0:08

School of Humans.

0:12

We can also drive black car range if

0:15

this one, it'll make it, make

0:18

it. This is my grandma's car.

0:30

Every time I drive up the steep and

0:32

curvy Arkansas Road into the Ozark

0:34

Mountains, I have two simultaneous

0:36

thoughts. See look, look at these houses.

0:39

You know, the woods are beautiful and

0:42

they're also terrifying. Things are kind of falling

0:44

apart. And also there's a lot of

0:46

space between a lot of these

0:48

vacant houses. I've been coming up here with my family

0:50

since I was a kid, and I have a lot of

0:52

happy memories here. But let's

0:55

face it, there's a reason

0:57

why so many horror movies are setting cabins

0:59

in the woods. Sometimes

1:01

bad things happen when no

1:03

one is around to hear you scream. We have no cell

1:06

phone reception. Yeah, that's

1:08

all. It was on this desolate

1:10

stretch of Highway nine in the Ozarks

1:13

between Mountain View and Melbourne that

1:15

on September twenty seventh, two thousand and

1:17

four, searchers found the body of

1:19

twenty two year old Rebecca Gould. Rebecca

1:23

was beautiful, popular, and full

1:25

of life, and her killing shooken

1:27

area where the murder rate was pretty much zero

1:31

It's been fourteen years and

1:33

Rebecca's killer has never been

1:35

found. The

1:41

murder has become one of the most notorious

1:43

cold cases in the region. But for

1:46

me, this case is personal.

1:49

I have a long history with this area.

1:52

My dad and my little sister, Caroline still

1:54

live in Mountain View. She went to

1:56

high school with Rebecca's younger sister, Danielle,

1:58

and they are still close friends. Even

2:02

after I became a writer and private investigator

2:04

and moved to New York City, Rebecca's

2:06

murder continued to haunt me. Every

2:09

time I went home to visit my family, I would

2:11

hear more rumors about the case. Occasionally,

2:14

a news station would do an update on the case, illustrated

2:18

with Rebecca blonde, dazzling

2:21

smile with her white fluffy dog in

2:23

her lap. But over the years

2:25

the leads were fewer and farther between. I

2:28

couldn't figure it out. If

2:30

everyone in town thought they knew who killed

2:32

Rebecca, why hadn't

2:34

her case been solved. A

2:39

few months ago, I came back to the Ozarks.

2:42

I wanted to catch Rebecca's killer. I

2:44

was supposed to stay for two weeks, but

2:47

I never left, and at some point

2:49

my investigation crossed over into

2:51

an obsession. I'm not

2:53

stopping until I get justice for

2:56

Rebecca.

2:58

I'm Catherine Townsend and this

3:01

is Helen Gone.

3:35

The last time Rebecca was seen alive was

3:37

a week before her body was found on September

3:40

twentieth, two thousand and four. It

3:42

was a Monday morning, just after eight am.

3:45

Rebecca had been staying at her boyfriend Casey's

3:47

house for the weekend. Rebecca

3:49

gave Casey a ride to work in her black

3:51

nineteen ninety seven Chevy Cavalier. Casey

3:55

was a cook at the Sonic in Melbourne. Rebecca

3:57

had met him about a year earlier when she worked there as

3:59

a car hop. But

4:02

Rebecca's days of delivering burgers on roller skates

4:04

were over. She had recently moved into

4:06

an apartment in Fayetteville with her sister Danielle,

4:09

and was starting college at Northwest Arkansas. After

4:12

dropping Casey off, she stopped at the Possum

4:14

Trot gas station in Melbourne, where she bought

4:16

a breakfast, sandwich and coffee. Rebecca's

4:19

plan had been to drive back to Casey's, pack

4:21

her stuff and meet Danielle to drive back to

4:23

school. When she didn't show up

4:25

that afternoon, Danielle and the rest of her family

4:27

became alarmed. The

4:31

next day, police showed up at Casey's

4:33

house. They found Rebecca's

4:35

car parked outside. Inside,

4:38

they found her cell phone, purse, all

4:40

of her clothes, and her dog Lady. There

4:44

was no sign of Rebecca, but there were

4:47

ominous signs that something very bad

4:49

had happened. There a blood

4:51

soaked mattress that had been flipped over, her

4:54

uneaten breakfast sandwich, a

4:56

washing machine full of blood.

5:01

Over the years, I've heard a lot of rumors. I

5:03

heard there was a party over the weekend, a fight

5:06

with a girl, a jealous lover. Someone

5:08

even told me that Rebecca was kidnapped, chained

5:11

up, and held hostage in a horse trailer.

5:14

So our first job will be separating

5:16

fact from fiction. Taylor

5:19

and James, who are both working on the podcast,

5:22

have come to Arkansas to help me. They

5:24

started out working on sound and logistics,

5:27

but quickly got sucked down the internet rabbit

5:29

hole of topics, boards and web slues.

5:32

I know this look. They've been sucked into

5:34

the case too. Let's

5:37

start with what we know based on newspaper

5:39

reports and the murder board. Are brought with me

5:41

from Manhattan, police

5:43

released almost no details on this case,

5:46

and what's out there publicly is hard to find

5:49

a lot of it's not available online. So we

5:51

head to the library to look up old editions

5:53

of the newspaper on microfiche backpacks

5:56

of persons? Do you need to be out here in lockers though? Okay?

5:59

And there are four

6:09

I don't know a lot of factable ones are online.

6:11

You're just going to go ahead somewhere.

6:23

What days that can you guys? Do? The

6:25

day in September sixteenth? Or

6:28

was it started with a one? Right? Yeah? So

6:33

she went missing the next day, which would be

6:36

there, so this may have

6:38

been the first day that she was reported missing. Was

6:40

on Tuesday? Yeah,

6:44

although again we need to we got kind

6:47

of confirm that because everyone tells me different day. Some

6:49

people say Monday, some people say Tuesday. I'm

6:52

sure the police would at least confirm that. Maybe,

6:54

Oh there's search for one woman can das?

6:56

Yeah? What day is that? Friday? That

6:59

is Friday twenty fourth and

7:03

you can see a picture of the missing poster. Yeah,

7:06

Rebecca Gould, blonde hair,

7:09

brown eyes, one hundred and three

7:11

pounds, So Friday the twenty

7:13

fourth, it made the Baxter Bolton According

7:17

to authorities, she had visited a friend of Guy on last

7:19

weekend and failed to return to Fatball in her

7:21

car with her purse, keys and money, and it was found

7:23

at the friend's house. The friend is not considered a suspect

7:26

of the disappearance, according to Arkansas State Police

7:28

Lieutenant Bill Beach. Yeah,

7:33

see, in the beginning, it was confusing because there

7:35

was a report that she had been

7:37

seen that afternoon it looks like, but

7:40

that was later found to be not true.

7:42

So it just kind of goes to show like when stories

7:44

come out after the fact, there's often a lot

7:46

of facts wrong. Official

7:55

suspectfile play there. It is what

7:58

day is that is that the weekend? Yeah,

8:00

Saturday and Sundays at

8:02

this for quite time, there are several people of interest,

8:05

no particular suspect, So

8:07

it says here I

8:10

searched the area Monday morning and found the body thirty

8:12

five feet down the embankment of the highway.

8:14

I think that the George Derrick guy knows

8:17

because he was one of the first people's see the body. Since

8:19

we have no forensics and so few

8:22

details have been revealed about this case, we

8:24

have to focus on victimology.

8:27

We have to enter the mind of the crime victim

8:29

so that we can understand the relationship with

8:31

her killer or killers. To

8:34

understand her death, we have to go back to

8:36

the last weekend of her life. So we

8:38

had to talk to the person who knew her best,

8:40

her sister, Danielle starting route

8:43

to Mountain Home. So it was your

8:46

sister that got you interested in this or

8:48

put this case on your radar

8:50

in the first place. Yeah, I mean I'd read about

8:52

it, but Carolyn, because

8:55

Carolyen was friends with Danielle, I would hear about

8:57

it more. You know, like over the years, I

8:59

would just kind of hear what was going

9:01

on, and then it was unsolved, and then when I

9:03

met Danielle, it just got really personal. Rebecca

9:07

was only a year older than Danielle.

9:09

They were best friends. When Danielle

9:12

talks about the day her sister was murdered, it's

9:14

obvious she's not just relaying information

9:16

about that horrific day. She's

9:19

reliving it. It's sensitive subject

9:21

matter. She has to talk about her sister maybe being sexually

9:23

assaulted and everything like that. This

9:26

is as close as we're going to get to being inside Rebecca's

9:28

head. In that final forty

9:31

eight hours on the friday before

9:33

Rebecca disappeared, she and Danielle drove

9:35

from Fayetteville, where they had recently moved into

9:37

an apartment together, back to Mountain View.

9:40

Like a lot of us at that age, Rebecca's

9:42

life was in transition. Danielle

9:45

is visibly emotional as she remembers

9:47

the last conversation that she ever had

9:50

with her sister. She remembers

9:52

that Rebecca was looking forward to starting college,

9:54

into the future, she had her whole

9:56

life ahead of her. When

9:59

they got to town, the sister split up.

10:02

Danielle stayed with her boyfriend Nick, while

10:04

Rebecca headed out to spend the weekend with Casey.

10:07

After Rebecca's murder, Danielle went on

10:09

to Mary Nick. They had two daughters,

10:12

but have since separated. She's been

10:14

through some tough times and had health issues

10:16

that have affected her memory. Despite

10:19

how physically and mentally hard this is for her,

10:22

she's determined to help find her sister's killer.

10:28

Can you just sort of take me through what happened from the

10:30

time that you guys got in the car to when you

10:32

dropped her off and the last time you talked to her.

10:36

We got in the car and

10:38

we started to

10:41

drive back home.

10:43

We had a flat tire, like

10:46

twenty miles thirty miles away. She

10:49

changed it. She could change

10:51

his higher. Yeah, it surprised

10:53

me. I

10:56

can't remember if if I drove.

10:59

I probably drove to Nick's house and

11:01

she, Yeah, she probably

11:03

dropped me off there, and she left

11:07

to go to Casey's and

11:09

we were going to meet back up Monday and go

11:11

back to Fayebelle. Danielle

11:14

remembers waiting for Rebecca, the

11:16

sinking feeling in her stomach when her sister

11:18

never showed up. Yeah,

11:21

we were supposed to meet early that morning,

11:23

and I knew, I think I just

11:26

knew something was wrong, and

11:29

we'd gotten phone calls, you

11:32

know, she couldn't be found driving

11:34

out there, Like I mean, I was just

11:37

sick already just driving

11:39

out there. She remembers

11:41

driving up to Casey's house and seeing the

11:43

flurry of police activity there. That

11:46

was the moment when she figured out that her sister's

11:48

crash pad was a crime scene. Did you talk

11:50

to her that weekend at all? I

11:53

don't think it did. But

11:55

that was not unusual, right like for her to

11:57

rise just

12:05

had to start looking Over

12:07

the next week, police launched a massive

12:10

man hunt for Rebecca. Friends

12:12

and family papered the town with wanted posters.

12:14

Hundreds of volunteers scoured the woods.

12:17

It seemed like the whole town was looking for Rebecca.

12:20

Some of them screamed her name so that if she

12:23

was hurt and bleeding in a sinkhole

12:25

or a barn, she would hear them,

12:27

And on September twenty seventh, the

12:30

search ended. She

12:34

didn't deserve what happened to her.

12:39

If there was any other way to like help

12:41

get this out there without having to ask you and prey through

12:43

it, you know what, Like, Yeah, I know she

12:46

was a good person. I mean she loved,

12:52

you know, and cared for a lot of people.

12:54

And sorry,

13:01

it's okay, it's fate, brain. I'm sorry,

13:03

it's okay. I guess I

13:05

know that you guys were best friends and

13:08

really close, and I'm

13:10

trying to understand what was going on in her life

13:13

before she died. We

13:18

had just moved to Fayetteville. We were

13:20

living with Tiffany and my other sister,

13:23

and we were in college.

13:26

She was trying to make her lot better as

13:29

far as getting into

13:31

college, moving on

13:33

to Fayetteville, and becoming

13:36

somebody. Which relationship

13:38

been like with the Isra County Police.

13:42

I don't contact them.

13:44

I mean, I don't contact anybody

13:48

other than you. I mean, I want it solved,

13:50

but there's just no point. I mean, what would

13:52

you like to see happen? Someone

13:55

actually care and

14:01

help us solve

14:03

it and get the correct people that

14:07

took her life.

14:13

Is it okay with you? I mean, would you be okay

14:15

with us calling your dad? Yeah?

14:18

That's fun, Like, that's perfectly

14:21

fun. Okay, And you can

14:24

do anything you want to help, you

14:27

know, get

14:30

it solved, because

14:32

it's not fair to no one

14:35

to lose someone and then just to you

14:39

know, not have any you know, closure.

14:48

I was challenging to

14:51

listen to.

14:53

She holds it together incredibly well. You

14:56

can feel it's just the pain

14:58

in her eyes. M

15:13

Rebecca's body was found down as steep Embankment

15:15

off Highway nine, five miles south

15:17

of Melbourne, near Devil's Knob Wildlife

15:19

Management Area. Even though the

15:21

body was near the road and just a few

15:23

miles from the Izard County Sheriff's Department,

15:26

her body was hidden by a thick wall of trees.

15:29

It's a day that local journalist George Jared,

15:32

who covered the case extensively, will

15:34

never forget he saw

15:36

Rebecca still wearing the

15:38

black griefs and T shirt she wore

15:41

to bed. George was a twenty

15:43

four year old CUB reporter when Rebecca was killed,

15:45

and hers was the first murder case he ever

15:47

covered. It's

15:50

really strange to say this, but

15:53

I never knew her. But there's no she

15:55

had as a profound impact

15:58

on my career as

16:00

anything. What happened

16:02

was actually the newspaper work. It was a weekly newspaper.

16:05

I would call all the police agencies

16:08

in my coverage area. One of them was the

16:10

Izzard County Sheriff's Department, so

16:12

I called them. It was probably a Monday

16:14

or Tuesday. She disappeared that

16:16

Monday, September twentieth, two thousand and four,

16:19

and so I called them. And I

16:23

know I called him on Monday. I probably called them

16:25

on Tuesday. But you know, when you're dealing with

16:27

small agencies like that, they don't have murders,

16:29

I mean not very rarely. So

16:32

i'd call them. They didn't say anything, you know, it

16:34

was, you know, well, nothing going on here.

16:36

George is right. I've covered a

16:38

lot of true crime cases, and I know

16:40

that police often hold back information that

16:42

only the killer would know from the public, but

16:44

in this case, they won't even verify basic

16:46

information. Sometime Tuesday,

16:50

they went to Casey McCullough's house.

16:53

The story is, you know, she went and dropped him off

16:55

at work, and then she went to the Possum

16:58

Trot convenience store, got a couple of things,

17:00

and then left went back to his house, and then somewhere

17:03

sometime during that morning she died. And

17:05

so during this process I actually met

17:07

Danielle and surely her

17:10

mother and Larry. They

17:12

were down at the sheriff's apartment when I went down

17:14

there, and I started talking to them.

17:17

Literally the next day, the Thursday, they were

17:19

out around guy In near where

17:21

Casey McCullough's house is, and they were

17:23

looking, you know, searching, And I literally

17:26

watched Larry taking

17:28

posters of his daughter and

17:30

taping them to you know what Those guide

17:33

wires are arrows, I mean that go around

17:35

like a curve. And he was he I

17:37

mean, obviously you can't do that.

17:39

Number one and number two, nobody driving in

17:41

eaty speed. We'd even be able to see or make out what it

17:43

was. But when I saw him doing that, it just

17:45

crushed me. And so

17:48

so I was out there searching with them, you

17:51

know, looking. The

17:53

next Monday, I got to work

17:55

really really early, like five o'clock in the morning.

17:57

I just went in. I just had

17:59

this feeling I need to go back to Melbourne,

18:02

and so I drove down there,

18:04

went to the courthouse. Now in the morning, a

18:07

lot of you know, these elderly

18:09

women would walk around the courthouse and they were

18:11

talking. There were several of them down there, and

18:13

so I parked my vehicle

18:16

and I got out and I walked up to

18:18

him. A couple leads I heard. I overheard

18:20

a couple of ladies talking that there were searchers

18:22

behind or out near this woman's property

18:25

somewhere. So I

18:27

said, could you tell me where you live? And she told

18:30

me, and it was out It was down Arkansas

18:32

nine, you know, connecting Mountain

18:34

View with Melbourne, and

18:37

so she said, oh, yeah, they're out there,

18:39

and she had said something about a smell. I

18:42

went out there, and you

18:46

know, I saw a bunch of cars like lined up on the side of the

18:48

road, and so I knew something was there. Well,

18:50

I ran into a searcher that I

18:52

had. He I'd met him through the searching,

18:54

you know, I'd seen him, and I said Hey, I

18:58

heard you guys are out here looking for Rebaca out here, and

19:00

he was pointing, goes, she's right there, and

19:03

i'sare I

19:06

mean, she was right off the road. She

19:08

looked like she was asleep. You

19:12

know. One side of her face was you know, seemed

19:15

okay, and then the other side was, you know, very

19:18

badly damaged and decomposing. Was

19:22

she whining down or sitting up or

19:25

she was slumped. It was like it was

19:27

like she was in some I

19:29

want to say, like some There was like tree limbs.

19:32

It was really grassy. It almost

19:34

looked like maybe she had been where she had

19:36

been tossed, like maybe she had landed

19:38

on a branch or something. I mean, but

19:40

when you see something like that for the first time

19:42

ever in your life,

19:45

you're almost like you're

19:47

not there. At

19:50

that moment, I was like just trying to get away, Like

19:52

I literally started walking back away from it.

19:54

And I had a camera with me, and I remember

19:56

somebody asked me, They said, you're gonna take a picture of that, are

19:58

you? And I said no, I said, I'm gonna try to

20:01

forget about this. Probably spend the rest of my

20:03

life trying to forget about this. We'll

20:06

be right back a

20:24

little just where she walked out. Okay,

20:26

thank you. Rebecca's father,

20:29

Larry Gold, is a prominent dentist

20:31

in nearby Mountain Home. We

20:33

meet with Larry in the back room of his dental

20:35

office, a converted house right

20:37

in the middle of towns.

20:44

Taylor was so into the gate she drove from Atlanta.

20:46

How long have you been here? So I've

20:48

been here almost week

20:50

on Saturday. As we

20:52

talked to him, his dental hygienis work around us.

20:55

He has the same tan skin and dazzling

20:58

smile as his daughter's.

21:02

Larry went to usc before marrying Rebecca's

21:05

mom, Sharlot and moving here, and his

21:07

accent is still more Southern California

21:09

than northern Arkansas. People

21:11

in this neck of the woods fall into one of two

21:14

categories. You're either from around

21:16

here or you're from off So

21:19

even though Larry has lived in the area for over four

21:21

decades, run a business, and raise

21:23

a family, to many locals, he still

21:25

falls into the latter category. Rebecca

21:31

had a hard life. I attempted to get custody

21:34

of Rebecca and her sisters

21:37

and was pretty much raised by her mother

21:39

in different areas of Arkansas.

21:43

They eventually settled in the Mountain View

21:45

area, and then as Rebecca

21:49

grew a little bit older, I

21:54

would have to say that my

21:56

opinion of Rebecca began to

22:00

really develop further. I

22:02

had a little bit more time around her. I

22:05

saw that she was beginning to turn

22:07

her life around. But there was a lot

22:09

of outside influences that were really pulling

22:12

Rebecca in the right direction. And

22:16

nothing could have made me happier

22:19

than to see that. So I

22:23

come back to the one memory in particular

22:25

that it

22:28

makes me cry. Excuse

22:34

me. The last time that I

22:36

saw her and

22:39

I talked to her was probably

22:43

every father's dream.

22:46

She came to my home and

22:49

she said, Dad, I want to talk to you, and

22:52

so we went out on our back porch

22:54

and we had some privacy, and

22:58

she proceeded to tell me

23:00

that she was wanting

23:03

to fulfill some

23:06

dreams of hers in college,

23:08

and so she was heading heading towards

23:10

getting into the University of Arkansas. M

23:16

m hm. So

23:19

she was at that point in my

23:21

life in our relationship, I'm

23:24

doing absolutely everything right. She

23:28

had dreams, she had hopes, she had ambition.

23:31

But the one thing is she said to me that

23:33

will m

23:36

h

23:38

m hm. Always

23:41

be remembered. I

23:46

don't know if I can get this advocate this out.

23:49

No, I mean, I'll take it. But hm,

23:53

as I said, it was really every father's

23:55

dream here hear from your child.

23:58

But she said said to me that,

24:03

Dad, I've watched you in law life and

24:06

you've always done well, and

24:09

I want to I

24:15

would it be like you so

24:22

m so

24:25

those that's my last memory of

24:27

our time together. Mm

24:31

hmm. So with that said, obviously

24:34

I knew I knew nothing about what was going

24:36

to happen next. And for some reason, I'm

24:38

thinking it was only a few weeks before this

24:40

happened. After that, it could have been a month, could

24:42

have been a couple of months. But

24:46

when it happened, that

24:50

that disbelief. I

24:55

don't know. You're you're you're in You're

24:57

in a state of shock, and you've

25:00

never been through something like this before, and

25:03

you don't know the next step. So you obviously

25:05

beg and to turn to law enforcement and people

25:08

you trust to answer

25:11

your questions and to kind

25:13

of help point you in

25:15

the right direction. In

25:17

the years since Rebecca's murder, Larry

25:19

has done his own investigation. He's written

25:22

countless letters to the police and to the

25:24

prosecutors. He's hired pi's

25:26

and gone to the press. At some point,

25:29

he even talked to a clairvoyant. At

25:32

first, he was cooperative, patient,

25:35

He was a law abiding citizen who raised

25:37

his kids to respect God, the American

25:39

flag, and the police. But

25:42

after several years passed with no arrests,

25:45

Larry grew frustrated. He felt

25:47

like the police were stonewalling, and so

25:49

he went to the media and he hasn't

25:51

spoken to the Arkansas State Police since.

25:55

The investigators in charge of the case believe

25:57

that by going to the press, Larry hurt

25:59

the investigation. If you ever

26:02

murdered, it's unsolved. The

26:04

longer you go, the harder it is to

26:07

to come up with with the

26:09

facts and to get any kind of a conviction.

26:12

So there needs to be some parameters

26:15

built into the law enforcement

26:17

to where any at a certain given point.

26:20

And I'll just use as a reference five years,

26:22

say five years, you give law enforcement everything

26:24

they can possibly do. At the end of five years,

26:27

the family, as long as they're not considered

26:30

to be a

26:32

possible suspect, they

26:34

should have the right to come in and

26:37

maybe at that point not look at the file, but

26:39

they certainly have a right to look at certain things

26:41

and then to bring in qualified people

26:44

representing them at some point

26:46

in time. You need have you need to be able

26:48

to access the entire file. It

26:50

is a cold case. They want to

26:52

let me have her any

26:55

of her forensics. They wouldn't let me have any

26:57

of her of the medical

27:01

uh, the the anatomical findings cause

27:04

well cause death. It was on a death certificate.

27:07

But you know sometimes that gets

27:09

put on a death certificate and that's

27:11

an error, and you just

27:14

want other people to be able to look at this. According

27:26

to Rebecca's autopsy report, the

27:28

cause of death was blunt force trauma

27:30

to the head, probably with

27:32

just one or two blows. Nobody's

27:35

been able to confirm this for me yet, but

27:37

I've heard over the years that the murder

27:39

weapon may have been a piano leg Was

27:42

this, as some people have speculated, a

27:45

pre planned crime, or

27:47

did her killer hit her as hard as they could

27:49

and then panic when she started bleeding. By

27:53

the time Rebecca's body was found, it

27:55

had been out in the elements for a week.

27:58

Her body was badly decomposed, which

28:01

makes determining an exact time of death

28:03

difficult, and the media

28:05

report state that Rebecca dropped Casey off

28:07

at work on Monday morning. There's

28:09

another rumor going around that she was actually

28:12

killed over the weekend. Rebecca's

28:14

car had dark tinted windows. Is

28:16

it possible that someone else was driving her

28:18

car that morning? To

28:22

understand Rebecca's death, we need

28:24

to take the same ride she took on the last

28:27

day she was alive. We

28:30

head to the Possum Trot, the local gas station.

28:33

Back in the day, Rebecca was a regular. These

28:36

days, it's pretty deserted. It

28:38

is super hot out there. Yeah,

28:42

it feels like asana.

28:46

I headed behind the counter.

28:48

There's a black and white TV playing an old

28:50

western and watching it and

28:53

me is an old man, the cashier,

28:56

so he knows who I am and talks to me about

28:58

the case. Oh, that's a when you were in here?

29:00

Last time I was in here, I can't remember.

29:02

I've been working on this Rebecca Gold cold case,

29:05

so I've come by a few times before.

29:11

How are you dealing with that? You know, we've

29:13

actually made a lot of progress. We got a

29:15

bunch of kIPS and I'm

29:17

going pretty well. H

29:20

thank you. Yeah,

29:25

I know wish I better conditioning. I

29:28

know, I wish my car had air conditioning

29:44

m.

29:55

Hello. Hi, my name

29:57

is James Morrison, and I'm trying to get

29:59

in touch with Steve Wortham

30:04

Taylor and James on their reporter hats

30:06

and try to find the last person to see Rebecca

30:09

alive. Yeah, I

30:11

want to convenue stories and stopped. Got the breakfast

30:15

biscuit in that morning. Jessica,

30:18

work on this one and team Conservative. I

30:21

see, And is that a relation? Is

30:23

that your daughter no

30:26

belief? Were you involved in the search

30:28

or anything? And why I talked

30:30

to her mother a lot of times, her mother come back several

30:33

times long thoughfully knew where she might be

30:35

or something, But yeah,

30:38

I didn't. Well,

30:41

they got to know who did it because it's

30:45

been a too much hush. Yeah,

30:48

you're talking about the police have to know who did it. Yeah,

30:51

it was a bad deal I made, Yeah,

30:55

because I need told me it was a bad deal inside

30:57

the trailer chasing and you

30:59

know bleating, you know everywhere

31:02

ill people. If you did meet gomagain or go mad,

31:05

I'll meet you when you come out. Let's

31:09

see if we can find his niece. Hi,

31:19

my name is James Morrison and trying to get in touch

31:21

with Jessica Shrabel Ah

31:26

she here, she ad another

31:30

location. I don't know how

31:32

you would her phone

31:34

number. Yeah, I'm Sorr. I was just talking with

31:36

her uncle Steve.

31:39

Yeah, and he'd given me this number. He must have given

31:41

me the wrong one. Yeah,

31:46

I don't know. I don't know how you get a hold

31:48

of Roald on her phone memory? All

31:50

right, Well, thank you. I

31:53

found her by looking at Shrabel as a

31:55

friend of Casey's, and then her

31:57

sister. Oh, I

32:00

clicked on her in the mountain and Jessica

32:03

strable, but also oh

32:06

and then also where she worked. I can give them a call.

32:16

I hate to bother you at work. This is

32:18

the only number that I had. I had just spoken to your

32:20

uncle Steve, and

32:23

he told me that I should talk to you, and I was wondering,

32:26

you know, if there may be a better time to call you, if

32:28

you would be interested in talking with me. Yeah,

32:31

that's fine. This is

32:33

Jessica s Trabel. She was working

32:35

as a cashier at the Possum Trot on the morning

32:37

that Rebecca went missing. Really

32:40

the last person to see her

32:42

alive. I hardly ever

32:44

worked on Monday and Men day. I was working on Monday. You don't

32:46

remember something till you know something significant.

32:48

Happens, and then you're like, oh yeah, yeah,

32:51

yeah. So Harry

32:53

and Casey came in several several

32:55

times, you know, and I remember kevichin, I'll be in a big day,

32:57

and so that's what she positive. That's

32:59

what she called that day. Do you remember if

33:01

she bought a bread of the sandwich? Yeah? Yeah, that

33:04

was like the kep chine on the breakfast sandwich, is what you know?

33:06

Can you just talks about morn? Sure?

33:10

Okay. So I was at work and paused

33:13

and tried at the quick stop and she actually

33:15

came in. I cannot remember what time it was, and I'm gonna

33:17

say, like it wasn't busy, so I'm

33:19

gonna say probably after

33:22

people had went to work eight thirty to ten o'clock

33:24

that morning and came in.

33:28

She was someone that like if I seen her, you know, we're like, oh,

33:30

that's you know, Casey's friend or whatever.

33:33

So anyway, so then like when she left,

33:36

I walked outside behind

33:39

her, bought a newspaper, picked up

33:41

the newspaper and was kind of you know, like when you pick up something,

33:43

you stop and you look. And she got

33:45

in her car and she left, and I remember looking

33:47

at her car and she was going like towards

33:50

I say, home, guy rode you know, right out

33:52

of there. And

33:55

so then that's that's really the only thing

33:57

I knew until probably Wednesday

34:00

Thursday, when her mom came in and said, you know,

34:02

mama was very friendic, which she gave me. She had like a big

34:04

poster and she was like this like screaming

34:07

when she came in. She was like, is anybody seeing her?

34:09

And so I was like, oh, probably, you

34:11

know, she was in here, my name moved in and that's it.

34:14

And she just like like kind

34:16

of like you know, like starts yelling

34:18

at me like you've got to call the police. You've got to call the

34:20

police. And I'm like, you know, that

34:22

would kind of like scare anybody. So it kind of like freaked

34:24

me out. I was like, oh, I mean, I

34:26

said, I don't I don't know anything. I said. I just remember

34:29

I said she was in here, and she's like, no, you've got a

34:31

call. I think maybe I gave

34:34

her my number or and then said you know, you can, somebody

34:36

can call me if they need to or something like that. And

34:39

then like probably two or three days later, then

34:41

that's when I was contacted by

34:43

I think that the Marky Mark colleens

34:45

Worth. When I was talking to him, I

34:47

didn't even realize, you know, I was like, oh, she's missing,

34:49

you know, she's spread away something like that. At

34:52

some point he said something during our conversation

34:56

and I said, you know, do you do you think

34:58

she's dead? And he's like, it

35:00

looks that way, and I was like, oh

35:02

my gosh, you know, like I didn't, you know, until

35:04

that point I realize that it was like anything

35:07

like that. You know, I just thought though she's missing or

35:09

really worried about her, you know, but of course

35:11

that the details had came out at that point, you

35:13

know, and Inzard County, you

35:15

don't think anything like that. I mean, that's like the

35:17

farthest thing that you would ever think is, you know, had

35:20

happened to her after Rebecca

35:22

left the Possum Trot, she would have turned

35:24

right down the road toward Casey's house. And Guy on,

35:27

so we do the same thing. We

35:29

drive out to Casey's house. Of course

35:32

it doesn't show up on a map or on GPS.

35:34

Yeah, we'll look at that. Okay, So guy in population

35:37

eighty six, right, I

35:39

mean this is Milla nowhere, Like,

35:42

oh yeah, this is way more remote

35:44

than Mount View. Let's

35:48

see what's hope. So that's

35:50

it. This is where Rebecca stayed the last

35:52

weekend of her life. We finally find

35:55

it. It's a blue gray double

35:57

wide trailer in the middle of nowhere, at

35:59

the end of a dirt road. Whatever

36:02

bad thing happened to Rebecca get

36:04

started here, she probably

36:06

crawled into bed, maybe hoping to catch

36:08

a few minutes of her favorite nine AM show, Live

36:11

with Regis and Kathy, or maybe

36:13

to take a quick nap before meeting her sister. This

36:16

is the other view about this area that's weird

36:19

is that, like you're back in the woods,

36:22

right there's like literally so

36:24

many little like rat trails and weird

36:27

little rat runs and backways

36:29

and you know, male

36:32

out of here. We'll

36:37

be right back. Let's

36:49

start with the obvious true

36:51

crime. Fans know the police usually

36:53

look hard at the boyfriend, but Casey

36:56

was publicly cleared very early in the investigation.

37:00

According to the Arkansas State Police, he

37:02

was at work all day on Monday and out that night

37:04

with multiple witnesses. Since

37:07

he thought Rebecca had left for school. He stayed

37:09

overnight with a group of friends and did not return

37:11

to the house. Until the police called him at work on

37:13

Tuesday. Casey had an airtight

37:15

alibi, So who else could

37:18

have known that Rebecca would be out here in the middle of nowhere

37:20

alone. Another thing

37:22

that bugs me about this case is that Monday

37:24

morning is a weird time for a murder. I've

37:28

tried reaching out to the police before, but

37:30

I've had very little luck. But now

37:32

that we're here doing the podcast, I

37:34

want to let law enforcement know that we're here to

37:37

help and we'll share any information that

37:39

we're given. Wait, so who is the lead

37:41

investigator on the case. There was Mark and then Dennis.

37:44

So Dennis is in charge of the investigation. Mark

37:47

is the head of the Arkansas State Police Division,

37:49

so he has to give permission for any you know, official

37:52

interviews or anything like that. And I talked

37:54

to Mark before. Mark was the original detective on the

37:56

case. Mark is the one who told me a few years

37:58

ago when I've talked first talked to him and ambushed

38:00

him in his office like that. He thought that

38:03

we were going to have to He thought there were have to think

38:06

outside the box, you know, get some outside

38:08

help on the case. Benett got assigned

38:10

to Dennis because Mark got a promotion right,

38:12

so he's like in charge of the whole thing. Rebecca's

38:14

case involved law enforcement from several different

38:16

jurisdictions. The Izard County Sheriff's

38:18

Department responded to the initial crime scene,

38:21

but the sheriff very quickly handed the case over

38:23

to the Arkansas State Police. A few

38:25

months later, the case was given to Dennis Simons

38:28

of the Arkansas State Police. It's been

38:30

Dennis's case ever since. His

38:32

satellite office is a room at the back of the

38:34

Stone County Sheriff's Department A few

38:36

walks past the town square. I

38:39

leave James and Taylor in the car and head in

38:41

alone. I hope Catherine gets some good

38:43

stuff from Dennis Simons

38:46

and make it on his good side for sure. Yeah,

38:48

because if he can help us out, then we can

38:51

help him out. I mean, we have the same goals, so

38:54

it seems like we would be advantageous for him to help

38:57

us out. Yeah. No, because I think

38:59

now it's just going to be playing the waiting game for a while. But

39:01

I mean, I guess the longer we wait, the better. Yeah,

39:04

exactly, because that means he's talking

39:07

to her and hasn't say in the Dorner face. I'm

39:09

pretty nervous going in to meet Dennis because

39:12

I've heard that he's a former military drill

39:14

sergeant who does things by the book. Normally,

39:17

you'd wait to be called into an officer's office,

39:19

but since there's no receptionist, I decide

39:22

to take a shot. I summon

39:24

every ounce of what I hope looks like sweet

39:26

southern charm, walk straight in and

39:29

sit down. Oh the shit

39:31

is coming out Uh her face. Oh she's smiling.

39:33

It looks like I don't know, it's

39:35

hard to tell. Let's

39:39

see what she says. So that's

39:42

about twenty minutes. Actually, all

39:45

right. So he's clearly very he's got

39:47

you know, I could see the case files with recaus

39:49

picture on him taking up several shelves up there

39:51

in his office. He's clearly very passionate about the case.

39:53

He really wants to solve it. But he's also like,

39:56

look like I've got a couple years to retirement, Like

39:58

I want to make it there. I'd love to prosecute this case

40:00

before retirement. But you know, I'm

40:02

not allowed to talk about this case. So he said, there's

40:04

been a lot of heartbreaking the case. There's been a lot

40:06

of missed opportunities, there's

40:09

been, you know, a lot of He's

40:11

just said, it's been a lot of twist. He used the exact

40:13

phrase. He said, there's been a lot of twists and turns in this case.

40:15

That it made it difficult. He said,

40:17

what he needs now is something from

40:20

the crime scene. One of them is the

40:22

murder weapon. He confirmed that, but he said that's already been

40:24

out in the media. He said he does not want to

40:26

say what the other items are because he's

40:28

like, I'll get fired. Did he say

40:30

anything about Casey? I asked

40:32

him about that, and he said he's absolutely

40:35

certain that Casey was at work at the

40:37

time. Oh. He also said

40:39

that there have been a lot of people who have come in and given

40:41

statements, but he said they're all like meth

40:43

heads, druggies, unreliable witnesses,

40:46

you know. He said, it's going to be a very hard case to prosecute

40:48

based on what those people said. But I

40:51

don't look is he right? I don't know? But is

40:53

that is that it's very helpful to know that

40:55

that is what the cops think. I've

41:08

heard from multiple sources throughout the years

41:11

that one police theory is that drugs may

41:13

have been involved in Rebecca's murder, and

41:16

two names keep getting mentioned as persons

41:18

of interest with those theories. There's

41:20

Chris, who has a criminal record and has been

41:22

in and out of prison on drug charges, and

41:25

his friend JB. Taylor.

41:29

James and I go back to the murder board, looking

41:32

at the web of facts we need to untangle to

41:34

get to the truth. So what is like because it sounds

41:36

like you have like a like a process that you go

41:38

through or like a method like, so what is

41:40

going to be like your approach to We look at the pictures

41:43

of Chris and JB. I

41:45

know these guys have been arrested a lot for

41:47

drugs, but that doesn't necessarily

41:49

mean that they'd commit murder. You have to tell everyone,

41:52

like in a sense, what they want to hear. For

41:54

example, since the police won't share their evidence

41:57

with us, we've got a long road ahead as

41:59

we try to solve this case. But

42:01

I also know that because we're not the police, we

42:04

have a shot having someone talk to us

42:06

that hasn't before, or finding something

42:09

new that will break the case wide open. Someone

42:12

in this town knows something, and

42:14

I'm not leaving until we find out who killed

42:17

Rebecca. Goal I think to be really good

42:19

at this job. You have to be

42:21

able to stand back and look at it like a chess

42:23

game, otherwise you're not going

42:25

to be any good at the job. See, you have to kind of go okay.

42:28

Like Rebecca's family, they love her and obviously

42:30

that's your priority and you want to help them. But if you

42:32

get too emotionally involved and you're not doing

42:34

your job properly. Right, think

42:37

about the torture that Rebecca's family has

42:39

gone through all these years, the torture of

42:42

like knowing they live in the same town, knowing

42:45

what kind of know what happened. Not really. The

42:48

weird thing to me is that life went on for all these people,

42:51

so you know, but they're

42:53

still living with it, and you can like feel it because

42:56

people still talk about it in the town all the time. It's a tough

42:58

case. I

43:01

don't know why I think we can do it, but I kind of think we can.

43:05

I'm Katherine Townsend and this is

43:09

Helen Gone. Helen

43:27

Gone is a joint production between How

43:29

Stuff Works and School of Humans. It

43:32

is written and recorded by me Catherine

43:34

Townsend. Taylor Church is our producer

43:37

and story editor. Audio editing

43:39

and designed by Jonathan Sleeve. Mix

43:41

engineer Glenn Mattulo audio

43:44

Mixing and Love by Tunewelders. Executive

43:47

producers Brandon Barr and Else Crowley

43:49

for School of Humans and Conell Byrne

43:52

and Chuck Bryant for How Stuff Works. Our

43:54

field producer is James Morrison,

43:57

Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman.

44:00

Them and original score by Ben Solee

44:03

available wherever you get your music. To

44:07

dig into the investigation, please visit

44:10

helegoonepodcast dot com or

44:12

follow us on social media. School

44:24

of Humans