A Body in Kentucky /// Part 2 /// 157 | Forensic Files

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always ladies and gentlemen the team captain of team captain he is
of course our captain well we had an incident this week I was booted off the team
but it's good to be seen and it's good to see you I'll start another team and we'll take over this world
[Music] tonight we are drinking Julius we needed a little sunshine captain and I couldn't
bring that to you so I brought you the very next best thing Julius by the fine team of Awesomeness that is the tree
house Brewing Company garage grade four and a half bottle caps out of five wow that's some high that's some high marks
my friend High Praise from a high guy [Music] all right Julius was brought to us by
these awesome garage goers first up we have Chelsea who writes thank you for getting me through countless hours of
travel well thank you Chelsea for having such great taste and beer and great taste in podcasts oh my God watch out
for that deer and a big shout out to Lydia from Parts Unknown and a thank you to Courtland at Beale Air Force Base in
California and her twin sister Caitlyn cheers to you both and a big wheelchair Marcella in Mount Holly North Carolina
and a shout out to Kelsey and Saratoga Springs Utah and last but not least we have Tracy in Minneapolis Minnesota so
thank you all for filling up the fridge for this week's show if you want to buy us a round for next week go to True
Crime garage.com and click on the Donate button and we're a little bit behind on
the beer shout outs but we really do appreciate it thank you so much for keeping the lights on in the garage we
couldn't do it without you and also if you want to follow us on social media follow us on Instagram Twitter Facebook
untapped all of that at True Crime garage and if you're saving your beer money for yourself and for your own
fridge but you want to help out the show anyway go to iTunes and please leave us
a five star review that's enough of the business Captain everybody gather around
grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] Kentucky Friday May 17 1968 Wilbur
riddle he's a water well driller found the dead body of a young woman while walking around at a job site just off of
Interstate 25 near Georgetown Kentucky he immediately reported his findings to the local authorities what they found is
startling someone had killed the young woman and wrapped her in some kind of canvas bag or tarp and tying up the
bundle with rope inside the young woman was nude cause of death most likely asphyxiation with a murdered victim in a
homicide investigation underway the most troubling part for the investigators they don't know who the woman is they
have received many tips and leads and dozens of missing women reports yet the victim remains nameless newspapers
dubbed her tent girl because of the material she was wrapped up in several had pointed out that it looked like the
type of material one would use for a tent or a bag that would carry a tent well Wilbur riddle retired about 20
years after finding the body and still 20 years later they had not identified the woman known as tent girl Wilbur
liked the local sheriff and detectives that had worked so hard on the case still was not satisfied that she had
never been identified refusing to let the case go cold in his life Wilbur told his children about him
finding the girl and showed them the newspaper and magazine articles when they were old enough to hear of such a
tale one day he told his son-in-law Todd Matthews Todd was fascinated by the case
Todd started spending much of his time researching the tent girl case and Captain you know this feeling you know
how how this works it turned into an obsession for him yeah digging you go down a rabbit hole and
you can't get out my friend digging deeper and deeper he located and studied the FBI's lab report on the white towel
found wrapped up with the body in the report it stated that the Tau could have been used as a baby's diaper
this prompted Todd to believe that the tent girl was older than the investigators had thought and she could
have been a mother he wrote to the authorities explaining his reasoning about the 10 girls age he
also wrote to the counting coroner seeking to have the tent girls remains exhumed so that her pelvic area could be
re-examined to see whether she had been a mother well the tough thing here is he's just a armchair detective yeah so
he's not going to get anywhere I mean you can make all the requests you want they don't have to do anything yeah I
mean these things cost money they take up time this is a very old investigation by this point it's at least 20 years old
eventually he would make Todd Matthews would make the 200 mile trip from his home to see the tent girls grave site
at around the same time uh he visited the Undertaker of the cemetery who had handled her burial and the local
newspaper as well where he had learned that there had been no new developments in this case in the entire you know 20
years ever since it went cold in the 90s Todd got a little help with his research with the you know now what
we take for granted the internet right he began searching missing persons websites for Clues to tent girl's
identity well yeah I mean there was no schools for a computer back then well can you imagine how much time this
would take um you have all these especially back then in the in the 90s you got all these
kind of random missing persons websites that are popping up right and you also have to in my opinion uh maybe not so
much at the time or not so much for Todd but you also have to question some of the things that you're seeing on these
sites um question how well they were cataloged appropriately with the correct information I still think you have to do
that yeah and I think uh maybe it's a little easier for his situation because he's looking for some maybe some very
specific things amongst a crowd of many well Todd eventually you know after searching all these sites you know he
doesn't really get anywhere with this so he decides that he wanted to create a website devoted to the tent girl where
people could learn about the case or for the many that still wanted to know who she was
um and you know a lot of times people hear these cases and and this is the case even to this this day a lot of
people remember a case from when they were a kid or from an area where they grew up maybe they move away they never
know if the case was ever solved or what took place since the time that they were
outliving life and so he thought you know what a great place for people to come in and check in
on this case to see if it was ever solved uh or just check in to kind of relive what they already knew yeah or
somebody could stumble upon the case and go wait a second I know that person or or see if any positive movement was made
on this now very cold case well Todd got great he got really good traffic uh to this site and he got a lot
of emails but none of these turned out to be the lead that he was looking for then late one night this is January of
1998. Todd was scouring the web for Clues like he had done so many nights before on this night he was on another
missing person's website he had poured over and tore through hundreds of descriptions of missing people that
evening when one caught his attention and it was simply titled Lexington Kentucky
1967 missing okay so not too far yeah so 1998 remember the tent girl was found in
1968. so now 30 years later captain and we still don't know who tent girl is but on this
website someone named Rosemary Westbrook had posted details of what they say is the following my sister Barbara has been
missing from our family since the latter part of 1967. she has brown hair brown eyes and is around five feet two inches
tall and was last seen in Lexington Kentucky or the Lexington Kentucky area okay if you have any information please
contact me at the address posted so this post is for Barbara Ann Hackman slash Taylor or Dash Taylor I should say right
she was born December 1943 last seen Sometime Late 1967. well Todd Matthews he contacted
this Rosemary Westbrook who posted the missing person's description she can't post a picture
um I don't think there was a picture on this website but I mean look I mean for listeners that don't know back in the
day to put like a picture on the interwebs I mean that was kind of a tricky thing you could crash the whole
internet right um well [Laughter] I'll tell you that because I studied computer right right for 14 years you
know he had he had the colonel has jokes people he has dad jokes well so Todd Matthews contacted this Rosemary
Westbrook she told him that uh that Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor was her sister and she was about 20 she was 24
years old and the mother of a baby girl when she had vanished in December of 1967. well on his hunch was that this
person was older than you know the tank girl was older than the police thought she was yeah I mean this that's not
going to deter Todd Matthews where we saw back in 68 and 69 the detectives were turning leads away because of
obvious factors so one wasn't the right height wasn't the right weight maybe not
the right age right Todd doesn't care about age because as you pointed out he believes the victim to have been older
than the the police suspect so this is a solid lead for Todd but again this this
is a lead that police could have came across you know in 68 or 69 but so Todd has this leading he's going to hold on
to it we have the sister saying that um her sister Barbara had been working at some type of Lexington Kentucky rest
restaurant she was married to a guy named George Earl Taylor at that time now George was a carnival worker so he's
a Carney you know as Mike Myers would say small hands smells like cabbage strange thing
yeah what is in your beer you don't remember that part from uh what was that Austin Powers must be
because you rated at a 4.5 it's Austin Powers he's afraid of Carnival of kearney's okay he says they have small
hands and they like cabbage I love Carneys so all the carnies out there listening
Captain's on your side me not a fan but here's here's the strange thing so I guess at the time you know back in in 67
and 68 uh none of her family knew that that Barbara was in Kentucky at that time
okay where's she originally from uh she was from Florida and you say well how does this happen uh
apparently Barbara who actually went by the nickname Bobby to her family she was
seen by her family down in Florida in December of 67 when she visited her family I'm not exactly sure of who in
her family she visited with and and we'll get to that in a moment but according to her little sister Rosemary
who spoke with Todd when she was last seen it was with George Earl Taylor her husband right and with her
eight-month-old daughter and of course no one reported her as missing at that time either at some
point another sister of Barbara's had later reported her missing in the State of
Florida because this is where this was the last state that she was known to have lived in
the family was told that Barbara and George were going to North Carolina to live not too far from Florida right
going there to for a job I'm assuming going there yep to for a job and to create a whole life there you know live
their days there raise their child there neither George nor Barbara ever mentioned anything about Kentucky to any
of her family members um and the reason why I wanted to say I we would get into that in a moment
regarding of I don't know who she was there to visit as far as her family goes she she came from a rather large family
family Barbara's mom and father had six kids no I'm sorry they had seven children wow so they had seven children
but but at some point there was a flood and there was a tragic um accident or or you know some tragedy
that took place because of this flood her husband Barbara's father and Barbara's brother had passed away in
this flood well unfortunately Barbara's mom with the remaining six kids she couldn't
afford them she couldn't she couldn't take care of them after losing her husband right So eventually she had to
give up her children you know the family I don't know if they were if they were placed separately but
it sounds to me like the family did their best to try to stay close obviously we can understand the the
obvious obstacle that that is going on here so I don't know how close the family remained at the point when she
was last seen in 1967. well it's pretty interesting because you wonder why the change of plans or was the plan to go to
North Carolina just a a front to begin with because one the only way you're going to be able to communicate really
is a very expensive phone call uh expensive trip to go see them okay well we're gonna just tell the family
that we're moving to North Carolina but that doesn't mean we have to move there well the tricky thing though too is I
mean think about George's you know Barbara's husband's job so you know and I'm it's a little unclear if you know
when we say he worked for carnivals well you know usually these things travel around and so he would be
essentially you would think traveling around with these with this Carnival that he worked for now was this a uh you
know the only job in his career that he ever had probably not um maybe he was looking to do something
where he could just live in a city and work in that City and not have to travel around yeah we don't we don't know the
reason for there to be this thought that we would go to North Carolina and then she seems to end up Barbara's sister
seems to end up with some kind of evidence that at some point she was in Kentucky right we have let's go back to
Barbara's husband George the he told Barbara's family that he didn't know where Barbara could be he simply told
them that where is he telling them this from is he in Kentucky at this point I don't know when this conversation took
place in full disclosure here all we know is that Barbara says that I'm sorry Rosemary says that she last Saw Barbara
in December of 1967 that that's when her family last saw her in the State of Florida and Florida they're planning
they tell them they're going to North Carolina somehow years later she ends up with information that her sister was in
Lexington Kentucky at some point right so at some point she is becomes an armchair detective
she's looking for her sister and she gets evidence that hey she ended up we don't know if she ended
up with her husband in Kentucky but we know that she ended up in Kentucky right and we have the husband that speaks with
Barbara's family at some point again we don't know when this conversation took place right I get the impression though
that this conversation took place because of Barbara's family that somehow they reached out to this
um reach out to George so he tells them that he didn't know where Barbara was and that she had run
off with another man okay so now we talked yesterday about that strange you know these strange little stories that
you come across when you start looking into these old crimes and these old cases we talked about the the poem and
the uh on the yearbook in the yearbook yes that's a bit of a strange story here's one for you for today
regarding this incident remember we said that Barbara's sister Rosemary had been
looking for her for some time right she actually reported Barbara as missing to the
Lexington Police Department this took place on October 31st of 1995. Hmm this is like 25 almost 30 years later she's
calling this in pay attention to that date that I gave you too because the later they'll repeat it for us please it
was October 31st 1995. okay the the the Lexington Police actually have no record
of this phone call with rosemary reporting her sister is missing they have no missing persons report
none that was taken on that day that she said that she called in none that was ever taken for this Barbara Hackman
Taylor ever okay um well how does that make any sense because when when this person Rosemary
Westbrook called in from another state all these years later to report her sister is being missing from 20
20 some years ago on Halloween the Lexington Police thought that it was a prank so they never took the report when she
called in that day why would they that's a dumb problem well it makes you gotcha it makes it
makes you angry you know it makes you question them and and wonder why um yeah and I'm not trying to have their
back here I'm just wondering how many weird phone calls they get on Halloween well I'm sure they get a bunch and I'm
sure they're all hopped up on candy corn but come on take down the report I mean
it's not like you know they came up and said hey we have a missing person from Lexington Kentucky what's their name see
more butts got you no we're talking about just like a normal name well maybe whoever answered that phone that day in
95 should be relocated from the police department to work for the carnival step right up yes so now Rosemary told
Todd Matthews remember Todd he's the armchair detective she told Todd that she was only 10 years old when her
sister Barbara had disappeared and she agreed with Todd that there were enough similarities between Barbara's
case and the tent girl case to Warrant further investigation Todd tried to get the proper authorities
involved but he but you know they have other cases okay so let's go back because I think you glazed over somebody
so Barbara was missing basically since she was 10. no Rosemary is Barbara's little sister
okay so when Rosemary was 10. Rosemary was a lot younger she was 14 years younger than her Barbara was 24 and
rosemary was only 10 last time she saw her sister in 1967. that makes more sense sorry
yeah he you know he's trying to get the the Kentucky Authority authorities involved in this case again of course
they have newer cases they have fresher leads on these new cases uh initially they weren't going to be jumping through
hoops to help out Todd so Todd Matthews he did the detective some detective work
himself as much as he could and after he put together a proper presentation which
after hearing would leave anyone with just a you know one thought it's time to exhume the body of the tent girl and
conduct DNA tests right and they're going to test the DNA of uh tank girl with Barbara's sister correct it was it
took a little over a month but in March of 1998 tent girl was exhumed and her remains were sent to a laboratory in
Frankfurt Kentucky the first thing they were able to conclude was that the tent girl was between the ages of 20 and 30
years old okay so you know you keep pointing out new technology and you're exactly right Captain with our
technology now we're saying well we we had the the age wrong it wasn't she wasn't 16 to 19. We believe her now to
be 20 to 30 years old so older than originally thought and good for Todd because he was right
with his what he suspected and still possible that Rosemary is right that this could be her 24 year old sister
after finding that out it was time to see if Rosemary was related to the tent girl so they collected DNA for
comparison it was in April of 1998 they got the results back the test found that Rosemary's DNA genetically
matched that of the tent girl yeah who therefore had to be Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor wow that's awesome yeah and once
again and it's so crazy too that the the guy that found her his son-in-law goes on to identify her yeah I don't want to
sound too hippie you know but it's almost like maybe her spirit was there helping guide them along or something
well yeah and there's there's a lot of neat things here going on because you have Wilbur who refused to forget about
this case you know he finds this girl he retires 20 years later he refuses to forget about oh I found this girl and
they never they never named her right he'd let that bother him he let it bother him for 20 years to the point
where once his kids were old enough he told them this is what happened this was this was a big part of my life this is a
this is the weight that I've been walking around with on my shoulders for 20 years well and when the kids didn't
listen and they didn't do anything about it he said he started talking to his son-in-law the person that had to listen
you know he had to listen like oh yeah this is my father-in-law no but it's pretty remarkable now we have a name uh
now we can start searching for motive and suspects let's get right back to the case of a body in Kentucky after this
quick beer break [Music] all right we're back what's that sound uh switching from beer
to birth it's my new Addiction all right get a hold of yourself I just love it well okay so Captain we have we have
finally 30 years later and finally we have the identity of the tent girl okay now the authorities well we got some
tough questions that need to be answered well we only really have one lead really
yes uh because this would be that of her husband you know maybe hopefully Char hopefully
they could ask him some questions straighten out this whole matter if need be maybe bring him up on some kind of
charges but that would not be possible because George Earl Taylor died of cancer in
October of 1987. so he passed away you know 12 years before they even figured out who the
tent girl was right so they can't ask him questions so all we can go off of is that he claims that she left him for
another man yeah and it seems to be the belief of Barbara's family and some of the the
authorities involved that Barbara's husband George Earl Taylor was most likely the person who had killed 22 24
year old Barbara Hackman Taylor back in 68. um if this is true he then wrapped up
her body in one of his canvas tarps or bags used for carrying his Carnival tents from town to town and dumped her
in an out of the way spot off of the interstate hoping that she would decompose as much as possible before
anyone found her um I guess he did do a little bit of moving around from time to time so I
guess make it more difficult yeah I guess the thought is if they couldn't ID her that this would never catch up with
him um yeah and then then her daughter might not even know that her her mother is tent girl
yeah you know yeah and and the other thought too is like you said you know he simply tells her family Barbara's family
that she ran off with some other guy and he's got to believe that they would accept this Theory because heck she had
run off with him when they claimed to have been going to North Carolina right yeah and a couple weird things here I
mean if there was no sexual assault and it's not really really reported that there
was that would make sense you know her husband killing her yeah I mean here's the thing I think it's safe to say that
someone had killed her and I started off by saying that because there were you know there were no signs to the cause of
death so that makes you wonder immediately but this according to the autopsy report no signs of cause of
death but because she was just discarded uh it's obvious to me that someone had killed her and tried to cover this up it
could have been an accident uh it certainly could have been an accidental death um where whoever killed her didn't mean
to uh that some kind of fight broke out between the two of them we know that there's that discoloration that was on
the skull um right it's very possible because of the sign of the times and also they're
you know they're traveling around in a carnival show I mean how many drugs are going through those people's systems has
to be a lot right could be so it there's a good possibility like I said that maybe it was an OD I mean because we've
seen that like in the vanishing girls the girls in Chillicothe there was a couple times where
bodies were discarded but it was more likely that because because of the sign there was no sign of uh strangulation or
blunt force trauma or anything like that so you know the belief is that maybe that they were OD'd and that they were
dumped it could be possible here as well well let's keep in mind two things that
we know happened all right when it comes to the husband when it comes to George Earl Taylor first off
he never reported his wife missing to anyone anywhere at any time that we know of right he never called the police and
said my wife is missing now you it's easy to say well why would he if she did run off with some other man right you
know if I had a girlfriend she ran off with another man I wouldn't I wouldn't call and call him that she's missing
yeah she's missing well not if you're not missing and if you find her charge her with breaking my heart right so
anyway the I get that all right she's not reported missing because she ran off with some other man but here's the thing
at no point over the course of 20 some years before the guy died he never bothers to tell her family at any time
oh we did live in Kentucky for a little bit before she ran off with this guy you
know so yeah but who right but at that point if you just don't care like this lady left me you know I'm raising our
kid by ourselves by myself um it'd be interesting to locate the daughter and to find out what she knew
no but what I mean is we know that a conversation happened between somebody and Barbara's family and George Earl
Taylor because he tells that family member she ran off with another guy nowhere in that conversation does he
mention the the name of Kentucky to anybody and I think that enough I mean what if the story of them going to North
Carolina was actually true and then when they were doing their armchair detective they went okay well
we know that Barbara went to Kentucky at some point like I said before we don't know if she went to Kentucky with him or
without him right I no I can agree with that because I don't have 100 Proof in front of me
that that anyone can prove that the two of them went there together I believe that there are people that have
they have some inkling that that's what happened that there there may be something that ties the two of them
still together and being in the state of Kentucky early in 1968. which that that makes the that makes the
um the likelihood that somebody else was the Killer very small yeah but the eyewitness and we kind of talked about
this before but the the eyewitness that claims that he saw Barbara with some guy
and he was driving them and they argued and he dropped him off if he correctly identified the person as
Barbara then who's this other guy and maybe that you know leans to George's side of the story as well
right um so I mean it basically at this point in this much time um you're not going to getting answers I
mean barring barring some deathbed confession by somebody that um that comes forward you're you're not
going to get a solid answer as to who killed Barbara Hackman Taylor you you just won't my suspicion as far as those
as the motorist and those eyewitnesses go my suspicion is that they were that they saw somebody that night
whatever they said happened absolutely happened the problem I have with it is at the
time that they're calling in that tip they're going under the impression that the tent girl is 16 to 19 years of age
right where we later learned that she's 24. it just like so many people had called in before these two tipsters and
said you know what that's my daughter that's missing that's my niece that's my girlfriend whomever right I mean there
were dozens and dozens of these people calling in saying that that's my loved one
and none of those turned out to be correct so my thought is that those two tipsters were just wrong just like all
those other people that had called in before them and I think that had they known well they're not wrong they're
just wrong on the person that they saw right right you're thank you for clearing that up they're right in what
happened happened and what they're reporting is true they've just misidentified this person as being the
tent girl a lot more hitchhikers back then and here's my thing too I think that that
had they known in in 1968 that this woman was 23 or 24 25 if they had the age more correct on this then it
may have been it probably would have been solved a lot earlier I mean every record of her that was on
paper and on on you know databases and on websites and computers for all these years had her listed as 16 to 19. yeah I
wonder where the investigation would have went if they would have been able to identify her that quickly too because
then like we said we have a link back to George her husband and that also makes you wonder about some other things too
if they were off on the age which we've seen this in other cases before you know we talked about this a
lot when we were going through the Texas Killing Field because there were so many
girls and women being found that had decomposed that had laid there in the field for a while some that are still
unidentified to this day age can be a very tough thing to determine however I think that that also leads you to
believe that there were probably other misconceptions about what they had found about the remains that they had found
there's a possibility that the cause of death that they have listed is wrong as well right you know I and I
think I think that pointing out that her age is wrong probably points out that there are a few a few other things wrong
with that whole report I'm glad that they were able to identify her but it just raises more questions
well I I do want to point out that you know like we said Barbara's family and the local authorities went on record uh
publicly stating that they believe her husband to have been the one that killed her and dumped her body now that doesn't
prove anything but here's what that leads me to believe it leads me to believe that somehow how and somewhere
right you know they didn't just make the identification on tent girl and then go
oh her husband's dead oh well that's it we can't do anything with this they would have still spoke to people they
would have now they would have looked and said does this give us any leads is there anybody that we can go out to and
talk to now that we're armed with this information so they would have done that and then they may have been able to
determine if they could determine that the two of them were both present in the state of Kentucky in early 1968 right I
think that's where you just go okay in in the court of law could you get a conviction here no but in the garage it
looks like well from Nick it looks like yeah but he hands out convictions all the time that's right
um it looks to me like the the probability of George Earl Taylor having killed his wife is so much higher than
the possibility of it being a stranger and don't Google him because when you do you're going to get a different George
Earl Taylor and he actually murdered two of his wives well I think what what you
end up finding is just Earl Taylor right right I don't think you get a George Earl Taylor which we were not able to
confirm that it's the same person it actually is not this it can't be the same person no we know that the guy I
think was sentenced in like 19 but this guy was a wife killer right he killed like two wives so right when you look it
up you go oh well of course it was this guy yeah he just killed his first wife that nobody even knew about him but yeah
that's not the case so what happens with the other people in this case well let's
Okay so we have um we have Todd Matthews good for him cheers to you Todd yes cheers yes
because here's the thing after all of Todd Matthew's hard work and determination he believes too that
George Earl Taylor was the killer he believes that George Earl Taylor's tale that Barbara had left him for another
man was just simply a way to cover up and to hide his crime he does state that Barbara's death could indeed have been
an accident and that he you know the husband dumped the body but I'll tell you what Captain you want to talk about
web slew thing this here Tom Todd Matthews is the man I mean while we don't have a conviction he still solved
a 30 year mystery right so Wilbur's son-in-law uh Wilbur Riddle's son-in-law you know he put a name to the woman that
he had found 30 years before now Todd Matthew Matthews he says I kind of like this he says riddles riddle little had
been solved and Wilbur riddle paid tribute to his son-in-law saying that he Todd Matthews
has put in more than a thousand hours on this case there is no one in law enforcement there is no law enforcement
office that had worked harder on any case than he did on this one very good for him so giving him very high praise
the story of the tent Girl inspired the creation of the Kentucky State medical examiner's office back in 1968 and in
more recent years Todd Matthews he got involved with a project called Eden which I guess is just e-d-a-n which
stands for everyone deserves a name Todd has also done quite a bit of work for the doe Network which we have discussed
several times but for those of you who have not heard of the doe Network it is an International Volunteer group
attempting to organize many missing persons and identified cold cases but we still have a few more questions right
Captain because what became of this eight-month-old daughter that was last seen now I couldn't find any news
stories I was looking for news stories that would be like you know woman woman in this area finally finds
out who her mother really was right right uh I couldn't find any news stories like that if anybody is local to
this case and knows of those and wants to send them our way please do so at truecrime garage.com but what I did find
was I went and I looked at the current headstone for the tent girl which we now know as Barbara Hackman Taylor and and
on that headstone as loving mother grandmother and sister so I'm guessing that the the
eight-year-old daughter grew up to have a normal life as normal as you can without having your mother around and
went on you're right she ended up knowing who her mother was yeah and went on to have kids of her own so there's a
bit of a silver lining and and happy ending to that you also have to wonder well whatever happened with the Candace
Clothier case this was the case that we talked about was a possible connection that maybe these two murders were linked
the girl from Pennsylvania well if you believe that George Earl Taylor killed his wife
then you got to kind of jump to the conclusion that they weren't killed by the same person right right so you have
to wonder so now this case two basically took a lot of years to crack in fact it
took 42 years until there was a development in this case so yeah 42 years later authorities say that they
have cracked and closed the cold case they say the they say that Candace Clothier fell victim to drugged out
acquaintances who forcibly injected her with some sort of controlled substance when the injection killed her the
attackers stuffed clothier's body into a laundry bag tying it around her neck and
using her yellow turtleneck sweater to cover her head and then they tied her up and put her into what they're now
calling a laundry bag rather than just a canvas bag right they then left her body
in a secluded section of the Twisted Creek she lay partially submerged undetected for nearly five weeks until
fishermen found her this all came about from a tip this was in 2005 a woman called police she said she believed she
had owned the bag that Candace was found in this was a laundry bag authorities said that they believe three men were
involved in clothier's death and are now all dead themselves so for this police to the so because of this the police
refused to identify the men uh but also saying if any of those men had been alive when police received this
information even if they were clinging to life support in a nursing home we would be working to gather evidence with
which to achieve a murder conviction and like I said before that was my one of my
suspicions right when we started investigating the case with tank girl was overdose yeah so
so I I guess the way that this came about uh to to kind of put an end to the Candis Clothier case
was that they featured her Cold Case on the NBC 10 channel locally and after the newscast a viewer some a
woman that had seen the broadcast called police and reported that she believed that the sack that the fishermen found
her in was her laundry bag missing since she had gave it to her husband shortly after Clothier had disappeared and now
this is what they believe happened that Clothier left her home intending to visit her boyfriend instead
uncharacteristically she accepted a ride with someone that she somewhat knew who
was in a car with at least one other man at the time instead of taking her to her
boyfriend's the man took Clothier to a wooded area off of decanter Street in northeast of Philadelphia Philadelphia
sorry the men had a history of drug use and one of them was known to inject drugs and this is a strange thing
I I sometimes when they just put a sentence in a story you wish they would back it up with some kind of story or
evidence because this is a strange sentence to read one of the men was known to inject drugs
into animals and people without their consent a retired detective said they believe detectives believed the Clothier
died after she was involuntarily injected or given an unknown controlled substance the men then called a third
man to help them dump the corpse off of Chain Bridge which is on Route 232 and like we said the authorities would not
name the three individuals that they believed to have been responsible for Candace's death and dumping her there
now they did the same thing they did further investigation if there were people that were still around that they
could talk to with that new information they did and they had bits and pieces of
it enough to believe that they've they've been able to put together the three who committed this crime
the interesting thing though here Captain is while we don't have a convey conviction and while they won't name
these guys because they died they did go on to say that the trio that they blamed
for clothier's death they were among those that were interviewed decades ago when the case was still very active yeah
that's very interesting I'm glad for both of those cases that there is some closure for the family and for the
victims as well well and it's a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel kind of situation in both those cases
right and here's here's a little inspiration to this case should be inspiration to anybody that's out there
looking for a lost one you know we have we have Rosemary Westbrook who was able to finally locate her sister even it
being a sad truth a sad ending but it's probably what she or somewhat she had expected all this time but she's able to
get answers 30 years later and then you you also have the armchair detective who
gets obsessed completely obsessed with the case and he's one of the lucky ones that gets some resolve and some answer
to his his mystery that he was working on right so the moral of the story is if you're sitting there at work and you're
diving down rabbit holes and you think to yourself maybe I can solve it and then one day
you think to yourself why am I doing this keep going maybe you're the one that's going to crack a case it's the
old don't give up don't ever give up right Captain yeah or take a lot of naps do we have a recommended reading for
this week this week we are recommending Garden State Gangland the rise of the mob in New Jersey by Scott Detro the
mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self but in the New York and New Jersey metro area there are
still Wise Guys in wannabes working scams extorting businesses running gambling selling drugs and branching out
into white collar crimes and they are continuing a tradition that's over a hundred years old some of the most
powerful Mobsters on the national level were from New Jersey and they've spread their tentacles down to Florida across
the Atlantic and out to California and many of the stories that have never been told are in this book The Garden State
Gangland the rise of the mob in New Jersey and and you can find that title with the rest of our recommended titles
at truecrime garage.com click on the recommended page yeah we're not doing the Amazon Banner anymore they uh kicked
us out so so we'll just go to Amazon on your own time or go wherever you want um wherever books are sold all right
thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend you crazy people all right we'll see everybody back here in the
garage next week until then be good be kind and don't litter [Music] [Applause] thank you

A Body in Kentucky /// Part 2 /// 157

Part 2 of 2

www.truecrimegarage.com

Beer Fund: https://truecrimegarage.com/home

Brief Summary

Todd Matthews identifies "Tent Girl" as Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor, solving a 30-year-old murder mystery linked to her husband.

Key points

The Tent Girl Discovery. In 1968, a water well driller discovered a young woman's body, sparking a cold case.
Todd Matthews' Obsession. Todd Matthews becomes obsessed with identifying the tent girl after hearing about the case.
A Lead from the Past. In 1998, Todd finds a missing person's post that could be linked to the tent girl.
A Missed Report. Rosemary Westbrook reports her sister missing 30 years later, but police dismiss it.
Identity of the Tent Girl Revealed. DNA results confirm the identity of the tent girl as Barbara Ann Hackman.
Wilbur's Dedication. Wilbur Riddle refused to forget about the tent girl case for 20 years.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is a very old investigation by this point.

Discussion about the age of the investigation into the tent girl case.

6:05WatchNov 29, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Garage TV

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.