Tracy Sissom /// Part 1 /// 514 | Forensic Files

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that beer fun and that is enough of the business all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's
talk some true crime [Music] a young mother tracy sissom goes missing seemingly vanishing into thin air
later her vehicle turns up under mysterious circumstances this case is not without witnesses nor
evidence in fact some of the items found in tracy's vehicle provide much concern but
could also provide some answers a strange mystery couple is linked to this case but are overshadowed
by a violent man then a body is found by pure happenstance in rural indiana the remains are unidentifiable so
decompose that detectives cannot determine the gender of the remains but detectives were convinced they were
dealing with a homicide the body was wrapped in a quilt and tossed into a wooded ravine
someone discarded this individual out there in the woods like garbage who could do such a thing
and why now it's 17 years later and this case is still unsolved this is true crime garage
and this is the case of tracy sisson [Music] let's go back to thursday october 7
2004 this week's true crime story takes us to a rural area of the great hoosier state indiana today we will be starting
off in brown county indiana near the bartholomew county line brown county is in the southern portion of indiana but
brown county is pretty much in the center of the state on this thursday we have a man named pete jones driving on
nelson ridge road east of the town of nalbone that's an ominous sounding town name
it was nighttime and it was dark suddenly his heart jumped as a deer leapt into the road he slammed on his
brakes his tires screeched as the brakes locked up but it was too late deer versus truck is never good for the
vehicle or the deer the two collided with a loud crash the truck came to a stop and the deer
somehow managed to run off pete was shaken and stirred cautiously he drove off glancing around
to make sure there were no more oncoming bambi's when he got home he got out of his truck
and he realized that one of his running lights was missing of course it must have come off in the collision
he decided mainly because these lights are 75 dollars a piece he would be going back
during daylight hours and hopes that he could recover the missing running light and that it would be in working order
when he locates it so the very next day friday october 8th pete drove back to the area where he
thought he had hit the deer looking for the car part so he could possibly have it reattached
he parked so he could get out on foot and look around for this missing piece but just as soon as he got out of his
truck he noticed a foul odor and his first thought was that of the deer but quickly he thought to himself that
smells like decay and a deer could not have decayed that quickly now here's one of those heart-stopping
life-changing moments pete saw something unusual lying in the ravine next to the road
and it was not his truck light that he was hoping to find this was something large wrapped up in some kind of blanket
when he opened it to take a look and wish that he had not he saw death because unfortunately it was a very
badly decomposed body rolled up in a quilt and tossed into the wooded area along the roadside
the authorities were called in immediately because the call came in from a location so close to the county
line officers from both brown and bartholomew counties arrived on the scene and worked the scene together yeah
i think i would have just called law enforcement i don't think i would have had the guts to open up the blanket what
we have here is basically an unidentifiable murder victim the county officers know that
immediately this person did not kill themselves then roll themselves up in a quilt and get to that wooded area but
what happens here captain is that the remains are so badly decomposed in such a advanced stage of decomp that the
detectives from the sheriff's department can't make out the gender of the victim or an age
so not much really to go on as far as the initial investigation goes the body was removed
and taken off to the brown county morgue the scene was roped off and secured and
again officers from both jurisdictions blocked off the road and scoured the scene for any possible evidence that
they could find now i'm playing devil's advocate here captain when i say this but i've seen
some photographs of this location where they recovered the body from and this is an ideal location to dump a
body this is as country road as it gets brown county only has about 15 000 residents for the entirety
of the county which is 216 square miles well you're saying this body is very badly decomposed
what makes you think that they think it's a homicide because it could be like an accidental death or maybe even a
overdose where somebody then takes the body and dumps it out into the woods those are all certainly possibilities
but what everything that is going to point to for the detectives is they know somebody else knows something
somebody out there placed this body in this location how the person died could be a mystery
and is a mystery at this point in our timeline but we know somebody put them there now
bartholomew county is much more populated with about 72 000 residents back in 2004
for 409 square miles but that is still not a lot of people so you have this area where there's not really anybody
living in the immediate area and not a whole lot of people that live in either county but this nelson ridge road
is as said very country i'm talking no street lights no signage there's woods on both sides of the road so if you
needed to dispose of something or wish that you could do it under the cover of darkness that sort of thing
could easily be achieved at this location the other part of it too captain is that
one might expect something to sit there and go undetected for a good amount of time as well
is this a road that people would travel often or is this some place that maybe only locals would know this is a road
that's kind of by the way side that you wouldn't you wouldn't need to travel this road if
you were just passing through the area right the other thing jump off of the interstate and hit real
quickly correct and the other thing too is there's no reason there's nothing on this road in this location that would
make anybody want to stop there right there's not even a stop sign placing something here is
good for the offender or for whoever needs to dump this body because a if you were doing this at nighttime you
could see headlights off in the distance right you would have minutes notice not seconds
minutes notice that somebody will be coming your way soon and so you could stop what you're doing or move on
and again there's no reason to stop in this location so if you're looking for something to go
unfound this is where you put it you lose it right here and hope nobody ever finds it
now we said that the body was taken to the brown county morgue but the autopsy was actually performed at the
university of indiana school of medicine forensic pathology division in indianapolis try saying that three times
fast now here is what they were able to determine our victim is a female victim between the ages of 25 and 35 and
remained unidentified after the autopsy detectives released that the victim had a tattoo of a chain
with a flower located toward the back of the victim's ankle adding that they were
looking at all of the missing person files throughout the entire united states but so far have not been able to
determine the identity for a second i thought you were going to say the victim had a tattoo of a chainsaw i
was thinking that's a pretty badass test right chainsaw tattoo sales just went way up way up they were asking law
enforcement was asking if the public you know if they knew anything about this case or know someone with a similar
tattoo that they could call the indiana state police they included the following statement
and the request for information from the public that because of the manner in which the
body was found detectives believe the woman was killed somewhere else and dumped at this location prosecutor jim
oliver said quote in most murder investigations detectives work really hard in the first 36 hours to solve the
crime our investigators are frustrated with not having many leads to follow up at this point
and quote that statement was made to the brown county democrat newspaper editor linda marginson
five days after the body was found so as we already knew but the prosecutor confirming the detectives would work
around the clock trying to get evidence and leads for the first 36 hours of their investigation
but here we have five days into this homicide and because the nature of the case
it sounds like we have some evidence but no leads to move on and have an unidentified female homicide
victim yeah all the evidence they have is coming from the autopsy or coming from the scene in which they found the
body now for us captain we don't have the autopsy report and frustratingly authorities have never released the
cause of death here in this case the body in the blanket was that of a young woman but she could not be identified we
don't know how long the emmy believed her to have been dead but based on the advanced level of
decomp we would say probably quite a while and investigators were not certain how
long the body had been lying in the wooded area where it was found although one ap associated press article citing
brown county prosecutor jim oliver said that it had been there for up to eight weeks
okay so we know that she was found on october 8th and been there for possibly up to
eight weeks as the prosecutors saying in this article which would mean roughly august 14 2004 so these remains wrapped
in a blanket were placed there as early as august 14th 2004. well like you said this is a tough scenario for law
enforcement because they don't have a lot to go on it's not like there's been a missing
girl in the area for years and they go oh this is probably her they don't have a lot to go off of and
even after you find the body captain you know that whoever placed the victim there
now has had some time to cover their own tracks you've not been able to identify
the victim you can't check on the victim's inner circle can't find out where the victim came
from obviously you find your victim in brown county if you don't have anybody that matches a
vague description missing from your county you know you're going outside of of your box there immediately and and
like you said there's if they had any leads they're drying up real quick based off of the victim not
being able to be identified as well as the prosecutor saying the the victim could have been
at this site for up to eight weeks well but they also did leave something behind
that is identifiable the blanket there could be some fibers or some dna left or even
pet hair so that is a mistake that maybe the killer did make i'm wondering if this individual or the people that
placed the victim there i'm guessing that they thought that the body would remain there for quite some
time before somebody found it yeah now this would have been late fall we've said this on the show plenty of times
because it's just one of the hardcore facts of true crime that spring is typically when bodies are
found in wooded areas this is because hunters go out after the winter the long winter short winter whatever kind of
winter you have and that's when they start going out and walking these country areas
and that's usually typically when something's found so had this guy not hit this deer
and lost a light there's a chance in my mind anyway that they wouldn't have found this body for
several more months well he also becomes a suspect that's true for a short period
of time i i would assume that they would start with him and go was he just telling us this as a ruse
so now let's go figure out where he was what's his alibi yeah at the very least show me some damage to your truck yeah
because you're you're right captain that's that's the first thing you got to hone in on as an investigator you're
going okay well this guy has he found the body so he put himself at the dump scene why was he there yeah nobody again
this is a spot where nobody really has a reason to be in this location so why was
he there i'm sure he would have been looked at what we do know about the cause of death
which as we have said has never been addressed publicly well we know that this case was treated as a homicide very
quickly and right after the medical examiner viewed the body now per the northwest indiana times brown county
prosecutor jim oliver said investigators were treating the case as a homicide although the body had not been
identified at that point quote i don't think there's much doubt foul play was involved here end quote
that's what oliver said okay so it was evident to someone presumably the medical examiner that this woman was
murdered that she was a murder victim and even though the cause of death has never been released an insider in the
case told us that the cause of death is listed on the death certificate as strangulation
so the ways that this could be evident on a badly decomposed corpse is if there was some kind of ligature still on the
body or marks in the flesh from a ligature or if the hyoid bone was broken which
usually results from a violent choking but like you said the body's so badly decomposed how did they go about trying
to identify her right because that's your number one concern that's your first objective here
to hopefully get an id on the victim now brown county authorities looked into missing persons reports within the
county but no missing persons report had been filed in the county that matched the
description of this female victim that they found so they reached out to other nearby
jurisdictions they provided a description of the body as a young white female with dark hair
and a tattoo still visible despite the decomp and as we stated earlier the prosecutor
described that tattoo as a chain around the right ankle with a rose or some kind
of flower on the back of the ankle the other interesting thing though here captain and this is something that we
just don't see law enforcement do very often but something you brought up which is an
interesting angle and one that i'm curious as to why the this angle is not pursued more often
you mentioned that one thing that should be more easily identifiable if it crosses
the right person's eyes would be that quilt right they keep describing this thing as
a quilt not a blanket quilt to me is like handmade passed down throughout the years maybe
grandma made it maybe your favorite aunt made it usually these are family type items yeah sometimes made from articles
of clothing that the family owned the captain is quite the quilt maker everyone should know that but
again we don't see law enforcement do that very often do we where they let's take a picture of this quilt and there
there's probably reasons why we just don't know what they are but i question that
from time to time when you seem to be so desperate to to id this body you think you'll be pulling out all the
stops here and and post pictures of that uh put it on the news in the newspapers and what have you well
we had a handmade curtains that they found at the scene of amy malovic's death they didn't
release that information for years yeah it almost felt like a lifetime between the time that she was found and when
they showed us pictures of the curtain well finally captain on october 15th a missing person's report came into the
indiana state police or isp for short this report came from the police department in indianapolis a woman named
tracy sandlin storm system was reported missing in indianapolis the missing woman fit the description of the
body found in brown county tracy's dental records were obtained from her family and sent over to the
indiana state police it's not at all clear why it took such a long time to definitively id the body
because eventually that's what happens we are going to id the body as this tracy system
but it was not until december 17th that an announcement was made by the indiana state police this is the lead
investigator on the case chris fears that indeed the body they recovered from the woods was tracy sissom
tracy was just 33 years old when she was killed detective fears learned that tracy had
last been seen on september 20th in indianapolis so this fits the timeline of the body
that had been there for up to eight weeks but september 20th is the last day that
she was seen and i have other information that we will we will go into as we go along here
and based on that information i believe she was killed on or very near the date of the last time that she was seen
september 20th is a little more recent than i had expected based off of the quote up to eight weeks comment
now back to something real quick before we move on the missing persons report was sent by the indianapolis police
department to the indiana state police on october 15th it turned out per the indiana star
newspaper that tracy's family reported her missing the day after she was last seen so september 21st
so this missing person's report wasn't really connecting to anything until nearly a month later but for some
unknown reason her missing persons report was not connected to the body found on october 8th
until at least a week after it was found part of that could be though captain it
seems like the the hard push to release some information in this case and to tell the world that we found a
body that we cannot id didn't really come about until about five days after they found the body so
that would account for some of that time but again it was not proven to be tracy
for another two months there's clearly a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes
here that we just don't know about and a lot of time was wasted due to delays and lack of communication in
this [Music] case yeah [Music] from the east coast to the west coast cheers everybody and cheers to you
the crispiest cheers to you captain cheers to the people in the back i have a quick
announcement here i have an event coming up raising some money for the ohio history connection and for the porch
light project as well thursday august 26th is the date the event is called uncovering ohio cold
cases a conversation with myself and james renner this is a webinar so an online event so wherever you are and
whoever can attend simply by purchasing a ticket and you can purchase a ticket at ohio ohiohistory.org
again that is thursday august 26th and ticket information is at ohiohistory.org so be there or be square be square and
be there we don't care all right captain this case takes place in 2004 the tracy
system case and as we said it takes quite a while for them to even identify the victim i will say that i'm a little
surprised at the how recently she had last been seen right the bodies discovered on october
8th and she's reported missing on the 21st of september as having been seen the day before
september 20th and i'm just basing this off of the prosecutor's statement of well the body could have been there up
to eight weeks that makes me think that the me or or on that day when the body is discovered
when they are first looking at the body and the scene they're going okay well we're seeing a level of decomposition
here that shows us probably that the victim's been dead for six weeks maybe up to eight
and really we have a situation here where it was just a few weeks between the last time that she was seen that she
was alive and well and then later found dead in this wooded area you wonder if the body was stored or kept somewhere
for some period of time that may have increased the decomposition on the body or i
didn't get a chance to check into this or look it up maybe it was a particularly hot
few weeks there late that summer going into fall and that could have increased it as well there could be any number of
factors there but uh it's it's curious to me but once they have the identification of the body and they know
it's tracy the case just sits there for about two years yeah this is going to bring us to about
2006 on our timeline here and i'm sure that they're well i shouldn't say that i'm sure i know that there was a lot of
stuff going on behind the scenes just nothing that made the news so no real news coming out for about two years this
until the indiana star reported that family members have many unanswered questions
but they are not getting many answers from the indiana state police investigators are closely guarding many
of the clues detectives did not tell the family how tracy system died but insisted that the death was in fact a
homicide not even the family was told the official cause of death of the young woman in the quilt according to the
article this is i mean not only did you lose a loved one but you you naturally have so many questions
when somebody dies or in this case is murdered at such a young age but now you have a situation where
you've not only lost that person and you have that giant hole in your heart but hell you got kind of a hole in your head
too because you got no answers to go along with what happened to to your daughter or your sister yeah it makes
you wonder if because she was found like in a different location if law enforcement's just not taking it
as serious as they should i think they were i think that's probably a situation where it's just it might be complicated
right it might be a complicated investigation yeah i'm just saying as the family
you're sitting there going and we don't know what kind of communication law enforcement's having with the family how
because in some of these cases like delphi it seems like they're very open and letting the family
in a little bit as far as what investigation tactics they're using so we don't know what kind
of communication is happening between law enforcement and the family this is true and in this case we have the
indiana state police as well that we're talking about in tracy systems case so let's go
and get to know our victim a little better shall we because that's the first step in trying to get a lead on this
thing so who was tracy tracy sandlin storm system was born on december 27 1970. she was a lifelong native of
indianapolis a city that you and i have been to many times captain a great city tracy
graduated from howe high school in 1989 when she died she left behind her parents rebecca and john her sister
shelly and her brother john jr she also left behind an ex-husband and an estranged husband and three children all
of whom lived in indianapolis according to her obituary tracy was a member of holy spirit catholic church and owned
and operated sugar creek rottweilers where she bred and cared for her show dogs tracy had a great love of animals
obviously and worked with several veterinarians throughout her life tracy got married when she was young and
had two girls in quick succession her husband richard storm filed for a divorce in october of 2000
and the divorce was granted in december of 2001. richard and tracy were awarded joint
custody of their girls by the hancock circuit court meanwhile during the whole divorce proceedings
tracy got married again getting hitched to a michael system on january 25th 2003 then she gave birth to their son
shane so at this point we have tracy michael her new husband baby shane and tracy's two girls
sharing a house this is the house that tracy got in the divorce settlement from her first husband from that first
marriage but that living situation didn't last long by the time tracy was reported missing
in september of 2004 michael and tracy had split up and had been split up for quite some time and
were estranged from one another all right let's get into tracy's disappearance there is minimal reporting
about her disappearance but what little there is all says the same thing so this
is all confirmed tracy was last seen september 20th at 30th street and post road in the far
east side neighborhood of indianapolis this was an apartment complex where tracy was living at the time
but she was in the process of moving out so she is there on this day september 20th
to retrieve her belongings because she is now moving in with her mother who also lived in indianapolis
on this day tracy called her mom around 7 pm and told her that she was gathering the last
of her things and that she would be home soon i've not been able to determine captain
if this call came from a landline or a cell phone right she said that she would be home soon but she never arrived
at the time tracy was using her father's 1995 chevy blazer to help her move her things
the vehicle was also missing so when they noticed that tracy is missing they notice that the vehicle is missing
as well the vehicle is not found at tracy's apartment nike said she's moving away from her husband well she
lived in the apartment by herself they had already been separated for quite some time by this point
and she's moving back in with her mother now we have zero information whatsoever
on how and when tracy's family discovered her missing status and noted that the blazer was also missing so we
know that she spoke with her mom on the 20th and we know that the following day a missing person's report was placed
was made by her family right so sometime after 7 p.m on that night and sometime the next
morning they probably decide hey she should have been here by now it's been overnight we're not only missing her
we're also missing the vehicle that was lent to her to help her move her things you also have to wonder too if they went
out there and presumably they did out sue tracy's apartment to look for her and the vehicle
if they were able to access the apartment maybe they're seeing things in there that's causing concern as well maybe you
know when you hear your loved one tell you hey i'm gathering up the last of my items and i'll be home soon well you
could open up that front door to the apartment and the apartment tell you a different
a different story yeah that's a good thing that they didn't hesitate to report her missing so that's the best
that we can narrow down the actual time of her going missing we know that she made that phone call on at 7 pm on
the 20th we can't say for certain if anyone in her family went to the apartment to look for her i presume that
they did that's just natural reaction that's what most people would do so you have to wonder if they did this captain
did they find the front door locked unlocked did they find things still inside the
apartment was there any sign of a confrontation or struggle those answers to those questions we just
don't have any any idea we do know that someone in her family reported her missing on the day after she was last
seen this again the 21st we also have no information on tracy's cell phone or if in fact she even had one
it was 2004 so it seems likely that she would have had one if so and if the police were able to
obtain any helpful information on the cell phone we don't have any idea this is information that's not been released to
the public but all of the reporting on the story discusses where tracy was last known to be so that
is not a question in this case we know that she was last reported to be at her apartment this information came from her
mother who said that tracy called her from there if there was a cell phone and it showed
that she was at some other location after that time you'd think the family would have said so publicly when they
have spoken out about this case yeah i wonder what the family's feelings are about the ex-husband because
that obviously is the i think even though they were separated for a time period before this like you said she
moved into apartment by herself and now she's moving back home with her parents you go
well i mean that's the number one person you look at right and just with identifying the body
identifying the remains how quickly we see from there being no leads to now all of a sudden here in the garage we can
see these suspects start to emerge right they they step out of the shadows and present themselves a little bit we have
her first husband that she's been divorced from for some time but you gotta you got to look in that direction you
have the most recent husband who she was in the process of splitting up with and
moving on in her life and then once you get to know the victim and the victim's inner circle
that may present some other options as far as suspects or persons of interest go and then as you pointed out earlier
you always have to consider the person who quote unquote found the body yeah or the
possibilities that tracy was working on husband number three and who would that individual be so right away captain when
she goes missing when tracy goes missing there's no sign really no clue as to where she could be
for about two weeks but then we get the missing chevy blazer that she had borrowed turns up on october 4th
in the vicinity of la sale and michigan avenues so this is before the unidentified body
that we later learned would be tracy's remains is found this is a few days before her body is recovered
so a deputy pulled the vehicle over or although it's not clear whether he was actually on the lookout for it you know
did we know she's reported missing we can assume that they reported the vehicle missing as well but were police
actively looking for this vehicle we can't say that for certain so the way this story goes is that this
officer a deputy was going to pull over this chevy blazer or attempting to pull over the vehicle
anyway is what we should say here because per the indiana star a marion county sheriff's deputy spotted
two unidentified people in the blazer on the city's east side the male driver made several abrupt
turns and lane changes before he and a female passenger ditched the vehicle in the 500 block of north oakland avenue
and ran away so an unknown couple a man and a woman are in this chevy blazer right the one
that tracy was borrowing from her father correct she's missing and the vehicle's
missing until this point and the mail is driving but before they could successfully
pull over the driver and and pull over the vehicle the driver makes some smooth maneuvers and they're
able to flee the vehicle before the deputy could catch up to them now a partial box of ammunition was
found on the back seat of the vehicle this is according to the report says no fingerprints or other evidence were
found in the vehicle said an indiana state police spokesman but since we don't know the cause of death i mean
this is great evidence to have once you're doing the autopsy because if there is
if she was killed by gunshot then the these were possibly uh the ammo that was used well and that's
not what you want to hear too a partial box of ammunition you want to hear a full box of ammunition yeah just bottom
still in the cellophane the blazer was abandoned by a couple about eight and a half miles from
tracy's apartment and this is just one of those really weird things no one knows who the people in
the blazer were or at least if indiana state police does know who they are they've never said
that they we've identified these people or we spoke to these people or we know who they are right another thing that
was reported on but that we know very little about according to the indiana channel
i keep saying indiana every time i see the word indy so according to the indie channel state police sergeant jeff
deckard said one of the system's neighbors reported seeing a suspicious vehicle this is interesting a neighbor reported
seeing a dark suv or the sergeant just clarifying here or they thought it was an suv
we've not narrowed it down to a specific suv or even eliminated a pickup truck or
even eliminated a pickup truck with a camper shell said decker but again if anything came of this we don't know so
the old creepy camper yeah think about this captain we this is what we know here we know that
leading up to finding tracy's remains they spot the chevy blazer being driven by two unknown individuals
who are able to successfully get away from the cops long enough to park and flee on foot
we don't know if they've ever identified those people and then we have this statement of well
on the last day that she was seen neighbors i wanna it says a neighbor but i've seen some reports that are
similar to this and i wonder if it was more than one person because in other reports it says neighbors
reported seeing a suspicious vehicle and describing it as a possibly a dark suv so it looks like
someone either intercepted her after she left her apartment that night with all of her
things or somebody got a hold of her at the apartment yeah we're not getting reports like you
said from the family to let us know that all her apartment was filled with her her belongings and so when they abducted
her or like you said intercepted her and the vehicle because you're also stating in the
vehicle it's not like we're seeing piles and piles for her belongings right but that doesn't mean that they didn't
intercept her in a different location just dump all those materials somewhere the vibe i'm getting though with that
ammunition that partial box of ammunition that's found on the back seat is that the family is probably telling law
enforcement that that did not belong to tracy right because the way that they state
that and we know how closely they've held information in this case and what they've chosen to
release and it's been very little but they chose to release that information well and you're also because she's
borrowing the vehicle you go well that ammunition didn't belong to tracy and didn't belong to tracy's father correct
and now you have to wonder okay well could we trace this ammunition back to a person because if we could somehow
create a paper trail to trace it back to a person that person might be the one that's responsible for
her death again i believe i firmly believe that she was killed either that night or very soon
after she went missing on the 20th this vehicle is not found until october 4th so
we have a situation here captain where we have this weird unknown couple driving it but also enough time has gone
by that you could say there's a good chance that somebody else may have been in possession of this
vehicle at one point especially right after the murder you have to wonder too would the killer have been
brazen enough to use the victim's vehicle to move the body no you can use the term brazen or you
use the term stupid let's let's create a word that's both um yeah you have to wonder but it doesn't
seem like again it's a situation where the words that they're choosing to tell us in this case make it sound like
that might not be a suspicion by investigators they they may have tried that angle
and came up with nothing there's also been reports that are similar to this that state that there
were that are a little more in depth about the the fingerprints remember we said the ammunition was
found but there's no fingerprints found in or on this ammunition or in the blazer
that they called into concern so was it wiped down was the vehicle wiped down or was it just whoever drove
the vehicle or moved the vehicle wasn't in it long enough to leave behind a whole lot of evidence
you would expect to find some evidence of tracy having been in the vehicle at some point maybe that muddies the waters
a little bit on whether the body was moved in that vehicle but i'm just getting the i'm getting the vibe here
captain that that's probably not what happened in this case let's sum up that timeline a little bit so the listeners
aren't confused yeah because we were playing detective along the way as we were telling this story
captain the way that this thing breaks down is just like this tracy goes missing on september 20th that's the
last time that her family speaks with her that's the last time they know that she is safe
and where she should be the following day they make the police report they they filed the missing persons report
it's 14 days after tracy was last seen that this blazer that she was borrowing the chevy blazer is located eight and a
half miles from tracy's apartment tracy system her body is then located four days later her remains were found
70 miles from her apartment and as we know she had been dead for long enough to be decomposed to the
point that dental records were required to id her and that someone else was driving that blazer after her death
[Music] and like always we want to hear from you so make sure you go to truecrimegarage.com and check out the
blog on this week's episode also if you need more true crime garage check out our
bonus show called off the record it's on stitcher premium and you can also find a
link to that at truechromegarage.com and join us back here in the garage until then be good be
kind and don't litter [Applause] [Music] you

Tracy Sissom /// Part 1 /// 514

Part 1 of 2

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October 8, 2004 - Unidentifiable remains are recovered in a rural area of Brown County, Indiana. The body was found wrapped in a quilt and discarded in wooded ravine off of a remote country road. The Sheriff’s department announced that the body was found in a such a stage of decomposition that not only could they not successfully identify the remains they could not immediately determine the gender. Investigators began pouring over missing persons reports from the County, then state and the country. Join us in the Garage for a few cold ones as we unravel another Cold Case mystery.

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Brief Summary

Tracy Sissom went missing in 2004; her body was found weeks later, leading to an unsolved homicide investigation.

Key points

The Mysterious Disappearance. A young mother, Tracy Sissom, goes missing under mysterious circumstances.
A Shocking Discovery. A body is found in rural Indiana, raising questions about the circumstances.
Identifying the Victim. Tracy Sissom is eventually identified after a long investigation.
Family's Unanswered Questions. Tracy's family struggled with unanswered questions about her death and investigation.
Tracy's Disappearance Timeline. Tracy was last seen on September 20, 2004, while moving out of her apartment.
Missing Vehicle Found. Tracy's borrowed Chevy Blazer was found on October 4, 2004, driven by unknown individuals.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Who could do such a thing and why?

Reflecting on the mysterious circumstances of a missing woman.

4:30WatchAug 18, 2021

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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