Bodies in the Basement /// Part 1 /// 466 | Forensic Files

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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[Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] I was working a giant schnauzer by the
name of ammo and uh he was at cross-trained to be a cadaver dog I was contacted by the
Hammond Police Department and they took me to a house and they said that they uh
I had a suspect and they had several missing children in the area messing boys in the area and they wanted to know
if my dog could go into the basement of this house and conduct a search for him so I put the dog into the basement and
gave him this command to search and he went to a corner of the house in the back corner of the basement and
he was trained to do what's called an aggressive response which is to scratch yeah you know like he's digging yeah and
he didn't he didn't do that he went to the far corner of the house and just stood there and barked so I pulled him
back out and I redirected him again to do a search and he went back to that corner and did nothing but bark
[Music] he's not trained trying to give an aggressive response however Prudence would dictate we better
bust up some concrete here and take a look because there's a reason why the dog won't leave this spot
well I cleared the area and about a week later I was contacted by the Hamlin police to come back again
went back to the exact same residence and what they had done is they had taken a drill and started tried to drill
through the concrete and they discovered that they went down about 10 inches and there was absolutely
they was still solid concrete so uh they went back to the other side of the basement and did the same thing
started a bore hole there went down about six eight inches and gave up so they asked me to send the dog again
so I did and this time the dog went to the hole in the it would have been the southwest corner and he started
scratching very aggressively so I pulled him off and the detective told me he said man I didn't get that on videotape
can you do it again I said sure So I got the dog back he got the videotape up I sent the dog and the dog instead of
going back to that hole went to the other hole which would have been about halfway along the west wall and
started scratching there so they got that on videotape so after that I told them that uh they
should break up they have to break up the concrete now you know that we've got an aggressive response so I cleared and
uh I don't know about three days later four days later they contacted me again and sent me back to the same house
this time when I got there they had a concrete expert who had determined that this guy had whoever the guy was who put
this concrete in the basement had used bags and this was David most and he had used he had to use like some
phenomenal amount like 80 bags of concrete or some phenomenal amount they also brought in a forensic
entomologist who found evidence of coffin flies in the spider webs in the basement
coffin flies or species of fly that's indicative of Rotting Flesh but it doesn't have to be humid it could be
chickens pigs beef anything like that but they did divide they did find evidence of coughs and flies in the
spider webs in the basement okay the uh they also brought in a pathologist out of Indianapolis
and what they had done is they determined it all across the back of the basement the concrete was 16 to 18
inches thick so they moved out to where they could uh get a little bit the concrete was thinner where the older
concrete was which is only several inches and they broke a hole probably about the a circle about as big as a
garbage can and uh they had me send the dog well as soon as I sent the dog the dog dove into
the hole and started throwing dirt like crazy digging very aggressively sweet pulled him out of the hole
and once I got him out then the pathologist knelt down and started feeling underneath into the dirt and he
felt he said what feels like a human leg joint knee joint encased in a plastic bag
so they broke up the concrete on the Southwest end and they discovered two bodies there that were wrapped in
plastic and buried under 16 to 18 inches of concrete they then went to the west end where the
North End of the West wall where the dog had made the second alert on the different hole and they broke that one
up and they just third body the third body was uh this guy had apparently had to fill a bathtub full of
a blue lead-based paint and he had just had to continually dunk this body in this blue lead-based paint because the
body was in completely encased in paint about a half inch thick and then it was wrapped in plastic also
I don't know maybe that was something to try to keep this the smell down I have no idea what the what the paint was for
and and I do remember that they found uh when they did x-rays they found things inserted in the bodies through the
rectum like bottles or coat hangers or something I don't recall exactly what end up in the room they did discover a
map with uh x's on it where he had we don't know but assumed that he had gone to
various places across the country on his way up from Texas and these exes we don't know what they meant
[Music] foreign the voice you just heard there in today's trailer is that of canine
detective Dale Bach as you heard he was brought in to help a local law enforcement agency in Hammond Indiana to
have his canine search a home more specifically the basement of an apartment in this particular situation
the canine is acting in a cadaver search role brought in because the search for some missing teens led a Hammond Police
Department detective to that apartment so how exactly did we end up here in the basement of an apartment in Northwest
Indiana well the investigation started on September 10 2003 when the phone rang at the police department in Hammond
Indiana a woman named Lynn Smith reported her 16 year old son James ragani was missing
and I apologize if I did not pronounce that correctly it's regaini or ragani I believe oddly enough another mother
Holly gilkinson had also called and reported that her son too was missing her son is 13 year
old Michael Dennis he had not come home the night before okay we have two missing teens here Captain a guy James
16 another guy Michael he's 13. most of the time what this is going to say to Small Town Police is well we have a
situation where a teenage boy got fed up at home or maybe he's super rebellious and decided to run off for a little bit
yeah or he stayed over at a friend's house and forgot to tell his parents the problem with this situation is we have
runaway notes that were left for the family to find the other problem that we have for law enforcement is look there
are no dummies they're going wait a second two kids run away on the same day these two kids were friends and from
what I could find there was no mention of oh I'm running away with James or I'm running away with Michael right but
there's a possibility that law enforcement has to look at of course they're going to look at that situation
and they're also going to wonder if in fact these two were runaways as said the boy's parents produced runaway notes
from their sons which said that they had run off but these notes were very vague
about where they were going there were a few different places listed in these short notes some people say runaway
letters I've reviewed some of these these are very short notes the ragani parents also received a voicemail from a
phone number that was later traced back to a rest area off of I-65 near Roselawn
I do not have any details about what that voicemail was or who they believe the the voice was I I have
to believe captain that they the voicemail came from their son or else it would have been highly suspicious from
the get right now these notes we said they were vague well they were so the notes were simple they
were as such I'm tired with the way things are at home I'm leaving I'm heading to Chicago
um one note said I'm moving out to either California or maybe Washington State haven't decided yet I'll come back
when I turn 18. hmm so when you get your freedom you're going to come back well if you are to
believe that these kids ran away they're they're leaving the notes to make sure Mom and Dad don't think that they're
dead and murdered right uh that they're showing enough care for their parents to
let them know hey I took off here's the reasons why and here's some places that I might go one of the notes said that
they were going to Texas the weird thing here Captain is I do not know how many notes were in the possession of the
parents when they made the calls that their sons were missing to begin with but what I do know happened was there
were multiple notes left by both boys short little notes that they seem to like kind of hide around their homes
like an Easter egg hunt that you know Mom would find one and then maybe a couple days later find another one
that's that's very strange very strange and then second of all like let's to forsake a confusion do you know if these
were like actual like full Pages or again these were very short notes maybe a maybe a paragraph a couple sentences
at best but what I found incredibly strange and I'm sure this weirded out the parents big time
is let's say that James left three different notes for his parents to find or that Michael left three different
notes for his parents to fight so to save everyone the confusion we'll just say runaway notes a b and c right in each
situation well when Mom would find runaway note a it would say hey I've been fed up I
can't take it at home I don't like school maybe I'm going to Chicago I'll call you in a couple months
well then a few days later she finds runaway note B it kind of contradicts everything that
was said in runaway no a where it's you know the the next note may say hey I've got a job out on the
west coast all lined up I'm running away out there and I'll reach out to you when
I turn 18 or I'll come back when I turn 18. so this is going to be weird one for
the parents they got to be highly alarmed and two for law enforcement because if you are going to try to
figure out where these boys went especially a situation with the 13 year old Michael Dennis well law enforcement
knows that these guys know each other so I think once you find multiple notes at
one location and then you find multiple notes at the other location then you go hey these are connected somehow right
and so then you now have to determine one did either of these boys go where they said they were going which there
was communication sent from the Hammond PD out to these other jurisdictions but again it's very vague you can't just
it's not easy to reach out to every jurisdiction in California or Washington State and say hey do you got anybody
that matches this description running around there right but we also don't know if the locations match up with each
other what will be easier for the Hammond Police Department to determine is are these boys still in the area for any
reason at all when kids are not getting along with parents they say that they're
running away the first people you want to talk to in your investigation are these kids friends because kids tell
their friends more than they tell Mom and Dad so police start asking around trying to determine whether these two
boys were in fact runaways or if something maybe happened to them or if they were still in the area they came
across some kids who were buddies with the two missing boys they told them that Michael and James spent some time
hanging around with an older guy in the neighborhood that summer this was a guy known as Crazy Dave
locally in the neighborhood he's known as Crazy Dave so not someone you want to hear your kids are hanging out with if
your parents of Dennis or Michael yeah and is he like really crazy and spells it with a K what they are able to
determine is these kids are hanging out with this dude named Crazy Dave of course detectives want to figure out who
the hell is Crazy Dave they start asking around and they learn that crazy Dave's
real name was David Edward moust Michael Dennis had met Mouse at a community pool that summer oh my God no
kid should ever meet a doll had a pool well yes weird weird weird weird but the other thing that we need to teach our
kids even and remind our teenagers is there's no reason for adults and children to be friends
there's no reason for adults and children to for adults to give gifts to Children there's no reason for adults to
ask help from a child there's no reason for adults to ask a child to keep a secret these are all huge red flags now
if we're talking about somebody that's friends with Mom and Dad you know there are some some ways to get around that
but in this specific situation around that it makes seem like the person's trying to do something bad now there's
plenty of people that are become mentors to you know younger but that's all stuff
that you should share with Mom and Dad right this isn't things that you should keep from your parents if if an adult is
is a friend with a child or asking a child for help asking a child to keep a secret or
giving them gifts that needs to be shared with Mom and Dad because that's not something that should happen it's
not something that's normal right so what we have here is now detectives are going to return to the families of these
missing boys and say hey look this is what we've come up with so far some of the other kids have said that they may
have been hanging out with this older guy that we know is Crazy Dave and we've now figured out his real name is David
Edward Mouse and he spells crazy with a K and Dennis's mom Michael Dennis's mom Holly confirmed
that her son did spend a lot of time with mouse she was aware of this saying that her son spent time with him and on
one occasion he came home with a pair of new shoes that he said Dave gave to him
and another time he came home with some stereo equipment maybe she was hopeful that it was like a Daniel's son Mr
Miyagi type relationship like they're just sitting around learning karate so these detectives
learned that the boys like to hang out at Mouse apartment this was on the second floor of a house located at
4933 Ash Street in Hammond Indiana the people they spoke to said that they had been there six or seven times that
the boys had been there about six or seven times these other teenagers are telling police that Mouse would give
them beer cigarettes and money you know other teenagers had gone to this guy's apartment Detectives
ran David moust name through the system and discovered that he had a record surprise surprise so
they decided to pay a little visit to Mr Crazy Dave moust and stopped by his apartment
so detective Ron Johnson of the Hammond PD visited this David Mouse at his place
on September 18th he found Mr moust in the backyard smoking a cigarette and enjoying a beer
Mouse did not seem nervous at all at the appearance or the arrival of the officer
well to be fair he was buzzed and he didn't feel nervous at all answering any questions in fact detective Ron Johnson
said the mouse was extremely friendly and very courteous to the detective so much so that he permitted the
detective to look through his apartment you know a guy shows up with no warrant he says sure I got nothing to hide I can
answer all your questions go ahead and look through my apartment so the detective is in there he's asking Mouse
questions opening closets and checking under beds and such but there was no sign of either of the missing boys at
the apartment well if you take a look at David he looks like if you take Nick Nolte Nick Nolte and the Ultimate
Warrior had a baby that came out a little disheveled maybe drinks too much smokes too much how could that baby not
come out disheveled right that's that's what he looks like though so nevertheless flat neck he has a big fat
neck too police remain suspicious of David Mouse who had just finished parole for a previous crime and detective
Johnson says he was even though this guy was nice answered all of his questions and such he said I was suspicious of him
right away and this is a judge a book by its cover situation because the detective says
straight out mouse was quote different and that ball is different when asked later well what do you mean by different
he says if you would have seen him you would have said he's different he almost looks like he's stuck in the
80s well police staked out his place hoping to see some sign of these missing boys right that maybe they're coming
back and returning to his apartment maybe they're just running around having a good time and this is somebody that
they could either crash with on occasion or go back to his apartment to party yeah that makes sense they contacted the
other jurisdictions that had been mentioned in the runaway notes we already discussed the complications with
that asking if anybody had seen these missing boys now you have a situation where you probably are believing that
the two boys left together so that helps you a little bit when you reach out you're not just looking for one teenage
boy you're looking for two teenage boys at this point which may be a little easier meanwhile local prosecutors
that I love when people do good work I love when people say you know what we're going to do our jobs we have a a service
a community to take care of and to protect this guy even if he doesn't know anything about these runaway boys
he's a problem so the prosecutor local prosecutors filed a misdemeanor charge of contributing to the delinquency of a
minor against David moust this was on October 2nd this was because of what the other kids told the police about the
underage beer drinking pot smoking and things that were going on at Mouse place you know he's providing underage kids
with beer and marijuana and they're hanging out at his place so Mouse posted the 300 Bond and he was released
he continued to talk casually with the detectives about the missing boys but not really admitting anything at the
time the police contacted the landlord and the owner of the house where mouse was a tenant right they found out from
this owner his name was Bill Hinton that mouse was employed he was an employee at
a trophy shop that the homeowner owned as well he also told them because David looks exactly like a guy
that works at a trophy shop like what's his job he works at a trophy shop he also told them that Mouse had
done some work in the basement of the home that he had repaired some seepage on the floor
so detective Johnson went back to the home to inspect this work that maust had done on the basement floor
when he went to the basement he discovered a new concrete pad in the southwestern corner of the basement this
is interesting and I know a lot of people are probably saying well why wouldn't the detective have searched the
basement to begin with I think the situation here is the way that it was explained to me is that there were
multiple tenants living in this house in these different apartments that were broken up through this house when the
detective was first questioned Mouse in it in the backyard of this property and Mal said yeah sure go ahead look through
my apartment I'll be happy to take you inside and show you everything come on in it's a nice place he's simply showing
him his apartment there are spaces throughout this home that are common spaces that are shared amongst the
tenants yeah shared by the other pedos and so the detective probably didn't check the basement because either a he
wasn't suspicious of the basement because it was a common place or B he didn't feel that he had permission to
do so because there were multiple tenants and maust was not the owner of the home itself it's not like when the
police officer comes up and starts talking to David and and they go hey do you mind if we search her apartment and
he goes come on in it's a nice place it's not like you can just spend days in there
well not only that I was having this discussion with somebody a week or so ago and had to point out that a really
good detective in a really good officer especially if they're in a situation where they're suspicious of the
individual that they're talking with or suspicious of a crime scene or potential
crime scene right a good detective and a good police officer is always working with the knowledge of knowing that the
most important thing here is that I secure a conviction that whatever my actions are will later hold up in a
court of law and so if I step over the line at any point and this guy is my guy like I
believe him to be well I might run the risk of losing that conviction in the court of law so what
good have I done none with the permission from the homeowner now detective Johnson is in the basement and
he he's checking out this new concrete pad that was poured in the southwestern corner of the basement I found a source
that said that the the pad was determined to be approximately eight foot by five foot and 12 inches thick or
12 inches deep and the homeowner did consent to not just a quick look-see at the basement but he also consented to a
detailed search of the basement as well and this comes about because detective Johnson says look I was down there in
this area it would be very common in this area of the state of India it would be very common for people to repair
their basements in this way to pour additional concrete and that is so that you have of if you have a washer and
dryer in the basement that you are placing it on an elevated platform on a platform so that if you
were to have your basement floods then these items are not getting wet because they're elevated yeah that makes
sense so at first he says he wasn't suspicious of the concrete pad but then knowing what he knows from living in the
area he applied that to oh wait a second the water hookup is way over here so if that was the purpose of this
concrete pad it made no sense at all because you would want to create that platform as close as you could to the
water hookup he's super suspicious of this so the police decide that on November 20th this is detective Johnson
and Commander Dale Bach of the Lake County Sheriff's Department again he's the one that you heard in today's
trailer they come back on the 20th of November to search the basement again at 4933 Ash Street more like Ash Street
this is with the trained cadaver dog now the dog showed considerable interest in
the one end of the basement and this is the corner with the concrete pad the dog
is telling you you've trained me to find cadavers yeah I'm telling you I believe
that there's a dead body underneath this concrete in this corner of this basement
well like you said with this K-9 unit like he's trained to be diver dog but he's also trained to search for people's
scents so it I wonder if they thought maybe he was confused well every canine unit is different it all goes to
training some have the ability to be trained in different areas some don't I I don't know the specifics of this
particular dog but in this situation we do know he's being used to find a cadaver he's not he's not being brought
in there to find a missing person [Music] foreign [Music] we're back cheers everybody cheers to
you Colonel he's back I'm back everybody's back everyone's in the face all right uh the
dog again the canine Officer showing considerable amounts of signs that hey he's detecting something underneath the
concrete in the corner of this basement yeah but he's not acting as normal right right he's supposed to
he's trained to give a very aggressive response to when he finds when he's hitting on something and that's not the
response he's giving here you have to wonder if in fact if the K-9 unit if the officer is correct
and people are getting confused because some people are like you know I'm referring to the dog as the officer
because he is an officer so we'll pay him his respects um if he is one we want to be respectful
and just in case he's listening that's right um just in case he's listening um but if in fact the the canine Officer
is correct that he that there is something underneath that concrete I don't again I don't know this
particular dog I do not know the training is he giving a different response because it's a faint right you
know is is the detection faint I I think we we can just move past that because whatever the dog was doing to indicate
that there was something there and that they should do further searching of this area it was enough for
them to bring in technicians and they're going to drill some sample holes in the
pad you don't want to go in there and Jackhammer the whole thing up if you don't have to you can just drill some
holes and see if there's anything down there this portion of the search was conducted on December 5th
when they drilled holes into this concrete pad Captain coffin flies flew out of these holes
coffin flies coffin flies are indicative of there being a decaying body now it doesn't have to be human it
can be animal or or something else but they would not be there if there was nothing for them to
be this is pretty gross living off of so on December 9th after one second let me finish my lunch now the police have
probable cause to to tear up the place right so on December 9th just four days later police brought in equipment to
take up the concrete pad or concrete slab very quickly into this search they found
two bodies which is two more bodies than are supposed to be there they were able
to determine almost immediately that the the bodies were that of teenagers or young men right these two bodies that
were found were wrapped in plastic and tied with cord and tape oh one second I mean we have to applaud the officer both
officers I guess the dog is officer but you have to applaud where your dog is trained to make a certain reaction he
doesn't react like he's supposed to gives you an odd reading but you go hey better safe than sorry right might as
well dig this up and and yes yeah nobody wants to find anything but at the end of
the day when you have these missing kids you're trying to find answers so right away you're looking for two missing
teens and you find the bodies of what you can determine to be either teenage boys or young men
right so when you think about it Captain these other teens the the ones that told
police and Detectives that these kids were hanging out with some guy named Crazy Dave these other
kids were in fact quite lucky that they did not end up killed yeah you know these were teens that hung out with this
crazy Dave as well or at least one had been to his apartment these kids knew about Crazy Dave knew about the
activities going on at Dave's apartment with him providing alcohol and such to the teens
one of the teens in particular says that he was with James and Michael on what is believed to be the last night
that the two were alive he told the detective that he went with James and Michael to Dave Mouse apartment
and he left at some point in the night and he he said that when he left James and Michael stayed there and they were
alive of course when he left the apartment so immediately we have Dave moust who we
we need to arrest this man so he was in fact arrested on that same day this is again December 9 2003. they pick him up
while he's riding his bicycle home from work but here's the troubling part I think finding the two bodies in the
basement is the troubling part but riding a bike to work is kind of Rich Man Poor Man rich man uses it for
exercise poor man uses it as a vehicle look nothing against this Hinton character but I can't imagine that the
job at the trophy shop pays very well and he's living in a rundown apartment this is not a guy that's riding a
bicycle for exercise yeah but you could always like use the line when women came
in like why do you work at the trophy store I'm looking for my trophy wife but here's the troubling thing captain
uh you mean the two dead teenage bodies buried in concrete is not troubling enough
it is not well the troubling part here is the two that were found in the basement were identified via dental
records one was the missing Michael Dennis that we were looking for you know as anyone would expect but the other was
identified as 19 year old Nick James well so not the other kid that they were looking for Nick had been missing since
May of 2003. this is December of 2003 when they find the bodies the more you study True Crime the more you just see
similarities and so many things uh look at the type of victim is teenage boys Gacy would put them in the crawl
space this guy seems to just be putting them into concrete Nick had been missing
since May of 2003 he in fact worked at the trophies R Us shop with David moust and Nick was reported missing by his
girlfriend but he said Nick was 19. correct because you'd think okay look law enforcement has two missing kids
that you'd think that they would go oh yeah there's also another missing kid from the trophy shop oh they hang out
with Crazy Dave where does Crazy Dave work the trophy shop you'd think they'd be putting this all
together but maybe what I'm saying is maybe they didn't put it together in that manner because he was 19. right
that that's where my head went immediately but the other thing too is maybe they did put it together it's just
now you're looking for a 19 year old as well I don't know that you're announcing
that to anyone uh when you're surveilling David moust so Paul Goddard was Nick James's best friend the 19 year old that
was found in the basement he said that the two of them spent a lot of time with David moust
and he said that David was generous giving them cash and beer and said quote he never asked for anything I just
thought that he being you know David was being a nice guy this is what Paul told
the Munster Indiana Times newspaper yeah he only asked for hand jobs so then police excavated a third body
it was proved to be James ragani the other missing teen now the cause of death for the three
victims this is per the the times again quote Lake County coroner David pasterick said
he had not ruled out Suffocation and strangulation as a cause of death for bagani and for Dennis the two that
police initially started off looking for right they said that Nick James died of
blunt force trauma to the skull David mouse was charged with three counts of murder they also charged him for having
a fat neck the Hammond neighborhood went into an uproar over this crazy Dave guy
right because David moust is living in their small town and unbeknownst to them he's he's living there
but the reason why they're in an uproar is it turned out that David Mouse had a very serious criminal record
right in fact he was a twice convicted murderer living in their neighborhood he's been convicted twice of murder
correct and he has he lives in an apartment with other people and has the Stellar job at the trophy shop yeah this
this highly desirable job I'm just saying that he's he's living better than some people living better than the
colonel I wonder if he gets unlimited trophies like unlimited free Trophies the idea that this dude was out free
living in this small town and hanging out with kids terrified the residents many of whom
said that they planned to move away from the area even though David moust was now
behind bars in all fairness eventually the state of Indiana would pass a law requiring that convicted murderers must
register with local officials when they moved to a new location so David mouse was not from this area well thank God
they corrected that if sexual offenders have to register on a sexual offender's website or whatever murderers should
have to do the same so Mouse now in handcuffs well he was in for a six-hour interview
session with detectives Mouse confessed to The Killing saying that others had helped him commit the murders even
naming his landlord is one of the accomplices again again I I the comparisons with
this individual and and Gacy are very similar I mean Daisy once he was arrested was saying
hey it wasn't just me there's multiple people involved moust also implicated his old cellmate from time served in the
state of Illinois and he implicated another neighborhood teen saying he helped as well
I don't think that he's sitting there saying the four of us killed these three guys
I think what he's saying is is a situation where he's telling a story and it's changing as we go along here yeah
I'll give him a trophy for being a douche but in the end Captain he admitted to all three of the murders and
he said that he did all three of them on his own now for some reason we have a written
statement pertaining to James ragani's murder but not the other two so the details are a little tricky on
some of these murders here yeah David Mouse signed a confession stating that on September 9th 2003 at his apartment
James ragani had been drinking beer and doing shots and got sick and at 11 45 PM David Mouse took a rope
and put it around James's neck and strangled him until he was dead he then wrapped his body in plastic and took it
to the basement and later put cement over his body but he was has said I mean he he's telling these
stories but it's very obvious to detectives that this dude's responsible for all three of the murders
a Lake County prosecutor Bernard Carter said quote basically he drugged them with alcohol and the date rape drug and
then strangled them the first one the first victim he means Nicholas James he hit in the head with a baseball bat and
then strangled him he said meaning David moust that the first one was too bloody of an attack so
he decided to strangle the others so he he's saying that he killed all three of them the same day
no okay so at different times Nicholas James was a separate situation altogether right that when he went
missing back in May that's when Nicholas James was killed right the other two boys were killed September 9th of that
same year but what mouse is explaining to detectives in his confession that look I I hit the one over the head with
a baseball bat and realize later that's not a good method of killing because now I got all this blood
everywhere that I have to deal with yeah everybody listened to that statement we
have a murderer telling you that if you hit somebody in the head when their heart is still beating there's blood
everywhere it's too bloody of a scene again can connect the dots in other cases like Sean Benet Ramsey if she was
hit on the head first there would have been blood everywhere David moust admitted to detectives that he would on
occasion visit the basement to continue to talk to his victims after they were buried in the floor
what you heard me right so he's drinking yeah I'm gonna go down to the basement and
I'm gonna go talk to the concrete because he's missing one of his buddies that he killed I'm
reading between the lines here Captain but what I think actually went down is I believe that they found all three
victims at the same time when they were digging up that slab because as said it's determined or reported that it was
eight foot by five foot by 12 inches deep that's not that big of a concrete slab and we have three victims in that
concrete slab where I think that we have the speed bump in the investigation is that two of the bodies were wrapped in
plastic that was tied with rope or some type of cord right the third body for reasons only David Mouse could
explain was completely dipped or you know I guess it wouldn't be dipped but uh covered in
lead-based paint Blue lead based paint and mouse said basically that he took the body
of this victim placed it in the bathtub covered it in this paint and we're talking about
an inch thick covering the body at all points he states that uh he did this so that it
would conceal the odor of the body that nobody would be able to smell or detect the dead body I guess uh
the smell of paint is better than dead body as for the runaway notes detectives believe that Mouse lured the
uh Lord the boys to his apartment of course with Promises of some kind of trip okay remember we talked about them
leaving notes for their parents this misdirecting the investigation or hoping that the parents don't go looking for
the kids they figured out that moust was the he spearheaded them leaving these notes for their parents
this was all his idea so to me this is looking more and more like a premeditated murder situation right what
he said to these these boys is that look I I have access to a lot of money I have access to a lot of drugs I need you
to run some errands for me and you can make a lot of money in the process and hold on a second if any any young
teenage boys listening and you hear this from somebody remind yourself that he he rides a bicycle to
work he works in a trophy shop and he lives in an apartment with multiple people and his only friends are the
friends that he's giving booze to and those individuals can't buy booze I wouldn't really believe that he has
connections to a bunch of money somewhere because if he did he probably would have called in those favors by now
well if you go off of what I said earlier you're already in the clear adults and children do not need to be
friends for any reason at all yeah my motto is no friends okay um so what they were able to determine
is that Mouse told them that hey I'm going to give you a vehicle and I've set up this vehicle so that we
can conceal drugs in this vehicle and then you're going to drive it out to the West Coast basically you're going to
make a delivery for me and the people there are going to pay for all these drugs that you deliver you're going to
bring the money back to me and then you're going to get a big Hefty cut of everything right and this is how he
enticed them and talk them into leaving these notes for their parents so this was all very much planned out on
his end and even planned out by the kids themselves because they go over there thinking all right well we're friends
with this guy we're going to go on this trip yeah it's kind of sophisticated for
such a disheveled individual the other interesting thing too is that he told investigators that he took the two boys
with him to breakfast at the Roseland I'm sorry Roselawn truck stop on September 9th classy and this was they
were talking more about the trip at this breakfast so you can piece this together this is
where that voicemail came from right this is the same location that they traced it back to so while they're there
he had him so convinced that he had one of the kids call home and leave a voicemail at that time so so we have
three bodies and we know that David was in prison before two other killings so we have a total of
five victims correct I still don't understand how he got out of prison well that's a great
segue because that's what I'm going getting to right here so the Indiana prosecutors knew that mouse was a
suspected serial killer right he's eligible for capital punishment so the prosecutor prosecutor Carter requested
that the death penalty be on the table for the three murders so on October 31st 2005 Mouse took a
plea deal and admitted guilt for all three murders So Crazy Dave mouse was sentenced in
December of 2005 to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole and in his guilty plea Mouse
requested that he be held in isolation away from the general population of the prison now as the captain just mentioned
this monster had killed twice before so who was David moust and why was a twice convicted murderer out living in a nice
Community David moust was the second of four children born to Ava and George moust on April 5th 1954 in the state of
Pennsylvania PA in 1961 the family relocated to Chicago that next year Mouse father left the
family David was only eight years old at this time right there's a lot of uncertainty about Mouse early life and
exactly how screwed up it was so how screwed up he was right so he was eight when his father leaves but do we
have any indication that there was physical abuse or sexual abuse or or verbal abuse that we don't know of as
far as the ages from ages zero to eight but again it's very difficult in this situation to figure out how screwed up
his family life was or how screwed up he was and if who was responsible for that
his his parents were both I feel very fine and confident with saying that both of his parents were dysfunctional
according to the times George moust was orphaned at age 12 and spent the rest of
his life the rest of his juvenile years I should say in foster homes some that were described as sexually abusive Ava
moused his mother spent a month in a mental hospital in Pennsylvania this right after David Mouse birth
hospital records to describe her as quote psychotic her upbringing took place on a Georgia Farm
and has been reported as miserable and depraved according to her sons later defense team in court writings
his mother was beaten by a stepfather with boards and chains and treated as a slave by her mother that sounds
awful with his father gone and a mother that there's no more simple way to put it a mother that either did not want him
or could not handle him his mother David's mother requested that he be institutionalized at the age of
eight I'm sorry at the age of nine yeah so per the times quote Chicago State Hospital
records show that David Mouse earned year yearned for a relationship with his mother but she showed little interest in
him when the staff at the state hospital pressured her to take David Mouse swimming
with a sibling and a later stepfather she told the hospital I'm not taking him I wish he would drown
um so whether Ava loved David and did the best that she could for him or whether she was the reason that he
was screwed up depends on who you're talking to or where you're getting your information because Ava his mother gave
a lot of interviews over the the years and in some she says that David moust was a pretty good kid in that she loved
him she told the Chicago Tribune that she loved her kid and says that when David's father left the family
David started acting out things got bad pretty quickly his little brother Jeffrey recalls David Mouse beating a
squirrel to death with a bat in front of his younger siblings there's also a report that that David
Mouse is a little kid set his three-year-old brother's crib on fire and tried to drown him in the park maybe
when your kid does that you just lock him in the cage and forget about it it's a very difficult situation Captain
because as said was he the actual problem or was his childhood that was not carved out by him
the actual problem yeah it's the chicken of the egg because well but it goes back to who you
talk to and where you get your information from and even with Ava who gave multiple interviews over the years
she gives a different story in different interviews he was a good kid he was a normal kid and it wasn't until he was
nine that he started acting up and I had to get rid of him in other stories he was born bad and he
was trying to kill his little baby brother and and drown his baby brother from a very very early age
it's not both it's it's one or the other yeah I don't think she's gonna award anytime soon for mother of the year
it can't be both these are her words these are words she chose to to give to these people that he was fine he was
completely fine until his dad left then he went off the rails and I had to get rid of him in other interviews she says
that he was born bad that he was evil from day one and that he was trying to kill his little brother at a very early
age that's not the same story so when I say it can't be both we don't know the true story maybe maybe
it was both I'm saying these are her words she pick a story Lady it's one or the
other because they're two very different stories the other thing that you have to
keep in mind too is back then yeah if you just didn't want a child for any number of reasons
you could institutionalize him I'm glad that wasn't around this was I wouldn't say it was a common thing but it was not
it wasn't that unheard of yeah and the reason why I question some of this is that we have the look he's at
nine years old David Mouse is sent to the Cook County mental institution and he describes this location as he
called it the the snake pit and the situation was this that he's he's in this state institution or
the County mental institution there was another child that was there at the same time as David that would be
dropped off in the summer months and then picked up by Mom and Dad at the end of summer
yeah and what's believed is that they simply dropped him off said the kid's crazy and dangerous and we can't handle
him so that they could vacation or not have to deal with this kid when he's not in school people do this I know it's I
know it's sad but uh and it's something you know that nobody wants to talk about
but what kind of people do this pieces of [ __ ] but it's very possible that his mother was a piece of [ __ ] and
decided for whatever reason willy-nilly or or something very serious that she didn't want her her son if we have the I
look look you look we have the the statement from the hospital that when they were trying to encourage mom to
spend time with her son that was institutionalized on one occasion she's taking her current family
on a swimming trip and when asked by the hospital well why wouldn't you take check David out and
take him with you she says I don't want to be around him I wish he would drown that's not the response of a loving
caring parent the other thing that's weird and we do know that some of these types Captain
behave a different way in a very structured environment where there's set rules and and we can imagine that that's
probably what was going on when young David was institutionalized by his mother but we also have the his time
spent there is well documented so these reports say that David moust had no incidence of serious misbehavior during
his years at the hospital he has no documented incidents of lying stealing or out of control behavior all stuff
that that her his mother reported to the hospital as the basis for committing her son the hospital described David as
generally generally described David in their reports as an appealing sensitive and reliable child but he was deeply
disturbed by his parents rejection yeah you think and preoccupied with the threat of abandonment
his father left the family when he was just eight and then his mother [ __ ] drops him off and has him
institutionalized at the age of nine when his mother was asked to be specific about the trouble she claimed David
Mouse caused during his occasional home visits she became evasive and stated that quote she just doesn't want him at
home [Music] thank you [Music] all right so much more to get to tomorrow for everything true crime check
us out at truecrime garage.com click on that store Page and check out our be good be kind and don't Litter shirt and
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foreign [Music]

Bodies in the Basement /// Part 1 /// 466

Part 1 of 2 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

This week we take a look and profile a very unique serial killer "Crazy Dave." David Maust is a killer that most have not heard of before. Join us in the Garage for a couple of cold ones as we try to dissect this monster.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses the investigation of missing teens leading to the discovery of three bodies linked to suspect David Moust in Indiana.

Key points

True Crime Garage Introduction. Hosts welcome listeners and introduce the episode's theme.
Beer Review. Review of Zombie Dust beer, a hoppy pale ale.
Missing Teens Reported. Two boys reported missing on the same day raises alarms.
Detectives Investigate Crazy Dave. Detectives learn about an older man the boys were hanging out with.
Canine Unit's Discovery. A trained cadaver dog indicated a dead body under the concrete pad.
Discovery of Bodies. Police found two bodies wrapped in plastic and tied with cord and tape.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I don't know maybe that was something to try to keep the smell down.

Speculation about the use of paint on a body.

8:27WatchNov 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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