The Evansdale Murders - Ten Years Later /// Part 1 /// 595 | Forensic Files

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You Are whatever you are doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that only has
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of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
[Music] crime hear me calling your [Applause] name me I can't [Music] keep it must have been the Devil Himself
that did it that would be the only explanation that would make any sense at all in the
heinous and horrific crimes that we are going to tell you about today two girls enjoying a beautiful day
out together on their own in a remote area they go missing from a public area accessible to
all this is a park that includes trails and the girls were taken from here in broad daylight
later they are found dead they are the victims of an abduction and homicide for someone to take and kill
victims this young and for the offender to take the risk that they did and get away with
it well then it must have been the Devil Himself when we try to size up this monster the first thing we all naturally
question is has he killed before and we think well he must have he must have done this before to be capable
of such cruelty to have such evil in his heart to commit these crimes if he is killed before and if he
is responsible for this double homicide two young girls taken from a public place well then he will most certainly
do this again how many nightmares will he create but this sounds all too eerily familiar
unfortunately that is one of the parts of this nightmare that we know to be true this last February makes 5 years
unsolved since the murders of Libby German and Abigail Williams two young girls out hiking on a
beautiful day in a remote area they go missing from a public area accessible to all they were taken in broad daylight
later found dead when we first covered the deli murders case in May of 2017 no one here in the garage believed
that five more years would pass we would still be looking for the monster that committed those
homicides must be the Devil Himself but now just a little over a week from celebrating the independence
of our great country and as temperatures of the summer in the midwest slowly but
steadily climb we are reminded of a double homicide another one the Killer is still
unknown the case that when we first covered it back in 2020 I would have thought could have
should have some Solution by now but very sadly I say tomorrow will make it 10 years now to the
day 10 years since that horrible day when someone or someone took Elizabeth Collins and LC
cook the two cousins were last seen riding their bikes together near Meers Lake just
afternoon in Evansdale Iowa later they were found dead it must have been the Devil
Himself this is another look a new look at the still unsolved and unresolved cases of Elizabeth
Collins and lar cook the Evansdale murders 10 years later and this is true crime
[Music] garage [Music] me Friday July 13th 2012 we have two little girls reported missing this is
8-year-old Elizabeth Collins and her 10-year-old cousin LC cook the two disappeared while out riding
bikes together in Evansdale Iowa when they didn't return from the bike ride the Evansdale Police Department was
notified and the girls were reported missing lar Cook's grandmother says she last saw the girls around
12:15 in the afternoon on that Friday the 13th but we do end up with a few eyewitnesses who say they too saw the
girls out on their bike ride Evansdale is a small community under 5,000 residents back in 2012 and still less
than 5,000 people today Evansdale is located in the northeastern part of the state of Iowa Evansdale is in Blackhawk
County Iowa and while this is more of a small town it is very near waterl and Cedar Falls cities that combined have
over 100,000 people the girl's grandmother Wilma cook told the Press she last saw the girls riding their
bikes near downtown Evansdale about 12:15 p.m. July 13th the girls were also seen at about
12:23 p.m. that same day this on Broan Boulevard in Evansdale and then spotted between 12:30
and 1 p.m. on Gilbert drive not far from Myers Lake Myers Lake is a recreational
area and a popular fishing spot these are the last known sightings of the girls let's talk about the girls here
for a minute so in the summer of 2012 88-year-old Elizabeth Collins lived with her parents and siblings in Evansdale
Iowa Evansdale is a blue collar town with many residents involved in agriculture production in some manner
Elizabeth who attended Pointer Elementary was described by her mother as a bubbly little person who was always
active and busy one of her best friends was her cousin L cook AG 10 who lived just minutes away in the next town over
waterl LC went to Kingsley Elementary and she was also an active outgoing Girl Who Loved bowling cheerleading and
gymnastics and playing outside lar and Elizabeth's mothers Misty cook and Heather Collins are
sisters Heather was married to Elizabeth's father Drew Collins and the couple had four children Elizabeth being
one of them they seem to be a very typical American family with hardworking religious parents raising a bunch of
children Heather's mother Wilma came over for four or five hours most days to help out Heather's sister Misty was also
married she's married to a guy named Dan morsy now at the time time that the girls vanished Misty and Dan were
estranged and had been separated for years L lived with her grandmother Wilma cook who as we have already established
is Misty and Heather's mom l and her cousin Elizabeth played together nearly every day when Wilma went over to the
collinses to help out well let's get back to that Friday the 13th July 2012 here's how the events went down
according to multiple interviews with the family and articles about the family Wilma took L over to the Collins's house
around breakfast time now Drew Collins left the house in Evansdale early that morning to go to work at the tree
trimming company that he owns Heather Collins had an appointment and she wanted to run some other errands so her
mom Wilma came over and brought LC with her as usual Wilma stayed home with the kids while
Heather went out and L and Elizabeth set off around 11:30 for a bike ride this was something they routinely did and the
girls were expected to stay within a short distance of the house now Captain we covered this back in April of 2020 in
episodes 393 and 394 and one thing we talked about concerning this bike ride right and we already established that
it's a usual typical activity for the girls to enjoy together is there was no real clearly defining boundaries on
where they could not go with their bike ride but it was established that they were to stay close to the home and the
grandmother stated that she could go outside call the girls names they would respond and they would return to the
house so while we don't have any clear defining boundaries here what we do have is a situation where she's saying stay
close enough that you can hear me and then if I need you to come back to the house you come back to the house but we
know how kids are they sometimes push boundaries they forget about boundaries or they think they see a window of
opportunity of oh they won't miss us for 15 minutes or 20 minutes let's go check
this spot out right so it's widely been reported that the grandmother saw the the two girls zipping by on their bikes
around 12:15 yeah and this is you hear these little parts of these stories and that's
what makes them even more sad and tragic when you're kind of picturing this you think to yourself this seems like a very
happy situation right right even though we have kind of a not ideal situation with lyric parents but she's a happy kid
living with Grandma and regularly goes over to her cousin's house and is watched by Grandma and gets to hang out
with her cousin who also happens to be one of her very best friends mhm so this is a very ideal situation for these kids
and a and a great way to be spending their summer months out of school well it reminds you of a scene from a movie
and I know the the movies are written about real life but just this moment where the grandmother's outside and the
sun is shining dining and her grandkids are playing on their bikes and she watches them ride by right before
tragedy hits yeah the good parts of it remind me of my childhood when the days of summer when you're this young they
just seemed endless like you're outside just playing forever but what we have here Captain is you're right we have
tragedy that is about to occur Panic is about to set in and this will start and it probably starts at a very small level
and then ramps up from there right but this is all going to commence when the girls do not come back from this bike
ride and when they don't return we have concern that's going to set in so what we do know is that we
have Grandma Wilma says she saw the girls she noted the time it was about 12:15 in the afternoon when she saw them
riding around on their bikes and we do know we don't have an exact time of when Heather returns to the
house but it's after the last time that Wilma sees the girls and both have stated it was shortly after that one
thing I find interesting here too is we have this very well-defined timeline that we're going to continue on
for this day this timeline so key and so very important to this case but when we
had have the statements of Grandma and mother stating it's about 12:15 when I last saw the girls Heather comes home
shortly after that this is a small town one thing that does not happen is when Heather's returning home she doesn't
cross paths with the girls she doesn't see her daughter and her niece at any time when she's returning to the house
well the next time they're spotted is between 12:30 and 1:00 and they're spotted on Gilbert Drive which is a mile
and a half to 2 miles away from their their mother's house yes so they could be in an opposite direction than what
Heather was traveling the key thing though here is that we know that Heather returns to the house before 1:00 so we
got a small window of time 121 15ish to about 1:00 and the reason that we know 1:00 is a Time marker is because Heather
says she gets home the girls aren't there she's immediately concerned but she's not in panic like thinking
anything terrible has happened both the girls Heather and Wilma all had stuff scheduled for later that day very
shortly after this time period in fact and so they were all going to kind of go their separate ways and do the things
that they needed to achieve that day things that the girls were actually looking forward to right so when they
didn't return of course Wilma and Heather started to get nervous now our 1:00 time marker comes in because what
we are told by by Wilma and Heather is that by 1:00 Heather sent out her older son Kelly to scout out the area to go
find the girls tell them to come home hey you were supposed to be home a while ago but he returns home reporting that
he could not find them he didn't see them could didn't find any sign of them at all at this point we have one of the
fathers is back at the house Drew he stopped at home this is something he would often do he owned the tree
trimming company he's in charge of his schedule often he would drop by for a quick lunch Heather told drew that she
was going to go out and look for the girls again you can tell by all of this and the way that it's playing out that
nobody is overly concerned at this point they're just kids that are probably not
where they should be or lost track of time and should have came home earlier but did not it happens a lot when you
have siblings hey your your little brother your little sister they're they're playing with their friend
somewhere I can't find them can you get on your bike and go look around because the girls are on the bike and now you
escalate it more to go okay well you keep looking you you ride your bike around keep looking I'm going to now
Drive the neighborhood to try to find them yeah and growing up unless we had something to do or had someplace to be
in the summer months my parents did not care where I was they did not care if I was outside all day long and I would
often be busy and the only indicators of time that I really had was there was somebody in the neighborhood that would
ring like a lunch Bell like a you know Dinner Bell lunch Bell for the kids to come running back and grab some lunch
and so I always knew that would be like around noon or oneish and then after that it was like you would start seeing
the parents come home between 5 6 630 and then Sundown those were like the three things that told me about what
time it was because I couldn't care any less what time it was as long as I was out having a good time well especially
they in a small town so you would you would definitely feel the traffic of people coming home and then you'd feel
the calmness of once everybody got home and then obviously the calmness of of night setting in so Kelly the older son
who's sent out by Heather and Wilma to go looking for the girls he comes back he goes out around 1:00 does not find
the girls now we have a situation where adults are going to start paying attention to time and we have Heather
who says she got into her car at 1220 and she herself started driving around canvasing the neighborhood going to
Elizabeth's school and the softball field but saw no sign of the girls so you can see what's happening here we're
starting to Fan out right go out a little bit further and further looking for the girls because we've covered some
ground already and nobody has seen them nobody's been able to locate them Misty remember she's lyrics mother says Wilma
called her at work around 2 p.m. to tell her that they could not find the girls so Misty called her ex Dan morsy they're
still technically married at this time but again they've not been together for quite some time from my understanding
Dan is living at his mother's home in waterl now we have three more people that will be joining the search rather
quickly so this is Dan who is the other father his son Dylan who was at home with Dan that day and his mother Vicki
so we got three people that show up now to assist in looking for the girls Misty
leaves work and went over to her sister's house just a short distance away I don't have a time marker for that
but we know that she receives the call around 2 p.m. and she lives very close to where her sister lives but this is
becoming a scary situation at this time Heather is still out driving around and she returns home around 220
unfortunately empty-handed and does not have any information either about where the girls are at this point the family
began driving all over Evansdale we got multiple family members multiple cars out driving around all over Evansdale
looking for both girls well Panic is also probably starting to set in what's weird and this will only be weird
because later we will have some information that will make this strange but they ended up at Meyers Lake this
was around 245 and in fact they're at Meers Lake they see other people there and they
start asking people whether they had seen two little girls on bikes now there is a man that they speak to and he says
he was walking on the trail and he said he did in fact see two little girls on bikes he said they were traveling west
on the bike trail but the time that he saw them was unclear he was a little uncertain of the time meanwhile Heather
made the decision to go to the Evansdale Police Department sometime between 2:30
and 3 p.m. and you know kudos to her because some people feel like oh these are just kids being kids we'll find them
we shouldn't bother the police with it no I think as soon as you start getting nervous as soon as you start Panic
setting in as the captain said that's when you you get somebody else involved I agree that's what they're there for
let them know we can't find our kids we're concerned can you help and like you said Heather is going to go to the
police to report the girl's missing she's at the police department around 2:30 to 300 p.m. most reports that we
have seen have the time of her iners visit to the Evansdale PD at 2:48 p.m. three Evansdale squad cars after
the after Heather's there she explains the situation three Evansdale squad cars were now scouring the area and checking
not just checking the area they go and check the home first and start Fanning out from there within half an hour we
have Blackhawk sheriff's deputies and Evansdale firefighters joining in on the effort on the search effort well I like
this a lot because like you said they go back and search the family home they're
not taking anybody's word for anything and that's not and as law enforcement that's what you're supposed to do hey
our our uh little girls are missing they were on their bikes okay well let's start in the house let's look make sure
nothing happened in the house and then we we go from there yeah and that seems silly some people were probably thinking
well they they wasted a little bit of time here and no that's that's common practice I cannot tell you I've I've had
10 to a dozen officers tell me that when we get a missing person's call if it's a
little kid 90% of the time believe it or not we find them inside the home they're
hiding somewhere in the home or everybody went out looking for little Johnny and while they were out looking
he came back home yeah he's just hanging out of his room well unfortunately that does not seem to be the situation
here and things are going to go from scary to incredibly scary within a matter of minutes because Elizabeth's
purse and both of the girls bicycles were found on a trail in the Southeast corner of Meyers Lake around 400 p.m.
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[Music] your me all right we are back cheers mates cheers mates tall cans in the air
cheers to you Captain mhm just before the break we said that the purse of one of the girls both of the bicycles
belonging to the girls were found on a trail in the Southeast corner of Meyers Lake around 400 p.m. that afternoon now
we already stated earlier that the family some of the family members went to that area area to
that Myers Lake location and were looking for the girls even before they were officially reported missing to law
enforcemen and this area is rather big so just because they were there before does not mean that the bikes weren't
already in that location you know the parents then report them missing the police start looking for the
girls they start by looking at the house and of course this is one of those situations that I wish I could tell you
that they found the girls at the house that day instead what we find are the bikes and the purse but no Elizabeth no
lyric to be found and unfortunately the finding of the bikes and the purse does not really give them any clues as to
where the girls could have been no other than the fact that they were out of their boundaries let's talk about what
we know about where the bikes were found so this Myers Lake covers 27 Acres with
water and is about 25 ft deep at its deepest parts the lake is a major recreational area for the people of
Evansdale it's stocked with fish has a boat ramp there's restrooms there a playground picnic areas with a grill all
things that you would expect to see at a large Park it's very scenic but it also
has a really nice paved bike path winding its way through 3/4 of a mile around the
lake according to a report in the Globe Gazette the girls bikes were found on the Evansdale nature trail right at the
Southeastern tip of the lake between two lines of chain link fence by the maintenance gate leading to
a rock Jetty and a water Outlet on the lake this gate was not locked photos show that this area of the paved
nature trail is straight and with the fence on both sides and the trees overhead it has almost like a tunnel
appearance right picture that you have fencing on both sides you have the trees overhead and underneath you have this
paved Scenic Trail Bike Trail right according to the girl's Aunt Tammy the bikes were found about 12T from the edge
of the water on the trail this will lead to the suspicions that the police have early on in the
investigation that being that the girls went into the lake and may have drowned or had some kind of accident in the lake
we can Circle back to that in a minute the investigators also found Elizabeth's purple purse and cell phone now we need
to note that this phone does not have any type of service from my understanding it was just used
for games it was used for her to play games now Captain when we covered this two years ago well more than two years
ago now you brought up some interesting questions about this phone and we wanted
to know if she could have been using this phone to communicate with anyone and I unfortunately do not have those
answers that Still Remains unclear to this day as we all know it doesn't require service if she's in an area that
she has Wi-Fi and if the phone has Wi-Fi capabilities right and she likely did have Wi-Fi capabilities to be playing
certain games on that phone doesn't doesn't require them to play all of them but certainly some of them yes but if
you have internet connection to play those games you have internet connection to possibly communicate with somebody
but to break down where they find the the bikes simply to me if if I'm in law enforcement or I'm part of the family
searching I'm seeing this scene of the bikes in the purse and going this is not good oh this I I'm leaning towards
something really bad happen at this point yeah if I see this scene I I agree with their concern of well maybe they
ended up in the lake you know they're 10 they're eight years old they're young that could be the situation the family's
quick to point out the law enforcement both of the girls knew how to swim the other thing that the family was
concerned about when the thought of drowning in the lake came up was the family was quick to point out look none
of their clothing none of their shoes are found we would expect our kids to take their shoes off at the very least
before going into the lake it was a very hot day that day I mean it was middle of
July so the lake makes some sense but I'm with you Captain if I see these bikes abandoned sitting
here when I was a kid I didn't go anywhere without if I left my bike unattended it
was in my friend's front yard or in somebody's garage it wasn't just leaving it in a public place where I couldn't
turn and look to see my bike at any time because I was you had a nice Mongoose bike I had a
dino we all had bikes that we didn't want somebody to come along and snatch well it's also your biggest possession
at the time yeah that's true that's true it was like my Corvette uh for my 10-year-old Corvette but but
for everybody for every kid that's like the biggest thing that you have the most
expensive and you're not going to just leave that so once you see these bikes laying on the side of the path you you
look around and you don't see any any signs of them anywhere this is bad and this is the
other thing that scares me too is the purse I think the purse might scare me more than finding the B bikes so the way
that this is described is that the purse was on the lake side of the fence about
10 ft to the east of where the bikes were found and about 2T from the fence officials
said now this location is interesting to me as cars can't get to this spot so what I mean by that is these
bikes are found in a location where someone couldn't just pull up and snatch and grab the girls you know snatch them
off of their bikes at this spot and drive off to me that's weird right and and I get maybe that's kind of why they
were honing in on the lake possibility early on there's a lot of accidents especially with children with water but
and it doesn't have to be that they went swimming it could just be simply that they're going to put their toes in the
water and then something bad happen right and we spent a lot of time talking about the searching of the lake in our
original coverage so if you want to check that out and some of the other details that we won't get into this time
around because we covered it so good before those are episodes 393 and 394 we're going to try awesome well but
this time what we will want to do is to dive into some things that weren't discussed that we didn't get to or
anything that has changed in our thoughts and feelings about this case since that time well that's one of the
things that I find very fascinating with these cases that aren't solved right away and we're coming up on 10 years but
these cases maybe they don't have answers but they continue to evolve right and when these girls are missing
and this case first broke we had some decent coverage of this missing person's case on the Nancy Grace show and I found
both of these accounts to to be very insightful regarding where the bikes were found and a description of how the
uh bikes were when when found and this comes from two reporters so the first reporter was a man named Jim Spelman and
Spelman said what I find so fascinating is the geography of where the bikes were
found because again it's this kind of deadend area and if there was an abduction that happened how would you
get two girls all of the way to the end of and he cuts off and then says it's a 10-minute walk from the end of this bike
path at the very least to the end of where you might be able to get to a car or something like that okay that's
awfully insightful think about the distance that that must be from where the location of the bikes were to where
you could possibly have any type of vehicle to put the girls into and drive off with them he's saying in his opinion
that at the very least he believes it to be about a 10-minute walk from where the
bikes were found to the end of the bike path where a car or a vehicle would be and I'm not trying to crap all over
their point because I do think it's important to point out but the girls could have already put down their bikes
and they could be walking around the water so at the time of abduction if they were abducted by that
area and put into a vehicle or coh you know cohorted into a vehicle or or threatened to get into the vehicle
they could have already been closer to to that side easier area to be abducted well yeah and I don't think that this
means I I just like hearing the details of getting a better description of where
these bikes were found by this Jim Spellman because I don't think that it indicates that they weren't abducted at
this location as you pointed out they could have been on foot they could have set their bike bikes down just to look
around Mill about what have you someone bad guy crosses their path decides to take them and walks them controls them
lures them coerces them to his vehicle which is 10 minutes away it is fascinating to me though that in the
course of that walk we don't have an eyewitness or an ear witness that says they saw something
strange they saw something troubling or heard anything of concern around that time right the thing again though to me
with the purse that scares me is the purse the way that it's described almost sounds like you have the bikes here and
I know the purse is only like 10 feet away but the way that that description reads to me Captain is that the purse is
on the other side of the fence well chill out you already get in a colonel fire pants and it that to me sounds
like oh snap either these kids like ho the fence and then something bad happened when they got over there she
immediately drops her purse that seems unlikely what seems more likely to me is if in fact the location of where the
bikes were found if that is in direct relation to the abduction site if they were abducted there this purse its
location it feels like to me like like a perpetrator grabbed it with and tossed it with the attention of of tossing it
as far as he could or or just tossing it out of the area to free up an additional
hand to control the girls it it it seems it seems all very weird it's a it's a very strange situation to kind of try to
dissect now another reporter his name is Jesse Gavin went on to discuss the likelihood of someone abducting the
girls from the highway side of the trail right you have these fences right that are on both sides of this bike trail on
one side of one fence is the lake on one side of the other fence is the highway so we already have this other reporter
who's talking a little bit about where the bikes are found but this reporter is talking in direct relation to the
highway side of the trail and they go on to say apparently there was a hole in the fence somewhere along this section
of the trail that was the result of a man losing control of his car on the highway and crashing through the fence
so this is not a complete fence at this point due to some damage from this single car accident the reporter said
quote well like Jim said it wouldn't be the most likely scenario obviously that is kind of an area that's closed off to
main roads since it's a bike trail obviously it's very close to an interstate but it would be kind of tough
to get to that Interstate the other thing you've got to keep in mind about that interstate is it's being worked on right
now there's a lot of construction activity going on right there so there's going to be backed up traffic traffic is
going to be slowed down so any kind of suspicious activity that happens in that area it's going to be seen by somebody
it's going to be seen by a lot of people people driving along the highway would surely have noticed a car stopped along
the roadside side and possibly two little girls entering or being placed in a vehicle after walking through a hole
in the fence he goes on to say and remind us all that after all it was broad daylight back to your point about
the the purse being 10 ft away to me okay if it's on the other side of the fence fine but just it being 10 ft away
it kind of shows that these bikes weren't placed down that the that the purse wasn't just placed down because if
if I'm riding a bike and I have a purse and I and I get off the bike and I don't
want to carry the purse around I'm just going to lay it right down beside the bike yeah and the thing here too that I
I want to kind of throw out there is just because the bikes are found there and the purse was found there and
ultimately we know that they are found dead unfortunately many miles away from this Myers Lake
location so an abduction is the only thing that makes sense but just because the bikes and the purse are
found in this location doesn't mean that that's exactly where or has to be where
the abduction took place no because let's say the abduction took place in in um close by
neighborhood the abduction happens gets the girls into the vehicle has their bikes with them in the vehicle goes down
to this park grabs both of their grabs both of their bicycles it's a 10-minute walk dumps them there to to throw people
off hey now look around this park like you said it was what do you say 20 some acres big mhm I mean that's a that's a
big area to start searching that that kind of throws people off the scent yeah the thing here too is you know if
somebody knows that area let's pretend for a moment that the abductor knows this area somewhat well they don't even
have to know it very well actually at all I I would think looking at the the the location and where this kind of
takes place but if you have the ability to do so it it would be difficult because if you just abducted two girls
now you have all these moving parts and pieces of trying to conceal the bikes at
the same time but if you had the ability to control them and conceal the bikes at
the same time it does make a lot of sense right maybe the girls were abducted close by the road or right at
the roadside before before even getting to that bike trail and that bike trail is right there and you go you know what
if Mom and Dad or anybody comes looking for these girls they're going to be out in a vehicle driving around looking for
the girls and if the bikes are found right here by the roadside they're going to be alerted to something bad
immediately at the very least I could take these bikes and tuck them away back in the middle of this Trail here where
they wouldn't be seen from the road and whoever's out looking for these girls will just keep driving yeah that's an
excellent point knowing that people will be searching from a car and what is going to be in their eyesight so we
spent all this time here Captain talking about what were the girls bikes doing by
Myers Lake anyway and we should be pointing out here as well that Myers Lake is not
extremely close to their home in fact it's it's beyond wherever that imaginary line was that the girls were allowed to
be riding their bikes and this is according to the family Myers Lake is 1 and2 miles away from the Collins's house
again the girls were not supposed to be riding there Misty cook said on Nancy Grace's show they are not allowed to
just ride freely for hours or until dark they do have a little bit of Freedom so
they're allowed to go you know maybe two or three blocks away and stay within those blocks an hour check back in is
kind of the standard that we hold with them and mostly they stick to it so it was surprising to see that they had come
this far if indeed they did ride this far she's obviously referring to the lake Misty also said in an interview
this with kwwl.com I'm surprised they rode their bikes this far but their kids and later
Heather and Drew Collins told the media that they did not believe the girls would have biked that far on their own
well this is leading to what you were saying before about maybe that the perpetrator then took their bikes and
and placed them in this area on purpose if and this you know these cases they're
not there's all kinds of horrible possibilities that we that we have to kind of talk about and and go over
here and so a lot of this is not comfortable to say a lot of this is not comfortable to hear but if you have a
situation where the girls are incapacitated a single offender would have the ability to move those bikes the
other thing too is if you had complete control of the victims you might have the possibility of having them move the
bikes for you at your direction right or if there's more than one offender one offender is staying with the girls
wherever that location be likely a vehicle while the other offender is moving these items that they don't want
to have any part of but not out of the realm of possibility that they rode their bikes this far because if this
eyewitness is correct they saw them a mile and a half to two miles away from their home on Gilbert
Drive correct and correct me if I'm wrong here Captain this reminds me a little bit of the West Memphis 3
case a lot didn't we have a situation there where the bikes were concealed yes and some theorize that the
bikes were concealed maybe even after the boys were already attacked to later kind of hinder
finding the victims at all because if you find the bikes in that location then one would start to go well maybe they
are here somewhere or were here in this location at some point yeah and in that case
there there was a pipeline and that pipeline really kind of signal to everybody that that's the back half of
the woods so I think having those bikes being seen at the pipeline it was like the the perpetrators are leaving the
crime scene they see the bikes and they go okay well we need to hide these because this is basically advertising
sign to go go back there and look but not just that just uh I mean different in some ways because in this case there
was no school today and and they're out right in their and and so the timeline I think is a
little more blurry because at least when you have a case where children get home
from school you have a definitive starting point I'm not saying that I don't believe anybody in their family
but you have to uh question question everything in this case well there we do have a
situation and you're right Captain the situation is this we have Grandma who is in charge of essentially five kids at
that time right and so yes I don't believe that these times are spot on I do believe that they're fairly accurate
and I say that based off of the fact that we have such a short window of time so even if the times are off they can't
be off by so much because we have a lot of activity happening really within the course of 4 and 1/2 hours because she
says that they left the house on their bikes around 11:30 and then she says that she believes she saw the two kids
still alive and well right around on their bikes at 12:15 we have those other possible sightings other uh sightings of
the girls on their bikes we have the bikes being found by family and law enforcement at 400 p.m. so that gives us
just that little window of 4 and 1/2 hours now after the bikes were found fortunately the family sitting there
watching as crime SC SC tape is being put in place the officers are closing off access to this Trail so they can
scour the area and look for more evidence or look for anything at all any clues that might tell them where the
girls could be right investigators spent several hours out of sight you know they're they're in on this Trail down on
the trail where the bikes were but the family members cannot see them again it's about a 10-minute walk from where
the bikes were to where uh the trail kind of end and pops out there while this is going on the family members held
a vigil outside of the taped off area if anything other than the bikes or lyrics purse were found and we know
the phone was found it has never been disclosed and just to be clear and and I I feel bad CU I'm jumping back in time
here a little bit but when you're talking about that the grandmother's time might not be completely accurate I
don't think in any way I don't get the sense that it's she's not accurate because she's lying or trying to cover
anything up I just think it's because she's simply in charge of multiple kids and there's a lot going on she's busy
yeah she's busy and the other thing we need to point out too those other eyewitnesses that said they saw the
girls on their bikes and a little further from the home at later times in 12:15 that kind of backs up Wilma's
story that that what she says did in fact happened and if in fact 12:15 was the last time that she saw them well
then Wilma couldn't have done anything to these girls she's not responsible for anything here because we have other
eyewitnesses that see them after the fact those other eyewitnesses tell me that nothing weird nothing strange went
on inside the home and later somebody's trying to conceal what happened by getting rid of the girls getting rid of
the bikes staging some kind of scenario to look like something else took place right now continuing on our timeline for
Friday the 13th by 4:40 p.m. we have emergency calls that are going out to the residents of Evansdale this is to
notify them of the missing girls right we have two girls that are missing we need help finding them if you see either
girl call us tell tell us let us know officers also began canvasing the lake neighborhoods and the media was notified
by 5:30 p.m. so a lot of things are taking place very rapidly here and I like to see all of this activity and all
this effort we have boats that were put into the water on Meers Lake that begin scanning the surface we have divers with
a local search and rescue organization that are called in to start searching the lake police and firefighters from
the bigger city of waterl next door they come by and they are now assisting the Blackhawk County sheriff's deputies as
well as the Evansdale police department and we also get the Iowa State Police that joined in on searching wooded areas
so there's a lot of wooded areas in this General location and many people stayed out
searching all night long they even brought in some L Richie they brought in a plane so they could do some searches
from from the air and now we have the national Center for missing exploited children that were notified of the
girl's disappearance by 8:00 p.m. by by the next morning we have a representative from the national Center
of missing and exploited children on the ground in Evansdale boots on the ground in
Evansdale assisting in the search for the girls hear me calling your [Applause] [Music]
name me I can't keep it thanks for joining us here in the garage we have so much more to get to
tomorrow so join us back here same bat time zat Channel that's right Captain such an intriguing case such a tragic
case join us back here in the garage tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't
[Music] [Applause] live is it possible to predict the unpredictable can 3D printed life-size
organ models help to map out complex surgeries ahead of time is it possible it already is right here Mayo Clinic you
know where to go

The Evansdale Murders - Ten Years Later /// Part 1 /// 595

Part 1 of 2

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What could be more innocent, more everyday America, than two little girls setting off on a bike ride to explore the neighborhood? Something they had done countless times before. Except this time, they did not come home. This week we re-visit the still unsolved double murder case of Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Colins. We covered this case for the first time over two years ago and with the unfortunate ten year anniversary since these two wonderful and bright little girls were taken we felt compelled to give this another look and hope for some renewed interest and awareness of this still unsolved case. This case has been compared to the Delphi case countless times as there are many similarities. Just like the Delphi case someone knows something. If you have any information about the circumstances surrounding the disappearance and deaths of Lyric Cook-Morrissey and Elizabeth Collins, please call theEvansdale Police (https://evansdale.govoffice.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7BC382F505-BDE5-4CF8-9228-DE5E15DC7960%7D) tip line at 232-6682 orCedar Valley Crime Stoppers (https://cvcrimestop.com/) at 855-300-8477. A $150,000 reward, raised privately and by the FBI, is available for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses the unsolved murders of Elizabeth Collins and Lyric Cook, focusing on their disappearance and the ongoing investigation.

Key points

The Disappearance of Two Girls. Eight-year-old Elizabeth Collins and her cousin, 10-year-old LC Cook, go missing while biking in Evansdale, Iowa.
Five Years Unsolved. The case of Libby German and Abigail Williams remains unsolved five years later, raising questions about the killer's identity.
The Search Begins. As time passes, the family grows increasingly concerned and begins searching for the girls.
Mysterious Discovery at Meyers Lake. The girls' bikes and purse are found, raising alarming questions about their whereabouts.
The Puzzling Location of the Purse. The purse's location raises suspicions about the circumstances of the girls' disappearance.
Community Vigil. Family members hold a vigil outside the taped-off area as investigators search for clues.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It must have been the Devil Himself that did it.

Describing the heinous crimes committed against the girls.

4:00WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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