The Very Best of True Crime Garage ////// 453 | Forensic Files

Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you were doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
with me as always is a man who likes a top five countdown more than Newman loves Drake's coffee cake. Here is our
captain. Yeah, that's your big boy. It's good to be seen and it's good to see you. Thanks
for listening. Thanks for telling a friend. Today we are drinking one of our favorite holiday treats. That's right,
it's that time of year. Time for Christmas ale by the good folks over at Great Lakes Brewing Company. They call
this a winter ale. I call it Christmas ale because it's just too damn special to be called a winter ale. I like mine
ice cold in a frosty mug. This beer has a bright and uplifting taste with hints of fresh honey, cinnamon, and ginger.
Garage grade four and a half bottle caps out of five. And here's a cheers to some
bright and uplifting garage guys and gals. First up, a Christmas cheers to Jenny O
in Monrovia, California. Yeah, Jenny O, we like you dear. And a big shout out to
Jill in Hall, Iowa. Here's a big thank you to Denise in Loveland, Colorado. Denise, we like your gym. And a big
shout out to Chris in Bloomington, Indiana. Here we go, Captain. We have a cheers
for Allison in Vallejo, California. And last but certainly not least, we have Catherine Q in Glen Burnie, Maryland.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this week's beer fund. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this beer
fund for the entire year. We thank all of you. Yeah, b e e r r u n beer run. Thank you for the support.
Thank you for listening. 2020 was tough on everybody, but you guys made it a lot
easier on us. So, much love to you. And that is enough for the last time of 2020
of the business. All right, everybody gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some
true crime. All right, today we are talking about the best of all time. That's right, the
best of all time for True Crime Garage, the Captain's favorite shows, the Colonel's favorite shows. Hopefully,
they're your favorite shows as well. We're going to have a little a little party. So, let the drinks flow, my
friends. Let the good times roll, they say. Yeah, a little bonus show for everybody for the Christmas and holiday
break. But, I wanted to say something real quick before we get to the party. I just something that irritated me just
a little bit. And I just thought, "What's this world coming to?" And then it kind of corrected itself. And all So,
here here it is. Time Life magazine put uh Biden and Harris as the person of the
year. Again, this is not a political statement, so don't get this twisted. That's fine if you think they're the
person of the year. And but this bothered me because in this time of this pandemic, there's been so many other
people that have been very important to this pandemic and what everybody's been going through and
dealing with in 2020. But when I went to go rant about this, I went to Time Life magazine and and if
you go to the readers poll, the readers said that they would have voted for essential workers, nurses, doctors,
delivery people, grocery store employees. Those have been the real heroes of 2020. And I'll go a little
step further. Anybody that's had to work from home, that had to struggle with that, anybody that had to work from home
and had to also step up and be the teacher for your parent for your kids, all the small
business owners that have been suffering through this time and some people have lost their business.
Those all those people that I just named have been the real heroes of 2020 and that give me hope
in 2021. So that's my little rant. Not to bring down the party. Now it's time to party, but to all those people I
cheers you and we see you. Here in the garage, we see you and we love you. See you. Rant over. Cracking of the beer
sounds delicious. All right, we are here to talk about our top five each. The Colonel's top five,
the Captain's top five for all time True Crime Garage shows. I'm going to throw out a couple of honorable mentions, ones
that certainly crossed my mind basically because of one very simple fact. Is that
several cases that we've covered over the years, we've actually been asked by law enforcement, "Hey, would you take a
look at this case? Would you cover it on your show because we know that the garage reaches a lot of ears and we need
some help." So, a couple of shout-outs on some of those cases. They were cases as follows. The Invisible Man, we were
asked by the Sheriff's Department in Indiana to help them locate an individual that they believed to have
been committed several crimes and been on the run stealing identities and such. Sharice Bingham Walker, murdered wife
who was murdered in a park and the Indiana State Police asked us if we would cover that case. Taylor Robinson
from Northeast Ohio. Tyler Davis. Now, we weren't necessarily asked by law enforcement to cover that
case. Tyler Davis went missing from the greater Columbus area and what happened was the Captain jumped into action and
reached out to his wife who was with him the night that he went missing and said,
"Hey, would you would you talk to me on the phone or would you want to do an interview for the show?" And then he
covered his bases by checking with local law enforcement, talking to them about the night that Tyler went missing and
and saying, "Hey, should I do this?" And of course law enforcement said, "Yes, we we want to
hear what she has to say." And then of course the Barbara Blatnik case which was one that we covered in
July of 2019. That one is on my honorable mentions simply because it's a case that the
porch light project helped uh to solve and I I had said when we started this little garage adventure
over 5 years ago that, you know what? One day I hope to solve a case and and I and I
heard some chuckles in the room when I said that and I understand it was maybe something cheesy or just wishful
thinking, but in a way the garage has helped several cases. We've been We've been lucky because
we've covered some cases that were unsolved at the time and later were solved, some soon after, and the captain
and I both believe that if you throw some good energy out into the universe, sometimes it boomerangs back and and
good things happen. So In all fairness, we're chuckling at you cuz you're naked running around in the
garage, sweating, saying, "I'm going to solve every case." And so that's why we were chuckling. We weren't chuckling at
you solving cases, we're chuckling at your pee-pee. None None of that is true. Or maybe it is. Okay.
know. Captain had a Colonel had a rant. Who goes first, Captain? You or I? You go first. Okay, I I just want to
start off by saying I had to redo my list. This is the second list I did because
I went back to the beginning and I think because of like nostalgia and stuff my top five was like
all the cases were like within our first 100 episodes. And then I thought well, I hear every
day that our show gets better and better. So that probably means some of the shows
from back in the day were awful. Which is totally fine. But I think it was like a nostalgia
thing that I was like, "Oh, I remember that. I remember the good times." So, I had those on the list and then
eventually I was like, "Wait, all these are within the first 100 shows. I need to
This can't be right." So, then I went back and did the list correctly. So, mine is the
best list of all time. Yours, yeah, it's all right. Your list is all right. Well,
one of my favorite things, one of my favorite emails that we get is from people that say, "Hey, I've been
listening since the very beginning." So, those people I love. I just want to wrap them up with both arms and give
them a a a big bear hug, sit down and drink a couple beers with them and talk some true crime. But,
the thing that they always say, "You guys have come a long way." You I I enjoyed you in the beginning. I've been
there since the beginning, but you guys have gotten much better at what you do. So, we appreciate the the um
the pat on the back and the kind words and the encouragement. It's because of all of you out there, all of our awesome
garage army friends that that keep the show going. So, Wait, but the funny thing is long time listeners, it's been
so long since they heard those early episodes, they kind of forgot. It's the ones that go, "I just found your show a
month ago. I love it and now I'm going back to the beginning." And I go, "Please don't. You might not make it
back." Cherry pick. not Cherry pick along the way. Maybe cherry pick using our suggestions from
this show right here, from our little countdown. So, my number five, Captain, I went with
the Colonial Parkway murders. We covered this case in July of 2018 in episodes 226 and 227.
This made my top five for a multitude of reasons. One, that the case itself is a
fascinating case. It's It's one of my one of my favorite uh cases as far as unsolved serial cases go. It's one that
you would deem a red light case. You know, the captain came up with red light cases. Cases that pop into your mind
randomly or if you pull up and you get stopped in traffic and you're you're sitting at a red light, a case that pops
up in your mind. Well, the Colonial Parkway murders certainly is a red light case for me. And it's one that that is
so fitting to be a red light case because it's the slayings of at least eight people by a serial killer or
killers along the Colonial Parkway in in Virginia. I found this on the web that I
serial killer wrote to us. Jeez. There's There's my assistant right there. Yeah, there you go. Hey.
Yeah. Nobody asked you. Yeah. Why don't you shut your mouth when you're talking to me?
So, these cases go back to 1986 and went through 1989. And again, I think these cases are very
solvable and that's part of the reason that the mystery intrigues me so much. But,
what was interesting in putting together these cases and putting together the shows was I got
the opportunity to speak with Bill Thomas, who is the brother of one of the victims, Kathy Thomas. She's one of the
first victims of of the eight. And it was intriguing to speak with him and to hear all of the behind-the-scenes
information that he has learned over the years. He's worked with local law enforcement. He's worked with with the
FBI. His family and the other families have been very, very involved in these cases.
And again, I think that they are solvable. In fact, Bill and I set out to do a interview show
and he and I hit it off so well. We spoke for about 4 hours and just going round and round about all
kinds of different cases, but mainly the Colonial Parkway murders. And by the end
of it, I told the captain, I said, "Unfortunately, it was a brilliant conversation.
So fascinating. Bill's such an interesting guy. And he knows so much about the case." I
said, "We can't use this for an interview show because several times he said, 'You You can't
You can't say this on the show. You can't tell anybody this. This is information we're not allowed to release
to the public.'" And there were things along the way I was telling him, "Bill, this is stuff that uh
you know, what I'm about to tell you, I'm not supposed to be telling, you know, I can't use it on the show
either." And by the end of it, I thought I got so turned around I couldn't figure
out what we were allowed to use and what we could not or what we could use. So, Bill is a fascinating guy. He continues
to work on this case. The case is fascinating itself. The Colonial Parkway murders. Again,
I think it could be solved. I think it could be solved very soon. And it's a case that we covered in episodes 226 and
227. Well, and like you said, you're talking to Bill, not just the brother of a victim, but
a lot of the family members of victims become experts in the case themselves. So, that's really been an honor in the
last five or six years of doing the show, how many family members we've met from cases and how knowledgeable they
have been and also how supportive they've been of the true crime podcast world and really supportive on
what we're trying to do to shed light on the cases that's been such an honor to be a part of the last
few years. Well, and in this case in particular, Bill is is what I would call the expert
in the Colonial Parkway murders because because the murders happened in in several different jurisdictions,
there were three or four different agencies that were involved in the investigation of these crimes. And I say
three or four because there are a couple of other murders that are suspected to be linked, but have never been 100%
confirmed to be linked to these other murders. So, because you have different investigating agencies,
Bill Thomas has become the expert. He almost knows more than law enforcement because he has a good working knowledge
of all of the cases where the agencies that have worked uh this Colonial Parkway case, they've only walked worked
their specific case, not all of them. So, Bill is is the encyclopedia for the Colonial Parkway murders. And and
regardless, you know, he's still heartbroken over the death of his sister, and he's heartbroken that he
couldn't get answers for his parents in that regard, but but also Bill's a fascinating, brilliant
person in his in his own right away from the case. So, it was like you said, it's
um it's been an honor to meet a lot of these people along the way. Number five from the captain.
Amy Mihaljevic episode number 22. And how this episode went down was we had James Renner,
true crime author, come down. We went to a studio that I used to work at I used to intern at a music studio.
We decided to do the interview there. We started off by doing an interview and a
round table discussion about Maura Murray's case. And then you and James continued to have
an interview about Amy Mihaljevic's case. I went into the next room. We turned down once we knew you guys
were working. Um we just hit record, turned the volume down. I caught up with my old boss and
other interns I worked with cuz I knew I had to edit the episode later. So then they send me the file.
I edit the episode, but during the editing process, I thought, "Wow, this is a Wow, this is a powerful episode. So much
so that once I was done editing it and I uploaded it to our podcast feed, I went and hit play on my
podcast app and listened to the whole thing again um in its, you know, obviously better
edited form. It was really fascinating to me and I think it really showed the I think the passion you had for true
crime in general, but but the passion that you had for the Amy Mihaljevic case and also Renner's passion for true crime
and Renner's passion for the Amy Mihaljevic case and I and I remember thinking that that's important
because when we started doing this, we didn't know where it was going to go or, you know, how how involved I would be in
the actual show or would I just be sitting on the sideline hitting record. But I think this was a kind of a wake-up
moment early on where I said, "Look, people are very passionate about these cases and I need to take
uh the production side just as serious, the making of the music just as serious and and and also the research just as
serious as any other individual would. I would like to give a shout-out to our buddy Joe who who is the owner of that
recording studio. One It's a It's a wonderful studio. They are doing gangbusters work over there. But while
we were recording in between breaks, I got to see Joe and I hadn't seen him in years. And of course
the captain is is good friends with Joe. And Joe was forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn here, but I would say
one of your mentors back in the day or at least someone who taught you some of the old industry tricks that he has
experienced and and learned along the way. But yeah, he never taught me tricks, but he kept me alive for several
years by feeding me. So yeah, Joe Viers' studio, it's in a little town outside of Columbus called
Grove City. The studio was called Sonic Lounge. He's produced people like Boba Flex, 21 Pilots,
and many other bands. He's a amazing engineer and producer. So if you're looking for somebody to work with, check
out Sonic Lounge and producer Joe Viers. Tell him the captain sent you. Now, a shout-out to Joe that I wanted to say
here is um during the break, I had mentioned to him I said, "Joe, you know, growing up in the area back in
the the late '90s, one of my favorite local bands was the band that Joe was in, Digital Black.
And I was just, you know, throwing an old by the way, here's an attaboy for you. Joe, I I loved your band Digital
Black during the day. Back in the day, me and my buddies would go up to the Alrosa or to Polaris Amphitheater,
different places, and we saw Joe's band play several times. And the next time I saw the captain
Joe had gave a couple of digital black CDs for for Nick and I jammed it out rocked
it out in my car for for several weeks. So big shout out to Joe. CDs and I said what are these?
Like how are how is he going to play these? What do you do with this? How does this go into your phone?
So yeah, that was not my number five. Well, that's a perfect segue because my number four is the Amy Mihaljevic case
as well and as you pointed out we covered that in episode 22 where I sat down with James Renner who wrote the
only book that I'm aware of for Amy's case Amy my search for her killer by James Renner. That was episode 22. We
did that in March of 2016. It's been a it's been a minute as they say but we also covered her case in episode 308 309
and then again in 345 and 346. Really what you get with the 308 and 309 episodes is a much more extended version
of the interview we did with James Renner. It tells it fills in a lot of the blanks that we just didn't have time
to get to in episode 22. And then episodes 345 and 346 we go through some of the suspects and by name
and why they are suspects and how they became how they got onto the radar in Amy
Mihaljevic's case. I think we went through five suspects in those two episodes and there are certainly some
others that we can get to and maybe we'll get back to Amy's case at some point. For those of you who are not aware she
was a 10-year-old victim who was abducted from the Bay Village Square Shopping Plaza back in 1989 and she was
missing for a couple of months before her body was found about 50 miles away. I think the FBI website says 48.7
miles away from the shopping plaza. But she was found in a field in Ashland County, Ohio. And the case remains
unsolved to this day. It's one that we've said all along we think it it is solvable. We think that they will solve
it someday. It's just a matter of Yeah, but in fairness, you say that about every case.
I don't know. I don't know that I say that about every case. I her You said it a lot.
is depressing to me because there are certainly days and certainly time periods where I've gone in and out of
this case and walked away at times going, "I don't think they'll ever solve it." So, it's one that I hope and pray
that they do, but yeah, it's a very interesting case. It's unique for several reasons and it's
one that's I feel like it's really grown in popularity as far as the true crime community goes
over the last few years. It was certainly on the national level back in '89 and '90 when the case first broke,
partly because it's it's always kind of been tied to the Jacob Wetterling case just because those two victims both went
missing within a week of one another from two different states and at the time people thought, "Is there any
chance that these are connected?" cuz they were roughly the same age. But yeah, Amy Mihaljevic, I I share your
feelings there, Captain. I I think we did really good stuff on the on the Amy episodes. All right, number four coming
at you from the Captain. Miss Elizabeth, um BTK. Mhm. This would be a series that we
did. Episode 204 to episode 207. And I really just think as far as like serial killer profiles, it was very
extensive. This is one as far as research goes, you know, I listened to several other shows. I
watched some documentaries. I even I think it one book, maybe two books. But what was fascinating to me as we
were creating the episodes for everybody was after all that research and thinking,
I'm I'm an expert on this case. I learned something every episode. And so I I really that's a tip of the
hat to you where I went, okay, well, the colonel beat me again. But uh I thought
it was fascinating profile of really a a monster of an individual. Well, I never look at it as a a
competition because I would come up short every time. The music you do every week is
That's what she said. Yeah, that's right. That is what she said. And and reminds me every day. But um the music
that you do for each and every episode is fantastic. So, of course I would come up short. But yeah, BTK was was
fascinating stuff. Really good episodes and I thought we did a great job of laying everything out and really telling
the full story, as much of it as we possibly could. And it was I'm not going to lie. It was a little heavy.
A little heavy on the heart, a little heavy on the emotions to live in BTK world for a week or two. Yeah, two
weeks. Yeah, it's something that we've always looked into throughout the years, even before we
started the show. I mean, you BTK is he's you know, like Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy. There's these
there's these names, there's these P O S's that um are just known to everybody. So, of course we we knew a
good deal about him, but it was it was interesting to dive into BTK world for a couple
weeks, but it was also heavy on the heart, heavy on the mind. All right, we're back to the parte.
Little bonus episode for everybody coming at you, changing your mind. That's right.
That's right. Best of all time. Cheers to the people up front, cheers to the people in the back. Big shoutout to
the people What's funny about this list is we we we also took a look at other true crime shows and we we're going to
let their episodes, you know, be a part of this best of all time podcast, but what we found was we were better than
everybody. And so we wanted all the trophies. It's basically like we're giving ourselves
uh like a award show, like the Oscars or the Grammys, but only we get to win and
we get to give the speeches every time. Thank you. I would like to thank my mother and my father and
so many other people. And then the music starts playing. Right. All right, so I think we're to
number three. Number three on my list here, Captain, I have the Delphi murders. This is the unsolved
homicide of Abigail Williams and Liberty German from February 14th of 2017. This was an interesting undertaking for
the garage, for the Captain and myself, because this was one of the cases and one of the first times that we decided
to tackle a case that was relatively new. You know, this case uh unfortunately went down in February,
mid-February of 2017, and here we were in the garage, I think the the first week of May,
covering it for the first time. A lot of people had not covered the case, had not
touched it, and if you saw anything on this case, it was not more than a 9- or 10-minute clip regarding what little
information was out there at the time, and still to this day, little information out there because the
police, the law enforcement, are holding so much back. But, we had said we first
covered this in May of 2017 in episodes 110 and 111, but we revisited this case several times throughout the years. Um
in July of 2019, in episodes 320 all the way through 323, we did four episodes in a row in 2019,
and then we had our discussion show, episode 395. So, this is a case that is always on the garage radar. It's It's
always on the radar for our listeners, for our garage army out there, and it's certainly
on the radar of the captain and the colonel. This is a case that there's probably, I would say, 10 or 12 cases,
captain, that we seem to talk about a lot off mic, and this is a case that's crept onto our other show, Off the
Record, several times. And I think that this is a case until it's solved, I Here's what I look forward to. I can't
wait for the day that we can let's get a 12-pack really ice cold and and do a great show
on the when they solve it. When they think of the 12 pack is going to help with that great show.
When when they solve this case, I want you and I to be sitting in the garage talking about it and and telling all the
details that hopefully will come out once they finally solve this case. And to to tell you what this case means to
me, a little peek behind the curtain here, I am a subscriber to the Carroll County's weekly newspaper. I have it
delivered all the way to my house here in Ohio. Every week I get their newspaper because I'm looking at the
pictures in that newspaper looking for bridge guy every week from the garage hoping to find this POS. No, but yeah,
no, it's a good one because it's at the time people weren't really talking about it,
but I remember the NFL was put in a billboards all over the country and so we kind of felt like
well, it's our duty to do a show. Not that we're we're going to cover it the best,
but we can cover it the best we can and we can get people talking about it. And I had I ended up meeting several
people that worked the case and they were saying from the little coverage that they're getting through
the news and by us covering it and the NFL's work by getting these billboards put up that they were able to arrest
over 200 pedophiles that weren't registered. And so that made me feel like our our show
was doing something positive in the world. So, my number three is Brandon Lawson 911 tape
episode 85 and 86. And it's simply everybody when you look at the case, the 911 call is very important. So, I think
one, other people covered this case and we thought, how can we do it Okay, well, we can break down this call.
And I know that several people that have and several crime experts that have started to look into the case
have reached out and said, "Hey, I've listened to your episode why when you guys are dissecting
when you guys are dissecting the 911 call and they've used it because they didn't have the tool to slow down things
or to uh speed them up or to to try to clean up any of the 911 calls. So, they've
been able to use our episodes almost as a investigative tool for them as they start looking into this case.
For those unfamiliar with that case, this is another case where at the time very little information out there. So,
when we talk about Brandon going missing and the events leading up to the time that he went missing,
we're talking about that for just 15-20 minutes of an episode and then we spend an hour and 45 minutes or so just
dissecting Brandon's 911 call because he calls into 911 that night and he's hurried. He's out of breath. It's hard
to decipher what he is saying at times and so many people have looked at that case
and said, "If we could just figure out what Brandon was saying, we might be able to
figure out what happened to this young man." And so, yes, it was it was an interesting undertaking and an
interesting angle to take with that case. We had heard so many people say that. We said, "You know what? Let's
turn on the mics. Let's lock ourselves in the garage and let's just dissect this 911 call and see if we can figure
out what it is that Brandon was saying and maybe they can figure out what happened to this young
Well, I think like I said, the idea too is is bringing something new and different to
the investigation or to the true crime world itself. I I wish um I wish more people would do stuff like
that and instead of just you know, knowing that a case has been covered 500 times by other shows, you know, are
you bringing something extra to the table or something different to the table? Um
and I think if we if we viewed cases like that more often, um and and and your opinion can be something new, but I
think if people did that more often, we might be further along in some of the investigations of these cases. Number
two for me, Captain, is and I've been told by many people that this is some of our best work. It's the
boys on the tracks, which was a four-part series that we did back in March and April of 2017,
episodes 93, 94, 95, and 96. And the way that this came about was originally, we were thinking we would just do two
episodes on this case. And once we started getting into it, once we got eyeballs deep into the case itself,
we quickly determined this has got to be four parts. There's just too much to tell. There's too much to this story.
There's so much beneath the surface. And it kind of came about by I read a book by Mara Leveritt. Mara Leveritt is
one of, in my opinion, the most underrated true crime author of our time. She wrote um
The Devil's Knot, which is about the West Memphis Three case, and she wrote The Boys on the Tracks. She's not She
does not have an extensive catalog of true crime books, and that might be why she's
not so well heard of or or well known or and is underrated in my opinion. She's been a long-time writer for
Arkansas magazine, and I believe that that takes up most of her time. But, if you get a chance, read any of her true
crime books. Both of the two that we just mentioned are fantastic, really fascinating deep dives into both cases.
But, when I first started reading the book, The Boys on the Tracks, I thought, where do I know this? Cuz I kind of just
randomly picked up the book. I I knew her work from The Devil's Knot, and I thought, I want to read everything she
she's wrote about. I pick it up, I'm reading it, and I'm like, where have I This case seems
familiar. And then I remembered it was covered back in the day, a long time ago, on
Unsolved Mysteries, in a episode that they titled Friends Till the End. And this is the still
unsolved, and it's When you listen to these episodes, if you haven't already, you're going to go, how the hell is this
thing not solved? But, it's the unsolved murders of Don Henry and Kevin Ives from
back in the day, 1987, in Bryant, Arkansas. And, as I said, I was very proud of the work that we did
on these episodes, and it's still it still brings a big smile to the old colonel's face
today when when I still I still hear or still get emails from people saying, I tell everybody I know about your show.
I do what the captain says. I listen and I tell a friend. And I always tell my friends, start with
Boys on the Tracks. There it's a There's a really good theme song. That's right. Pat myself on the back.
Thank you for giving me the Grammy for Boys on the Tracks theme song. I appreciate it. I'd like to thank
your mother. And I'd like to thank Frank and I'd like to thank um alcohol. Yeah, we don't thank alcohol enough on
the show. Okay. So yeah, um Wait, did I tell you that's my number two, too? You just did.
Okay, there we go. I I Well, you blabbed on for so long that I thought I I already said oh yeah,
yeah, that's my number two, too, so we can just move on to number one. I'll keep it I'll keep it brief
going forward. Yeah, we only have we only have one left. Uh yeah, so number one. Number one of all
time. before I get to my number one, I'll do a quick little recap of my top five so
far. So for my best of all time True Crime Garage, number five, the Colonial Parkway Murders. Number
four, Amy Mihaljevic case episodes. Number three, the Delphi double homicide. And number two, the legendary,
as I'm told that it's legendary stuff, the boys on the tracks. So, for my number one, Captain,
I went with an oldie but a goodie. This is the Austin Yogurt Shop Murders. We covered this in February of 2017
in episodes 81 and 82, and they are two jam-packed episodes. I loved one, the work that we did on it,
but two, the the suspects that we covered very thoroughly in those episodes. For me, it's one of the
the biggest homicide unsolved mysteries. It's it's a red light case for me, that's for
certain, 100%. It's a fascinating case and I I actually think that it's a case that could not
get too much coverage. I think that there you could we probably could have done four or six episodes on the case
itself. It's that big, it's that extensive. The The Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre actually reminds me a lot of
of the Yogurt Shop case as well. They share some similarities. There have been people throughout the years that thought
that maybe there's some link between the two, but we went through a very interesting scenario
in our coverage of Yogurt Shop where we weren't able to really tell you the names of the people that we believe
that did it, but we were able to kind of tell you through eyewitness accounts the who of it. Uh again, not the names,
but the individuals we believe to be most likely to be responsible for the the homicides themselves. The two
guys that were seen at the Yogurt Shop that night. I won't go into it too much. If If you want to dive into that, I
highly highly recommend it. Go back and check out the Yogurt Shop Murders from February of 2017,
episodes 81 and 82 on your True Crime Garage dial. Yeah, see, I wonder if a little bit of it nostalgia,
but I know that is a case that you're very fascinated in and and the truth is, if you ask me
tomorrow to name my top five, it might be completely different. So, um or at least
rearranged a little bit. But, uh my number five is Amy Mihaljevic, which was also on your list,
episode 22. Number four, BTK series, that's episodes 204 to 207. Number three is Brandon Lawson 911 tape.
And that is episodes 85 and 86. Number two is the series, the four-part series, episodes 93 and 96, The Boys on
the Tracks. And number one, number one of all time for me, uh so far, I guess, is uh the JonBenét
Ramsey series we did, episodes 355 to 360. And when we're putting together these
lists, I started trying to think about you know, what is it about this case? And
and my brain kind of pop something up into my head. Because we went over the best of
2020, 2000, and then uh 2020, and then of all time. And a lot of these cases, like you take
the Delphi murder case, that has really rocked that area. And really changes the lives of of the locals,
right? And you look at a case like Amy Mihaljevic, and we've talked about it so many times, and
so then we get feedback, I you know, I used to know Amy, uh I grew up with her, or I I knew her brother, or I knew her
mother. And they tell you how much it affected their community. And then, same thing with like
Brandon Lawson, same thing with when you're talking to Maura Murray's family, they tell you how
much you know, her going missing has uh affected their lives and their livelihoods and
and what they've been what they might have not taken on in life because they've spent time looking
for a loved one. So, I think with all these cases, you see how much it affects the community and then the
family members and the friends. But, I think the interesting thing about JonBenét Ramsey is because it was
covered in the manner in which it was covered by so many media outlets. I actually feel like it was a case
that wasn't happening in Colorado. It was happening in everybody's backyard. If that makes any sense.
Because it was so highly covered and very similar to like the Casey Anthony case, it was so highly
publicized that it didn't feel like it was happening in Florida. It felt like it was happening in your own backyard.
And therefore, so many more people were affected. And it wasn't just um a case that maybe
changed the local community, but it was a a case that maybe changed the whole landscape of
of America. Yeah, that was a case that we received a lot of praise of. We covered it in six
episodes and we here we are, December 2020. It was a year ago. We were we were just
putting the final bow on those episodes. And again, a lot of a lot of praise for
our work that we did on that. But, the case itself was extremely difficult to put together
episodes for. And a lot of that was because of such widespread coverage. Like you said, Captain, it's a case that
was covered so widely that it almost feels like it happened in everyone's community. And
the the problem with putting together the the JonBenét episodes was there were so many times where an incident or an
event or something was reported five different times five different ways. There was a lot of irresponsible
reporting going on in that case from the time it started all the way up until the
day that we covered it. And so it was a lot of sifting through things and trying
for the captain and I to try to go to look at everything through all the different angles and go, "Okay, well,
what's the truth here? What What in this particular event on the timeline, how did it
actually go down? What is the What is the right thing to say here? What is the right thing to tell the listeners here
in regards to this particular thing? Because there are so many things with that case
that you can slap a question mark on and say, "Okay, this is something that happened before
she was killed. This was something that happened after she was killed. Does it have relevancy to the case
itself? It does it help point us in the direction of who did this and who's responsible for killing this little
girl?" So it was a it was an interesting case to put together. It's still a case that
that obviously, I mean, fascinates me amongst everybody else as well still to this day. As much as I always wanted to
dive in and learn more about the case and we probably could have made it 30 some episodes cuz you could have went
down every single rabbit hole. And I also love the spirited debate that people will have about that case
even with us now. I appreciate it cuz I don't have an answer or I don't have a definitive solution to to that crime.
It's just a very difficult case. Once we started diving in, it was like, "Oh, yeah, we're finally covering this."
And it was exciting, and then uh then you remember what you're covering. And and the the darkness of the case.
The darkness and um So, yeah, that I That's something that I think will live with me for a very long time.
Well, and I think with that case in particular with JonBenét, that it's been covered so much and so often
that it almost starts to take on a bit of fantasy, where it almost feels like a movie or a TV show that you
watched one time. More so than than a real-life case. I mean, it's it's a despicable, horrible
murder of a child. And and you're right, when we jumped into it, when we dove into it, there was a a
certain level of excitement of going, "Okay, well, we're finally We're finally getting to this We're We're covering a
case that we said we never would." And so, there was a level of excitement of excitement there, but then once you get
into it and it's it's just a heavy, dark, depressing subject. Now, the cases the case itself and the
the way that we were able to present the information to everyone, I thought was real interesting, too, because
we did it in six parts. And so, we were really able to take different aspects of
the case and really put a micro put them under the microscope for the entirety of an episode. You know,
everybody in their cousin out there have done 45 minutes on the JonBenét case. It's just It's just been done a million
times. But, we were able to look at it, I think, in a in a bit of a different way and present it in a bit of a
different way and really tear through the minutia of that case and the rumors and such and really get down to to the
the nuts and bolts of of the thing and and look at different aspects of the case
in in our different different episodes. Well, another reason why I think people look at the case and it
almost seems like it's a movie or something is because of the pictures of the family
they had so many pose type pictures with actual like professional photographers and so many pose type pictures of
JonBenét so many like glamour shots where like a case like Amy Mihaljevic or whatever you're
getting a couple home pictures or maybe a a home movie and a school photo. With with JonBenét Ramsey you're getting
hundreds of professional photos because of the the beauty pageants and stuff that they entered so I think that's also
a part of why it becomes more movie-like and it wasn't released I don't even know if it was released
when we covered the case but the actual what they what they believe is the last picture of
little JonBenét Ramsey and it's just her looking up at her dad and he he took the picture because
well, it's his daughter and he thought she looked cute but he also just was saying how like tired she looked and how
worn out she looked from Christmas. But that it was a kind of a proud moment as a parent like we must have done such
a good job because she is exhausted and it's now time to go home and and that was the last picture and she doesn't
have a bunch of makeup on and she doesn't look like a little Katy Perry or something. She she
just looks like a little 6-year-old kid that is wore out because of Christmas. JonBenét Ramsey She was strangled with a
cord. Little Miss Colorado 6-year-old murder victim JonBenét Ramsey unknown intruder
her brother JonBenét Ramsey They still have not interviewed the parents. I didn't do it.
John Ramsey didn't do it, and we didn't have a clue of anybody who did this. My life has been hell
from that day forward. And I want nothing more than to find out who was responsible for this.
How does your list stack up with ours? If you agree, disagree, head over to the blog, head over to our website True
Crime Garage. Again, this is the last episode of 2020. So glad to see this year go, but thank
you so much for the support and the love. We love you and can't thank you enough. That's right. If you want more
True Crime Garage during the break, make sure you get Stitcher Premium and check
out our show that everybody loves. They're saying it's the next biggest show on the planet. It's called Off The
Record. Check it out. You're going to love it. We love all of you. Until next time, be good, be kind, and don't
litter. Hey.

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Brief Summary

Hosts share their top five True Crime Garage episodes, reflecting on impactful cases and their experiences with families and law enforcement.

Key points

Cheers to the Heroes of 2020. A heartfelt shoutout to essential workers during a tough year.
Colonial Parkway Murders. A deep dive into one of the most fascinating unsolved cases.
Amy Mihaljevic Case. Exploring the tragic story of a young victim and ongoing investigations.
The BTK Series. An extensive look into the profile of a notorious serial killer.
The Delphi Murders. A deep dive into the unsolved homicide of two young girls.
The Boys on the Tracks. A four-part series exploring the unsolved murders of two boys in Arkansas.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

We see you and we love you.

Cheers to essential workers during a rant.

5:31WatchNov 10, 2022

Tension

40/ 100Low tension

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