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

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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] [Music] oh [Music] May 17th
1968 near Georgetown Kentucky Wilber 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 likee 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 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 [Music] [Music] here our story starts on a Friday
Captain this is May 17th 1968 we have Wilbur riddle he's a water well driller try to say 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 mhm Wilbur
sees some telephone workers uh 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 uh 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 hold 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 mhm 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 5T 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 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 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 okay
I'm going to 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 about 5T 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 INS 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 going rolling down the hill
mhm 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 P 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 in a tarp maybe
they have well they just couldn't resell it right so it 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 G gas station where he places a call to the county sheriff well and part
part of you would think that maybe I disrupted the scene a little bit you know cuz he accidentally hit the body
with his foot and it went rolling down the hill mhm well the sheriff and his men respond to the call uh 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 and 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 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 got to give people warnings taking a drink of my beer and
you just jump right into it the ambulance uh would would take the corpse to St 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 they could have got lucky you could have ventured off and 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 5' 1 in tall and she was about10 lb okay so pretty petite mhm somebody could easily carry that body by
themselves she had what's described as short reddish brown hair um but no identifying mark marks or scars on her
body there was a slight discoloration of her skull um but the autopsy showed no definite uh 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 2 weeks and maybe as many as four or five weeks what's the deal with the discoloring 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 and 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
asphixiation so now with her being dead with the estimate of her being being dead for 2 weeks to maybe as many as
four or 5 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 you know 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 um 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 descrip description mhm now as we said the body was was badly decomposed by this point uh too badly
decomposed to pull Prince from the fingertips wow but now this is kind of a genius idea I've 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 removed one of the
girls 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 uh which they end up doing but they have nothing on file to connect this with right right right so meanwhile
while this finger is soaking in this chemical for a week or so they 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 uh for further examination well it's 68 right so we don't have a lot of
communication between different law enforcements M 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 tough uh detective work at hand uh 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 in time star uh
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 likee 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 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 uh handle Prince 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 it seems to be a plausible explanation and so again that is that she was hid in the head she was knocked
unconscious then they wrapped her in the tarp alive mhm I say they but you know whoever it was wrapped her in the tarp
alive and then she died from affixation 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 MH 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 muser 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 the the Sheriff's Office asked Harold to get involved and
he did he spent several days viewing photos of the tent girl's 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 uh and people were responding
to the sketch within a day or two detectives were swamped by inquiry 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 muser who has to spend several days
viewing photos of the girl's remains um to come up with this 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 um but to spend a few days looking at the remains to come up with this 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 M 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 ORF 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 Texas Chainsaw massacure 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 this 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 was short
hair that popular in ' 68 I would guess that it would be um maybe amongst that group that age group 16 to 19 mhm 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 Debbie crane is a 15-year-old
girl she is from Pasadena Maryland she's 5 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 uh so we we're seeing some 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 corv Corvair yes lesser stepbrother uh of the Corvette I don't know the cor 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 Monty Carlo kind of in that that
range there's a car guy right now just screaming you're idiots you guys are idiot you guys are in a garage and you
don't know anything about cars we 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 Chev Chevrolet Corvair with a
21-year-old uh boy this is Floyd Colby and 17-year-old Carl Colby their brothers MH um both were regarded as
quote unquote undesirables uh this is Debb'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 Debb's boyfriend mhm 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 [Music] break this show is sponsored by better
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sharing the cases on social media 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 miday 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 15 y 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 point
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 Pro Pro to be similar to that of the tent girl's teeth interesting the 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 so 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 2 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 3 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 she got in a car with two gentlemen that were heading um I know if I should call him gentleman well one's
her one was thought to be her boyfriend and her boyfriend's older brother but they but they were undesirable right but
they suspected them going to Kentucky yeah you say there's a girl missing from Maryland I'd go well chances are this is
not her M 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 at you know at Tank 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 proceed 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 Schaefer 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 uh 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 kobby brothers and this de de crane right um 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 um 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
if you're going to 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 frighten thing for a second it's pretty unlikely that somebody would
capture somebody kidnap somebody and then hitchhike with them mhm so maybe she you know she obviously knew this
individual right and 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 uhuh um we're not getting the full details that 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 and 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 now but tent girl
wasn't sexually assaulted right not that they could tell right so I mean that that becomes a mystery to me because you
got to tr 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 The 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 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 right 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 male caller so would I with a rough and low
voice 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 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 to
Bradford 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 alive 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 minors 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 it up this is 1968 so I think that's important because
when we hear about uh 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're either going to college or you're getting you're going into a career and probably
a big percentage 70 80% of uh kids were becoming career men and starting 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 me free
free love man free love man far out remember we we talked about that uh that scene from a movie when we pictured
these girls hitchhiking where it's the car pulls up and where are you going San Francisco far out man and then they just
they just get into some car 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 go 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 5 foot 6 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 to 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 a 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 9th 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 on to one of those trolley 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 uh she is
reported missing that night Tony Monty 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 was in he worked for
the fire department and so we have a situation where we have many firemen and policemen we 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 13th 1968 so over a month later now three fishermen discovered her body
in a Creek in Bucks County Pennsylvania well and 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 6 weeks uh 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 Candice Well by late June the
Philadelphia detectives had interviewed more than 1,000 1,000 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 uh 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 okay uh she was
scheduled to graduate the following year 1969 but she had wrote a poem and it 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 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 of your neck stand
up because first of all are they going to publish this it's strange that she has the word sex in there and she's
underage um and it well that's not strange but what's strange is that that they'd publish it it was in the yearbook
yeah 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 you know it could be oh I see what you're saying cuz if she just wrote
it in somebody's yearbook it's not that weird that she used the word sex I see what you're saying the 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 in somebody's uh
yearbook regardless though it sounds almost like a a good buy note yes yes it does but yeah 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 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
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 uh 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 they both appear to have been hit on the
head po yeah possibly and tent 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 Candice'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 toxic ology went well I just also argue 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 mhm 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 detect
Ives 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 going to head out west right
uh sorry for that I apologize how many people actually just packed their stuff up and left their families or you know
told them 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 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 cuz I want to try some drugs
mhm 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 current 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 girl's 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 prints
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 prints they just
needed names of missing girls matching this description so they could look into these fingerprints well yeah they could
start eliminating them one by one mhm 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 was
nice of him 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 17th 1968 on US Highway
25 died about April 26th to May 3rd 1968 age about 16 to 19 years height 5T 1 in weight 110 to 115 lb 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's so many uh gray
questions or gray areas yes yes there there's where once we look like we 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 bring up 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 if it
was a stranger on Stranger attack and you're 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 um technology but also more advanced with the way we process
these things and the psychology of fighting crime if if if tent girl was stabbed multiple times then that might
lead to the motive of you know at least it would be a passion 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 let 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 um 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 all of the time right but the
thought is this that you know in 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 candi'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 of time yeah but they both locations were right off the highway you
know what 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 place these girls in these locations probably hope that they would never be found or wouldn't be
found for a good deal of time and they got their wish on some 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 mhm so 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 sitting in a place for weeks and weeks and weeks then that's
just totally remote mhm 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 Candice 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
Litter drink your bourbon [Music] [Applause] [Music] you can live out your Master Chef dream
when you find a professional on Angie to tackle your dream kitchen remodel connect with skilled professionals to
get all your home projects done well visit angie.com you can do this when you Angie that

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

Part 1 of 2

In “A Body in Kentucky” (episodes 156–157), True Crime Garage investigates a mysterious case in which a body was found in Kentucky. The hosts walk through the discovery, the forensic and investigative efforts to identify the victim, and the trail of leads and dead ends that complicate the case. Throughout the two-part episode, they examine possible suspects, motives, and law enforcement challenges, weighing evidence and theories. Despite in-depth coverage, the case remains unresolved, with no definitive conclusion reached by the hosts.

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Brief Summary

The episode investigates the identity of a young woman found dead in Kentucky in 1968, linking her to other missing persons cases.

Key points

The Tent Girl Discovery. Wilbur Riddle discovers a body wrapped in a tarp while waiting for work.
Identifying the Victim. A sketch of the unidentified girl leads to a potential match.
Anonymous Caller Tip. An anonymous caller claims Debbie Crane isn't the tent girl and suggests a location to search.
Debbie Crane Found Alive. Debbie Crane, missing for months, is found alive with her boyfriend in Pennsylvania.
Connections to Pennsylvania. Investigators explore possible links between Tent Girl and another victim from Pennsylvania.
The Tent Girl Mystery. An unidentified murder victim, known as Tent Girl, raises questions about her death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is the case of a body in Kentucky.

Introduction to a true crime story

3:17WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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