A Body in Kentucky /// Part 1 /// 156 | Forensic Files

[Music] [Applause] thank you welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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all right Captain that's enough of the business everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
crime this is the case of a body in Kentucky [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] May 17 1968
near Georgetown Kentucky Wilbur riddle arrived for work at a drill site as he waited for his boss he wandered
around Wilbur sees what he describes as a bundle it was something wrapped up in a canvas
tarp-like material and secured with rope Wilbur decided he would open it and see what was inside
he gets the Rope off and then he starts to pull open the tarp the bundle begins to take shape
and it's starting to look like a human body Wilbur deciding he wants nothing more to
do with what he has found he jumps in his truck and he leaves he drives to the nearest telephone
and notifies the sheriff when the sheriff met Wilbur at the scene he quickly confirmed Wilbur had in fact
found the dead body of a young woman who was this woman how did she die where is she from
who killed her and who put her here [Music] [Music] our story starts on a Friday Captain
this is May 17 1968. we have Wilbur riddle he's a water well driller try to say that three times
fast he arrived for work at a drill site this is near Georgetown Kentucky just off of Interstate 25. so when Wilbur
arrives for work he finds a note from his boss asking him to wait until the boss returns before he starts drilling
for the day so Wilbur riddle he's there and now he's got nothing to do but wait and I love this name I love the name
Wilbur riddle it sounds like like a name out of some kind of children's novel or
something Wilbur sees some telephone workers they are replacing the old style glass insulators up on the telephone
poles Wilbur knows someone that collects and sells these glass insulators these these things these are all things that
all all of us have seen at some point you know some people have turned these things into decorative fixtures in their
homes bars and restaurants they're shaped like like little bells like a little glass Bell uh some are decorative
some are clear some are colored glass most of the time people have turned these into like vases or lighting
fixtures or other like knick-knacky type things so he goes off for where the telephone workers have been discarding
these and he starts to gather them up now this is a dirt road off of the interstate there is a creek and on a
second I think I've heard a country song about this there's a creek and there's an
embankment there as well Wilbur sees something and he's got to go over and investigate
he sees a bundle what it's rolled up it's like an old green tarp or an old uh green canvas type material which is
wrapped up and it's secured with a rope and he says it it appears to be about five feet long
okay now let's put yourself in his shoes okay what are you thinking right now when you see this bundle
well here's my thought you know he seems to be out there collecting these glass insulators anyway right
um you know there are some people that are pretty crafty and they you know especially when he's showing up at all
these job sites you know he probably drives around and works at these different drill sites and he probably
often comes across old discarded material which he may trade to people right he may use for to you know to
build his own things um so he's not he's just going into it thinking what is this yeah and maybe I
could sell this I picture Wilbur showing up in a in a pickup truck and if he finds anything or if there's any
material left over from the work they're doing that he desires he might take it home with him
so if I'm Wilbur and if I'm that dude and and I'm I'm that day and age doing that kind of thing I'm going after this
bundle I'm gonna open it up and see what what is inside the thing that would deter me
a little bit is the length you know he says it's about five feet long um he said that it took a little doing
but he gets he starts pulling at the tarp um and he once he gets this thing open he said he
pulls it just slightly open and it's like someone smacking him in the face he he jerks back there's a terrible odor
that hits him now the tarp is still not completely unraveled at this point but because he has unraveled a couple of its
layers whatever is in stock inside is starting to take shape and he says it looks to Wilbur like there is a there
might be a person in there right uh someone had rolled up like maybe someone had rolled up a lifeless body in this
tarp and then dumped it off of this dirt road so now Wilbur is obviously quite taken
aback uh and he's not so eager to unroll this bundle now right so he kind of pushes on it with his foot well this
caused the bundle to roll down the embankment down that like slight Hill there as it did it unraveled a bit more and
judging by the shape he was now convinced that it was in fact a dead body that's gone rolling down the hill okay
that I I mean I don't mean to be insensitive but it's like that would be my luck like
oh no what what have I found I think it might be a person and then all of a sudden they're going
rolling down the hill this pic this to me is like a really bad episode of American Pickers yeah you know like I
know that they're being invited into Barns and out in fields and things but keep wondering when are they going to
find something like this all wrapped up maybe they have well they just couldn't resell it right so never made the show
they never made an offer on it well this this freaks Wilbur out rightfully so and
he runs to his truck and he drives to the nearest gas station where he places a call to the county sheriff well part
of you would think that maybe I disrupted the scene a little bit you know because he accidentally
hit the body with his foot and it went rolling down the hill well the sheriff and his men respond to
the call they arrive at the location given to them by Wilbur riddle as they approach Wilbur Flags them down
and leads them to his discovery the coroner is called in the men then Cut the Rope securing the bundle and open up
the tarp now I keep saying tarp because at the time this is what most newspapers
refer to this item as that this body was wrapped up in some type of tarp okay it's also been listed in more recent
reports that this was a canvas-like material or possibly a canvas bag but I'm going to go with what the original
newspaper said and so you'll hear me say the word tarp over and over again but inside they find the they find a nude
body it's a badly decomposed body of a young woman her right hand was clenched as if she tried to claw her way out of
being wrapped up in this thing her eyes had rotted away and her flesh was badly deteriorated you gotta give people
warnings drinking my beer and you just jump right into it the ambulance uh would would
take the corpse to Saint Joseph's Hospital in Lexington Kentucky where the coroner began the autopsy process what
do we know from the scene from the scene um this is a bit of a remote area let's
say um like we said it's a dirt area there's a creek nearby it seems a little strange that maybe somebody could have
had the ability to dump her in the creek if they had wished but it sounds to me my first impression Captain is that this
is a spot where whoever placed this body there was expecting it to not be found for a good deal of time okay it may have
to be somebody that knew the area but I guess because the interstates right by maybe not necessarily could have got
lucky you could have ventured off and eventually found the spot right but the the victim what do we know about the
victim well let's let's get into um let's get into the autopsy because that's what's going to tell us uh what
what we will end up knowing about this victim okay so here's what we learned from the
autopsy the the victim was a white female uh the coroner believed her to be about
16 to 19 years of age she stood five feet one inches tall and she was about 110 pounds okay so pretty
petite somebody could easily carry that body by themselves she had what's described as short reddish brown hair
but no identifying marks or scars on her body there was a slight discoloration of
her skull but the autopsy showed no definite cause of death and there was no trace of poison or
toxic material in the girl's body they could also estimate that uh approximately when she had died they
believed that she had been dead for at least two weeks and maybe as many as four or five weeks what's the deal with
the discoloration of the skull I don't know that I think assuming that maybe she was hit or something maybe struck on
the skull and that that's why there would be a discoloration well in that and you're right because that's
eventually what authorities would tell newspaper reporters saying that they thought that the girl was knocked
unconscious by a Blow To The Head and then tied up in this tarp uh in which she would have died a slow death by way
of asphyxiation so now with her being dead with the estimate of her being dead for two weeks
to maybe as many as four or five weeks this would put her death between the middle of April and up until the first
few days of May right if she had been dead for four or five weeks whoever placed her there like you said could
have gotten lucky if if in fact they were hoping that she wouldn't be found for a good deal of
time yeah if they didn't know the area yeah yeah they got lucky because they found a spot that was so remote that she
wasn't found for weeks well and the obvious thing here is they don't know who this girl is you know there's
there's no there's nothing on her body to identify her she's nude there's basically they find nothing inside the
tarp with her except for uh what is described as a white piece of towel a small piece of towel so no no
identification and there's no Towny girl missing no purse yeah and they don't have any local girl that's missing that
fits this description now as we said the body was was badly decomposed by this point uh too badly decomposed to pull
prints from the fingertips wow but now this is kind of a genius idea I've actually not heard of this but but
having read through this case I'm wondering if this was something that might be a little more common that we're
just not aware of the genius idea here is that they remove moved one of the girl's fingers
and they soaked it in some kind of chemical for about a week or so and the idea here is that once it once it
becomes saturated that they would be able to pull a print uh from the finger okay which they end up doing but they
have nothing on file to connect this with right right so meanwhile while this finger is soaking in this chemical for a
week or so they're going to focus on that green tarp and the rope that was used to tie it up and that small piece
of a white towel that was found inside the tarp all of these items were examined and sent off to the FBI lab for
further examination well it's 68 right so we don't have a lot of communication between different law enforcements it's
really hard for them to put out you know one email and get a bunch of missing girl pictures back yes yes and that's
why some of these old cases are so fascinating because we get to see the real little tough detective work at hand
and how things can go can go right when people really try to really try to get together and work on something now the
The Kentucky Post and time star this is a newspaper because the the body of the girl was unclaimed and unidentified they
nicknamed her the tent girl because of the tarp yes it was like a tent like material and I think that's something
cool by the newspapers there I don't I don't love the name but the cool thing here is the thought is that whatever
that material was that she was wrapped up in might be your biggest lead right at this point as to finding out who she
was well and you wonder if there's any prints on that yeah because this would be a material that you would assume
would handle prints well yeah so the investigators are obviously dealing with all of the obvious questions who is she
they've kind of come up with how she died uh they it seems to be a plausible explanation and so again that is that
she was hit in the head she was knocked unconscious and then they wrapped her in
the tarp alive I say they but you know whoever was wrapped her in the tarp alive and then she died from affixiation
in the tarp which I mean what a horrible way to go which is either planned or maybe the person didn't know that she
hadn't died at that point yeah maybe they just assumed yeah so like I said it looks like out of all those questions
they've only really answered one we have a decent idea of how she died uh so this
is a homicide investigation because of they believe her to have been killed but but mainly because of the way that she's
found you know when you find somebody wrapped up in a tarp like that and dumped off in a remote area it's pretty
obvious that that somebody led to this girl's demise and this is a homicide investigation so we need the
first step the first puzzle to solve is obviously who is she um without this information we will
likely never know who killed her and placed her body there where Mr riddle had found it so introducing Harold
Musser he's a 40 year old policeman who is also a talented artist often called upon to sketch unidentified murder
victims and suspects as well these the Sheriff's Office asked Harold to get involved and he did he spent
several days viewing photos of the tent girls remains and then he produced a sketch of her to be used in hopes of
learning her identity the sketch is of an attractive short-haired girl with an obvious flaw
between two of her Upper Front Teeth the sketch appeared in the Region's newspapers and people were responding to
the sketch within a day or two detectives were swamped by inquiries from people throughout the Midwest and
the South who thought they knew the tent girl so this drawing is going to establish some leads right and but the
the Curious Thing here is it's it's interesting that we have this Harold Musser who has to spend several days
viewing photos of the girl's remains to come up with the sketch that's just something that you know I know that he's
a seasoned police officer so he's probably seen his share of action and and things that he probably didn't want
to see but to spend a few days looking at the remains to come up with the sketch is something I'm glad that I will
never be asked to do yeah I think some people they either have it in them or they don't you know I mean there's
photographer friends of mine that I know that have got into wanting to take crime scene photos okay
and I couldn't do that right I mean if you have a fight or flight mentality so like when I watch a gory movie like I
love Texas Chainsaw Massacre the first one but I think that's more psychological
and then when they started remaking the Texas Chainsaw Massacre it becomes such a gory film that I have a hard time
watching it because my body naturally just turns away my head naturally turns away I don't even want to see it well
here's the other strange thing too you know within a day or two of the sketch coming out and hitting the newspapers
detectives are swamped by people coming forward saying that they think that they
know this girl so this sketch seemed to resemble everyone's missing daughter niece or someone that they knew
now obvious discrepancies like height weight age and dental structure would immediately rule out many of the leads
that were coming in and with short hair that popular in 68 I would guess that it
would be um maybe amongst that group that age group 16 to 19. so one by one they are eliminating the
possibilities they're eliminating promising you know the possibilities of these leads due to like I said height
weight or age discrepancy but a promising lead surfaced on June 7th in 1969 when a lieutenant received a phone
call from a detective in Maryland the detective told the lieutenant I think I've got the name of your tent girl I've
been searching for a missing 15 year old girl and there's a strong very strong resemblance between her and the sketch
he said that the tent girl's name is Debbie Crane and her mother nearly fainted when she saw the sketch of the
tent girl hmm Debbie crane is a 15 year old girl she is from Pasadena Maryland she's five foot tall last seen wearing a
brown skirt and a gold colored blouse and a light blue coat where did she go missing from she went missing near her
home she has um brown hair so we're seeing some did we're seeing some similarities here right we have the
height is correct the hair is is very close well the height is close yeah within an inch so the detective is
pointing out all of the details and um like we said they more or less matched now Debbie Debbie crane was last seen on
March 3rd of 1968. she was getting into a blue Chevrolet Corvair with a 22 Corvair Corvair yes lesser step brother
uh of the Corvette I don't know the the Corvair was around for for a long time I
don't know where it falls into the uh to the mix there maybe it's more like a Monte Carlo kind of yeah there's a range
there's a car guy right now just screaming you're idiots that's right you guys are in a garage and you don't know
anything about cars who claim to be in a garage and we also claim to be idiots okay so she's last seen March 3rd uh
getting into a blue Chevy Chevrolet Corvair with a 21 year old uh boy this is Floyd Colby and 17 year old Carl
Colby they're Brothers [Music] um both were regarded as quote unquote undesirables
uh this is Debbie's this is Debbie's mother stating that the two boys were undesirables
um adding that she believed that her daughter as the two boys were using some type of Narcotics and Carl the 17 year
old was Debbie's boyfriend it's believed by the families um by both the Colby family and the
crane family that the two brothers uh Floyd and Carl and Little Debbie were going to Kentucky in fact an area that
was just about an hour away from where the tent girl's body was found well this is all lining up yes it is and we will
get right back to this after this quick beer break [Music] thank you [Music] all right cheers mates thanks for
sharing the cases on social media it means a lot yeah and here we are we're still trying to figure out the identity
of the tent girl who was found in mid-may of 1968 by this point in our story it's been a little over a few
weeks and they're still trying to figure out who she is but we have a solid lead
now we got a good lead coming from a detective in Maryland who says I've been looking for a 15 year old girl Debbie
crane since March 3rd of this year so if in fact it's the same person well then that would put you know he's been
looking for this girl for three months by this right so here's what they decide to do the
detectives the local detectives investigating the tent girl case they requested Debbie Crane's dental records
now these records were obtained and they were sent to them uh and they proved to
be similar to that of the tent girl's teeth interesting so the details in this case they match but then again they
don't match entirely so what is our next step well we need they need to get the the parents Debbie Crane's parents to
venture to Kentucky to try to make a proper identification of this body to see if in fact it is Debbie crane but
it's very badly decomposed yes this is going to be difficult definitely for sure
well on June 13th Velma Crane and Debbie's Aunt they arrived in Georgetown Kentucky they spent about two hours
examining photos of the quote-unquote tent girl but they were unable to make a positive
identification as you said this was going to be difficult they stated that the body is too badly decomposed for Mrs
crane to be sure that it is her daughter I wonder what her gut feeling was well it sounds to me like she was leaning on
the side of it was her daughter really um and here's the thing you got to put yourself in her shoes it's been
it's been three months yeah you know it's actually yeah it's been over three months and you've not heard from your
daughter and this girl looks like her the the the dental records are very similar oh yeah she got in the car with
two gentlemen that were heading I don't know if I should call him gentlemen well
once or one was her thought to be her boyfriend and her boyfriend's older brother right but they but they were
undesirables right but they suspected them going to Kentucky yeah you say there's a girl missing from Maryland I
go well chances are this is not her but the fact that these suspects were possibly going to Kentucky then I go
okay well now that's starting to make more sense I feel for the parents that had to look you know at tent girl and
and not be able to identify whether or not it was their child well yeah this whole trip out there this whole long
drive out there you're thinking well I don't want it to be her but at least we'll have some answers yeah you know at
least we'll know how to pursue seed and hopefully we can go there and check it off our list that it is not her well and
think about how many missing person cases that we've covered I mean law enforcement that we're
looking for Brian Shaffer for example still look for him when they're on vacation yeah uh so imagine what goes
through the parents Mind of a missing child that is never found how much torture that would be so again
it's like one of those things where you hope it's not them because you want to keep hope alive that they are alive but
at the same time then at least if they have passed on you know it and then you can let go of that to try to move on in
a positive direction in your life the Kentucky detectives now armed with this information about the whole story about
the Colby brothers and this Deborah crane right since they're not able to get the positive identification that
they wanted they decide that they're going to send out a national alert a national alert
was issued for the Colby brothers and eventually a truck driver reported that two weeks before the tent girl's body
was found was discovered that he had seen two hitchhikers near where she was found really then there's another tip
that had came in this is from a motorist who had told the sheriff that he picked
up two hitchhikers in that same vicinity one was a girl wearing a short dress and
a gray sweater and the motorist said that he was sure that she was the tent girl okay he told the sheriff she and
the guy with her they kept arguing as we drove South I got tired of listening to it so I
stopped and I made them get out yeah well I mean it's his truck yeah and if you're gonna hitch a ride but be
polite yeah stop arguing pipe down but you know that's something that maybe uh you know a late teenage couple you know
16 17 18 that wouldn't be able to control themselves from arguing yeah you know because everything at that point in
your life is such a big deal well he tells the sheriff that when he last saw the two that they had crossed the
interstate highway and they were trying to hitch a ride back North to the Georgetown Kentucky area
he said that the boy had long hippie style hair and the girl appeared to be frightened
then another tip came in this time it is a caller that would like to remain anonymous wait but hold on let's go with
this frightening thing for a second it's pretty unlikely that somebody would capture somebody kidnap somebody and
then hitchhike with them so maybe she you know she obviously knew this individual right and she was maybe
frightened because maybe he was violent towards her when other people weren't around yeah maybe she was only
frightened because they were arguing the way he makes it sound is she seemed frightened as if like she was kidnapped
or something yeah I I think that it's the short we're getting the short version of the story
um we're not getting the full details that that took place between this caller between the motorist and the sheriff's
department and it's probably more detailed to the point where they're saying you know yeah they were together
you know this this young boy in this well this young man and this young woman were together obviously they were
arguing about something probably relationship type stuff right and maybe she was like I said only frightened
because they were arguing because they were not getting along but oh Tank Girl wasn't sexually assaulted right
not that they could tell right so I mean that that becomes a mystery to me because you
gotta try to figure out what the motive is and and once you take out you know sexual assault or or rape then I mean
this Narrows to fill down quite a bit and sometimes sometimes with these cases when you're going through the autopsy or
when well I should shouldn't say going through the autopsy because what we are doing in this case sometimes we have the
autopsy other times we have what has been reported right as the findings of the autopsy and that's what we're doing
in this case so when you have that a lot of times Captain you know when when they don't say when
they don't outwardly say she was sexually assaulted or she was not sexually assaulted right then you're
left with two assumptions either one it couldn't be determined because we spoke about the the decomposition of the body
or that it couldn't be ruled out you know so you know it might not be it just might not be known because of the state
that the body was found well that makes things pretty difficult as far as the investigation goes so the
interesting thing here though with these two callers is these two tips kind of line up because
you have in the exact same area you have one caller saying well I saw two people
a young man and a young woman they were hitchhiking they were looking for a ride
in this area then you have another motorist that comes along and says hey I picked up two hitchhikers and it was in
this area matching with the other caller stating that you know we drove South they're arguing the whole time I got
sick of hearing it I asked them to get out of the vehicle and then they cross the street and
they're trying to hitchhike another ride and he said it looked like they were trying to go back up north to the
Georgetown area where her body was eventually found the tent girl's body was eventually found strange that they
would hitchhike South and then immediately try to go back up north but who knows what they were arguing about
yeah I mean they could have been arguing about where they're going to go or what
they're going to do for whatever reason there's another tip that comes in uh and
like I said this time the caller would like to remain anonymous it's a mail caller so would I with a rough and low
voice well he says Debbie crane ain't the tent girl if you want to find her go to Bradford
Pennsylvania then the caller hung up the phone okay okay go back repeat that for me again
okay we have an anonymous caller calls in on the tip line right now mind you that this is a call reacting to the
National alert that had been issued for the two Kobe Brothers right this caller Debbie crane this caller has
a rough low voice very obviously a male caller who wants to remain anonymous and
he says Debbie crane ain't the tent girl if you want to find her go to Bradford Pennsylvania and then the phone hung up
all right Bradford we go here we go yeah now let's go it's the middle of June and
the detectives went out to Pennsylvania looking for Debbie crane uh dead or alive
well they end up finding her this this is very strange Captain they find Debbie crane uh she died she is alive and well
living with her boyfriend this is Carl Colby really who she was last seen with she tells the detectives that they never
even went to Kentucky that they had been in Pennsylvania the entire time uh that
they had went there because they knew that they had a place to stay and possibly a place to live right uh they
were planning to get married the young couple because they were both still miners
they were forced to go back to Maryland so good news for the crane family and everyone that was looking and worried
about 15 year old Debbie crane but now the police from multiple jurisdictions across multiple states have spent a lot
of time effort and expense and still we have not identified the young woman's body that was found over a month ago and
I keep bringing up this is 1968. so I think that's important because when we hear about a girl and her boyfriend
running off to possibly go get married when we think of that in today's terms we go wow these these kids must been
crazy right but it wasn't that uncommon I mean in 68 once you graduated high school you
hear either going to college or you're getting you're going into a career and probably a big percentage 70 80 percent
of uh kids were becoming career men and starting in a family by the age of you know 1920. yeah you're you're exactly
right because we have young women getting pregnant around this you know around that time in their life After
High School um and it's also 68 you have that the bit of that hippie movement is starting
to take place where people some people are flocking out to California and I think you know not just free love man
free love man far out we we talked about that uh that scene from a movie when we pictured these
girls hitchhiking where the car pulls up and where are you going San Francisco far out man and then they just they just
get into some car are willy-nilly and then they're never seen again yeah or it's like a bunch of people and they
have little guitars and they're like we're going to San Francisco too you know like that was the thing well and
and not just me backing you up but the story itself the evidence in the story itself backs up everything that we're
saying here because within days of putting this girl's sketch in the newspaper they're getting swamped with
calls that they have to immediately say to the to the caller uh what she's five foot six well that's not our girl right
anyway how are we going to identify this victim how are we going to identify this
girl that they've dubbed the the tent girl so around the same time that they found
Debbie crane alive the lab test results from the FBI came back all three of the items that were sent the tarp the rope
and the towel well they were all figured to be all of a common make so massively produced and distributed
making it nearly impossible well let's just say impossible for the sources to be located where these items had come
from right right so we're running out of Leads Here Captain by now the detectives
and the sheriff's office they got the they got to be starting to feel pretty crappy here they're they're running into
dead ends and this case is starting to look like it may turn cold then a new lead comes in this time is
this time it is from a police chief in Pennsylvania and we got Pennsylvania here again in
the story but this is a very different kind of lead nothing like this in this investigation
had been seen before the police chief was not looking to locate a missing teenage girl okay no he had a dead body
he had a homicide case that they were working on the issue is this the girl found dead in Pennsylvania the
circumstances were strikingly similar to that of the tent girl the victim's name is Candace Clothier a
16 year old girl from Philadelphia Pennsylvania she disappeared from her home around 8 30 p.m on Saturday March 9
1968. now she went by the nickname of candy she was known to be a quiet attractive
and respectable girl according to the local Detectives now candy was supposed to be walking
from her home down to a stop to get onto one of those trolleys she was going to take the trolley to her boyfriend's
house but she never arrived that night she was never seen at some point she is reported missing that night Tony Muncie
thing yeah yeah so somehow a conversation happens between her parents and her boyfriend and they decide to
report her missing her father was a um well-respected fireman I think he might have been a little higher up the ranks
than what I just described him as but yeah he I mean he wasn't he worked for the fire department and
so we have a situation where we have many firemen and policemen were combing the area that night and the following
morning near her home looking for the missing girl unfortunately she wasn't found until the early morning hours of
April 13 1968. so over a month later now three fishermen discovered her body in a Creek
in Bucks County Pennsylvania one what's difficult here is that if she got on the
trolley then the possibilities for suspects are almost endless yeah you know yeah and the the body was tied up
in a black canvas bag that had washed up onto a small island okay the body itself
it was nude except for a pair of panties she had been dead for about six weeks but was quickly identified was there
sexual assault that I don't know the thing here is Captain she was quickly identified because of one thing we were
lacking from the tent girl case there was a missing report right she had been reported missing in the area they were
actively looking for Candace well by late June the Philadelphia detectives had interviewed more than one thousand
one thousand persons and administered more than 80 polygraph tests but they were unable to make an arrest and a
strange thing that they came up with during this investigation Captain it's a it's a little chilling here Candace had
written a poem for the the upcoming yearbook that was coming out at her high school she went to Abraham Lincoln High
School she was scheduled to graduate the following year 1969 but she had wrote a
poem and it goes like this if life were merely passing by I hold my breath and give a sigh but that's not the true
story I fear this life of mine goes on for years I'm tired of eating drinking and sex I just can't wait for the world
that's next if you're wondering where this next world is it's the place where our God lives
so a strange what yeah isn't that kind of make it kind of makes the hair on the back your neck stand out because first
of all are they going to publish this it's strange that she has the word sex in there and she's under age
um and it well that's not strange but what's strange that they'd publish it it was in the yearbook yeah it was yeah
but okay so that's you know because it's so long ago was it actually published in the yearbook or
did she write it in somebody's yearbook it could be oh I see what you're saying because if she just wrote it in
somebody's yearbook it's not gonna be like she used the word sex I see what you're saying that the news article that
I read gave me the impression that it was something that was submitted and printed in all of the books not
something that she wrote but you could be right this could be something that she actually just wrote and somebody's
uh yearbook regardless though it sounds almost like a goodbye note yes yes it does but just just one of those weird
things that you come up with when you know in these different cases well and the other thing too is since we don't
have the information of her autopsy it's like other than her being wrapped in this uh almost like a tarp like material
the same as tent girl that's like pretty much the only similarities similar uh size of a person and that's about it
well let's get into that because the detectives they they started comparing the two cases and they noted the
following the autopsy findings were the same in both cases uh like you said said
there was no identify there was no identifiable cause of death in either case both bodies showed a slight
discoloration of the skin covering the skull in about the same spot this is on the right hand side of the skull both
corpses were wrapped in a canvas type bag or tarp and then tied with rope from top to bottom right both bodies had also
been dumped off of main roads near creeks uh the the one body actually in water that had you know washed up onto
this little island yeah and both had remained undiscovered for several weeks the other thing too is the both of the
girls legs in both situations the legs were bent at the knee and kind of tucked up underneath of them uh if that makes
sense so you have two girls that are basically found with no obvious cause of death no cause of death that could be
found by the coroner they both appear to have been hit on the head yeah possibly intent girl looks like
that she was possibly alive still was there any evidence in in this case that she was still alive when they wrapped
her in the tarp they never said that they didn't say that they believed her to have been left alive well she might
have had more bruising on her skull than tent girl and the problem that they're going to have with Candace's case
um you know I think she was found it took longer to find her okay so then with the toxicology reports
there well that that was an issue with the Candace case um I think that she was beyond that that
they weren't able to recover anything as far as toxicology went well I just also
argued that there was new drugs coming out and and I would argue that the testing back then wasn't as good as it
is now so who knows what was in either one of their systems well of course their thought is going to be if the
cases were in fact connected then the strategy is that since we know that Candace Clothier is from Pennsylvania
well then maybe our unidentified victim is from Pennsylvania as well right so the Kentucky detectives they sent copies
of the sketch to the boys investigating the Clothier homicide in Pennsylvania there they compared it to all of their
outstanding missing girls and young women cases they found no match there was there was
nobody that resembled the tent girl that they had listed as missing in the Pennsylvania area
these two cases were both still being investigated to Great length both as connected cases and as individual case
well the 60s was such a crazy time I mean if somebody said to me I could go visit a time period for a week I think
the 60s would be a lot of fun uh crazy time with you know JFK being assassinated you have Martin Luther
King's assassination you have Robert Kennedy's assassination you have a lot of um political talk going on you have a
lot of people experimenting with different ways of living uh you know like we talked about the free love
movement and a lot of people just just packing up and moving somewhere else trying something different I mean like
Kid Rock I'm packing up my things and I'm gonna head out west right sorry for that I apologize how many
people actually just packed their stuff up and left their families or you know told them we're I'm heading out or
didn't tell them they're heading out and how many people were not reported missing right you're well you're asking
how rare that is if it would be a rare thing I don't think it was that rare I'm with you I don't think it was that rare
either I think that when you have a situation where people are choosing to move and choosing to up and leave at
that age right there's probably at least in The Young Person's mind there's good reason to do so
um to the point where they may not feel like they should reach out to Mom and Dad and say hey went to Wyoming planning
on living here forever yeah or I'm going to San Francisco because I want to try some drugs and some free love well the
detectives are going to try some other avenues here they're not going to give up on identifying their victim whether
or not she is connected to the Pennsylvania girl so there's this old magazine it's well it's old magazine now
back then it was um but it was called Master detective so the detectives they decided to talk to
this magazine and see if they would cover the story Master detective was very interested in covering the story uh
they wanted the story of this seemingly impossible to identify young female murder victim in their pages so this is
a great chance for the investigation because this could lead to a break in the case and maybe they could identify
the girl so Sheriff Vance he was in charge at the time he gave an interview to the magazine and said if we could
only identify the tent girl I'm sure we would find whoever caused her death any reader in any state who has some idea of
who she is please contact us right away it is quite possible that she was killed
somewhere else and then brought here we also have Lieutenant Roberts who was working the case as well he also added
that he had hoped a master detective reader would come forward to solve the mystery saying although we are
handicapped by the lack of good physical description of this girl we have one obvious feature that someone may recall
that's the Decay between the girls two Upper Front Teeth it would have been apparent as a dark spot whenever she
smiled anyone who knew her Might Recall this he added that the print obtained from one of tent girl's fingers has
routinely been compared with the prince of other missing girls so stating that if we do come up with a possible
identification right they would likely be able to get the fingerprints from the missing girls effects personal effects
so they can compare the prince they just needed names of missing girls matching this description so they could look in
into these fingerprints well yeah they could start eliminating them one by one eventually the unidentified murder
victim that we now know as tent girl well she was eventually buried in a county-owned section of the Georgetown
Cemetery in Kentucky a bunch of the local people got together they collected money to purchase and
place a tombstone at her grave that's nice of them yes the the stone was complete with the sketch that was made
of her preserving what she probably looked like and followed by these words tent girl found May 17
1968 on U.S Highway 25. died about April 26th to May 3rd 1968. age about 16 to 19 years height
five feet one inch weight 110 to 115 pounds reddish brown hair unidentified so it's almost like a missing person
report right on that right on that headstone yep so right and the difficult thing here is
like I said before is with the lack of evidence because of the decomposition of the body
what is the motive here we don't know where she came from we don't know what the motive is there are so many uh great
questions or gray areas yes yes there there's where once we look like we're receiving we're receiving
lots of good leads those leads all seem to have dried up that with the exception
of there might be a possible connection between her and the victim from Pennsylvania yeah but again with both of
those cases there's so much lack of evidence that you don't even what's the motive what's the motive in that case
right you know without there being like I said and I hate to keep printing out but without their solid evidence that
they were both um sexually assaulted where's the motive here well in in the case of the tent girl I mean when you
can't even identify her there's no way you can come up with a motive because you you don't know if it was somebody
that knew her if it was well right but if it was a stranger on Stranger attack and you're and you're right with the
with the lack of evidence that's found on the body and at the crime scenes it's not really pointing you in any direction
either well and maybe not in you know 1968 but as we're getting uh more advanced with our
technology but also more advanced with the way we process these things and the psychology of fighting crime if if Tank
Girl was stabbed multiple times then that might lead to the motive of you know at least it would be a passionate
right killing and what does that mean and does that mean that it was probably somebody closer to her because normally
in these cases especially when it's young females it's the boyfriend or the husband right right that's the first
people that we look at but well here's the thing okay let's let's investigate it like this we have one thing that we
can go off of as far as both victims having been found um that of candy in Pennsylvania and the
tent girl in Kentucky and this is kind of some loose science let's say this but a lot of investigators would agree
with this statement as well as a lot of killers would agree with this statement a lot of times it's believed that the
harder it is to find a body the more likely that the person was close to the victim
that knew the victim and we can't say that that's the case all of the time it certainly is not the
case all of the time right but the thought is this that you know and a lot of stranger on Stranger attacks where a
serial killer may just pick somebody up or abduct somebody a lot of times they'll just dump the body when they're
done with it at the on the side of some Road this this body the tent girl as well as
Candy's body in Pennsylvania somebody took the time to wrap up the remains and drive them to remote locations and dump
them in a place where they probably hoped that they would not be found or at least not be found for a good deal yeah
but they're both locations where right off the highway you know I mean so it's like they're remote locations but pretty
easy to get to um so is that just happen stance that may be the case with tent girl but
it would be less the case with candy in Pennsylvania um and as far as you know here's the
thing though but then we run into this obstacle too just because it took a good deal of time to find them doesn't
necessarily mean that they were there the entire time right I guess I'm just going under the assumption that they
were that whoever placed these girls in these locations probably hoped that they
would never be found or wouldn't be found for a good deal of time and they got their wish on stomach to some extent
because if they were placed there shortly after they were killed then it was weeks before these bodies were
located right or like you said on the other hand I mean they could have had um they could have kept their victim
somewhere and then that was the final resting spot well they were only there for maybe just a little bit so and
that's hard too with the reporting because it seems like well if these uh victims were sick sitting in a place for
weeks and weeks and weeks then that's it's totally remote but if if they're found within a couple days of of them
being dropped then how do we know how remote this is well we we got a lot more to get to in this obviously Captain we
got to figure out one who was the body that was found in Kentucky on that day in 68 and two is there a connection to
the other victim to Candace in Pennsylvania and we'll get to those on tomorrow's show all right thank you
everybody everybody have a great night we'll see you back here tomorrow and until then be good be kind and don't let
her drink your bourbon thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music]

A Body in Kentucky /// Part 1 /// 156

Part 1 of 2

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Brief Summary

A body found in Kentucky in 1968 remains unidentified, linked to missing girls Debbie Crane and Candace Clothier.

Key points

The Discovery of a Body. Wilbur Riddle stumbles upon a wrapped bundle that turns out to be a body.
The Tent Girl. The unidentified victim is nicknamed the 'Tent Girl' due to the tarp she was found in.
Sketching for Identity. Artist Harold Musser sketches the victim in hopes of identifying her, leading to numerous inquiries.
Debbie Crane Found Alive. Debbie Crane is discovered alive in Pennsylvania, having never gone to Kentucky.
Striking Similarities in Cases. Detectives find parallels between the tent girl and Candace Clothier's cases.
The Tent Girl's Identity. Detectives struggle to identify a young female murder victim known as the tent girl.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's good to be seen and it's good to see you.

Nick's welcoming line to the audience.

1:04WatchNov 29, 2022

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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