got his pants cuffed up real high. Who does that? They kept hearing that from different people. They kept hearing it from different people. So I see the Brossman tape and immediately I think of one thing. I think of Tim Hickman. I called Tim
and I say, have you ever heard of Billy Brossman? No, what's that? I said, Go google the Billy Brossman tape on YouTube and tell me if you've ever seen this man before in your life. Tim goes to watch the tape. Five minutes later, I get the text from him. Yep, I've seen him again. Chills with the old veteran reorder. So Indianapolis Police, I'm sorry, Tarah Hope. Police. They go forward.
It's circumstantial evidence right now, but they're going forward. They're trying to get a they're trying to go after this guy. They have a lead on the name. They go to get a DNA swab from him. He doesn't want to give it. Time goes by, They get a cord order for the DNA, a warrant. Now the man's got no choice. He's got to give the DNA or he's going to jail. He gives the DNA swab. They've got that now in their system. They have this suspect's DNA. They go to
the prosecuting attorney. We want to go over chargers on this guy for killing Billy Brossman. Now right now, they've not connected anything to seventy. It's a terra haute case. But the prosecuting attorney, looking at the the full scope of evidence, decides it's not enough to go forward. And that happens sometimes, and prosecuting attorney's jobs are not to take cases that are ten percent chance of being found guilty. They have to run for reelection. They don't want to
lose a high profile case. And in the attorney at this point decided we don't have enough here, and it's sat. It did not go forward, But it's sitting out there now. Tim Hickman sitting out there now, and I think if this case does get solved, eventually, the preppy looking guy that came in Tim's store, that in his window, and the preppy looking guy that came with his pants cuffed up in tear a hot ten years later is the guy that the police departments are eventually going to track down, is my hope.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, let's get back to this incredible Vicky Webb, because what's interesting is you have the Brossman video, which you think is uh, it's quite good in its quality showing this this person pretty clearly. But also what you had mentioned is that there's audio. Now tell us about Vicky Webb about her ability to to recognize her perpetrator by what she says about recognizing his voice.
Yeah, so this is very important. So when I met with Vicky, I played her the bros beIN video. She had not seen it, and I knew that was going to be an emotional moment. If she thought the bras beIN killer was her shooter, that was going to be a very difficult moment for her and I we walked. We talked about it ahead of time. VICKI do you want to see this or not? She decided she did, so I played her the Brosbin video and she watched it.
She stood up and stared at it intently as she was wh and she sat back down and we looked at each other. She shook her head and she said, Bob, that guy is not my guy. And I said, are you sure? And she said she was. She goes, if I heard audio, I can make a difference. I'll remember his voice more than his looks. But that guy does not look like my guy, this preppy looking guy. Vicky described her guy as a weathered jockey look about as
opposite as a preppy looking guy as she can possibly find. Also, in Vicky's case, the man spent time in her store, you know, maybe fifteen minutes in her store, or in the other cases, we believe he was in and out. So, putting those two things together, I don't believe that Vicky's killer or Vicki's attempting killer was the bros Being killer. And if the bros Been killer is the guy's seventy killer, that means he's not Vicky's shooter. But again, a lot
of time has passed, a lot of memories go. Vicky says she could recognize the voice. So I said that I was told the voice, you don't see a whole lot or the audio on that tape. But the FBI told me they could. They had the audio, they could crank up the audio. So I said to Vicky, I said, you get in touch with your local the eye. You got a name, you got a number. She did. I said, see if they'll play you that audio. She still does not think that's her guy. But but the Brasman thing
has more than just the video and the audio. He's wearing a wedding ring. Now again, it's ten years after the killings, a year in between with Texas. Now we got a wedding ring to talk about. There's a woman involved here somewhere. It's given police another lead, a lot, a lot of stuff dan to sit to get through. For these police departments come from a lot of different directions.
A puzzle that's going to be hard to confirm. But even if you say to yourself, Tim Hickman is the best guy to identify, and he is, imagine what a defense attorney does to Tim Hickman and a witness stand. Oh, so you think that your memory from thirty years ago can put my guy behind bars? Can you tell us what you had for dinner three nights ago. Very very difficult. So for police, this is either going to be one of two things to solve the case. Number one a
DNA match. So the suspect from Brossman, they have his DNA in the system, they've not got to hit yet. The only second way is going to be a confession. And as the FBI profiles will tell profilers will tell you, there's no history of this, so it's clearly a DNA case now and it's in the hands of wherever those advancements might take us.
You chronicle all the advances in DNA that were used, and we're hopeful by police to have a breakthrough in this case. You talked about vacuum technique and what you said originally that it was only semen and saliva available, but now they had touched DNA, so there was some evidence that was the police were anxious to test at the International DNA.
Lab that you cite.
Tell us about what was tested and what was hopeful and what were the results.
Well, right now, there are no DNA matches for anything with our suspect in this case or anything else. But now again, as DNA keeps advancing year after year after year, demon and saliva go to handler or touch DNA. Well, now handler or touch DNA have gone to shellcasing DNA. Shell casings are probably the best chance now right today for DNA in this case because they've still got those
shell casings they kept after all these years. But even now beyond shellcasings, if you look at some of these cases that are being solved around the country that are thirty and forty years old by DNA, now we have
what's being referred to as family or geological DNA. You look at our murder suspect in Idaho where the kids were killed on the college campuses there they were taking DNA from his parents, or the case of the Gabby girl whose body was found in the mountains and the suspect killed themselves in the Everglades, they were taking DNA from his parents. So as we evolve here, it may not be a direct hit. For yes, we have the
suspects DNA and the system. Who knows where we're going to be at in five or ten years from DNA, and that's what the police departments are hoping for. You know, I mentioned in which tadd had got the wedding veil where the man looking for the looking for the tie, came into the cumber bunt before the wedding and saw that the gud was inside the wedding veil and the police officer there, the detective Tim Ralph, has saved the wedding veil all these years. And you know Tim caught
Tim Chase down the BTK killer. This was in his own town. He spent his whole life chasing it and cracked it. So these police detectives man to think like it's something that's foregone and done. Brad Ramsey, we just got finished checking a case from nineteen sixty. It's in the book named Joe Anne Fox. The case is sixty years old. He comes across a DNA match of a man in Florida for a homicide. He goes down there. The guy's eighty years old. The feeling occurred when the
man was twenty. I think it's a good message for the for the police to have out there that you're never safe if you think you're going to get away with stuff, We're coming after you. To the end of time.
You recognize all the dedicated detectives that have been involved in this case and are retired, but you chronicle and put their statements in as to their dedication still once they retired. Some of these officers fifty years in law enforcement.
Yeah. Absolutely. I spoke with Mike Crook just this past week. He's in a head to go in to the hospital for some treatments for his neck, and I guess Mike is probably pushing eighty years old and he's he's asking me, is there anything new in this case? I said, well, Mike, you'd know about it before I would. You know, that's
what he wants to talk about. And when I was doing the media tour and going to tear A Hote, Brad Ramsey the police officer there, I said, Hey, I'm gonna be in Tea Hote doing some TV and newspaper Brad hope if we can do lunch or something. And Brad writes back and says, I'm in Florida on a golf vacation. When are you gonna be there? I said just one day. He said, I'll meet you for dinner. I said, what, He goes, I'm flying home. We're gonna
we're gonna have dinner. I'll the golf can wait. I seventy comes first I mean, these guys are just incredible. I mean, I I just wish that somebody thought I did something with my career like ideal about these people with theirs, I mean, I am in awe of each and every one of them. There's a man in Saint Charles's name, Don Stepp, who handled the case for many years, retired marine, and it's just now retired from the police department. And he says, you know, it's the one case I
couldn't solve. I wanted to tell Nancy his parents I'd solved it and it's haunting me. And I said, what are you going to do in retirement? He said, I'm gonna go fishing. I'm gonna sit at the pier, put a line in the water and think about this case. And realized they have thousands of cases. Chris Shroud as a young detective in Raytown. He didn't he's been handed the case of Sarah Blessing. And I talked to Tim and he says, Bob, we've had cutbacks in our police department.
We're really short handing handed. Crime keeps coming in every day. We can't keep up with tomorrow, with yesterday's news, much less today's and then I look in the corner and I see this stack of files from the I seventy case that go to the ceiling. I would love to delve into him. When can I do that? I am just my respect is off the charts. And that's one of the reasons I wrote the book. I didn't write the book for me. I wrote the book for these guys. If I can help them, Man, what a thrill that
would be. And Dan, I've told all the media places I've gone, I'd say the same thing to you and your audience. Just imagine what a thrill it would be for you if somebody listening to your podcast was the person who picked the phone up and made the phone call and said, Hey, I saw that Billy Brosman video. I know that guy. Hey, I knew a guy that had the ERMA Workie gun. You know, thirty years ago. If one of your listeners Persson that made that call that made the crack in this case, Man, how would
you feel? How would I feel? How would these cops feel? That's what I'm playing for for that in.
Game, you right at the very end of an FBI profiler that became part of your team, integral part of that team Larry an Crum. He said, quote in this book, make no mistake, this guy likes to read and watch all of the TV news stories anything about himself and them. He wants to he wants to know about himself. He wants to learn all he can about the case. And he said, if he's still alive, he's reading this book.
And he's listening to this podcast.
Very interesting. I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about your incredible new book, dead End, Inside the Hunt for the Interstate seventy serial Killer. For people that might want to check out more about this case, can you tell us if you have a website and do any social media?
Dan, I'm the sixty five year old guy. I'm afraid social media came along way too late for me. But you can get it wherever you buy books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Books, a million, Walmart, Target. You know, it's funny. And when I wanted the television show, isn't there asking me where to buy the books? And I'm reading off these places and I somehow, I say, stupidly, toys.
Are us toys?
Well, just so we're clear, you cannot buy the book of you cannot buy it there because one, Toys r Us does not exist anymore. And two, even when Toys r Us did exist, I don't think they stock their shelves with books about serial killers. So Genius Publishing is the book. Again. Amazon is probably when most people buy their books. And I didn't write this book for me to make a penny. If you paid you by the hour that I put in, I'd be a poor man on this book. I just so much want to help.
I'm so dedicated to these officers, and I thank you for everything you're doing to help. And boy, my fingers are crossed because guess what, they have a suspect. They're just waiting, and I believe today is coming when it's going to be national news.
As you write in the end, may the police someday get lucky. Thank you so much, Bob Ciphers for coming on and talking about dead end, inside the hunt or the Interstate seventy serial killer. You have a great evening.
Thank you, Dan. Good night,