The Turn of the Windmill: The Disappearance of Debra Ann Wilhite

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[00:02:07] Content warning. This episode contains discussion of violence and murder.

[00:02:15] Deborah Ann Willhite was about to clock out when the man came in from the rain.

[00:02:21] He was a middling sort of man.

[00:02:24] Medium height. Middle-aged. Medium-length

[00:02:28] hair that was dark in color. He was soaked from the rainstorm raging outside the windmill.

[00:02:33] It was October 14, 1974. Deborah worked at the windmill. That was a trunk-stop-slash

[00:02:41] restaurant near the confluence of US Highway 41 and Indiana

[00:02:46] State Road 57 in Evansville, Indiana.

[00:02:49] That evening, Deborah was at the end of her shift.

[00:02:53] She had only worked there for about a week.

[00:02:56] The mother of two was set to hop in her green car and drive home to her two

[00:03:00] little girls.

[00:03:02] The national missing and unidentified Person System lists her height

[00:03:06] as 5'6", and her weight as 120 lbs. She was white. She had green eyes, piercetiers,

[00:03:14] two missing molars, and brown hair that she sometimes bleached blonde.

[00:03:19] She wore blue that night. A blue sweater.-bottom jeans. She was only 19.

[00:03:26] The man may have asked Deborah for a ride. He had a whole story. He said he hitchhiked

[00:03:32] into town on a cattle truck. He was heading in from Indianapolis on his way to Evansville.

[00:03:38] Someone owed him some money. He needed to get to a certain motel where he would rest

[00:03:43] his head.

[00:03:44] It's unclear from witness accounts if Deborah offered the man a ride.

[00:03:48] All anyone knew was that Deborah left around the same time as the man.

[00:03:52] Then, she was gone.

[00:03:54] Her green car was gone.

[00:03:56] The man was gone, all vanished in the rainy darkness.

[00:03:59] A few days later, her husband, Jeffrey Wilhite, called the police in nearby Princeton, Indiana

[00:04:06] to report that his wife had stolen the family car.

[00:04:10] That was a hardtop, two-door 1966 Ford Galaxy, with a license plate number of 26B2953 and

[00:04:20] a vehicle identification number of 6W66x173520. Deborah had a history of leaving for days

[00:04:30] at a time. Rumor spread that this time she'd left with a man. That she went to California.

[00:04:37] But, there were never any concrete sightings. All Jeff knew was that he'd phoned her at the windmill on October 14, 1974,

[00:04:47] asking his wife to swing by an Evansville bar to pick him up on her way home. She never showed up.

[00:04:53] In the past, Deborah had always come back. But this time, she didn't. In 2024, she is still missing.

[00:05:02] She's nearly 50 years gone.

[00:05:05] This is a case that unfortunately had everything working against it. There had been a delayed

[00:05:10] report of her disappearance. There was no body, no car, no sighting after the windmill.

[00:05:17] Still, police investigated. According to a 1982 article in the Evansville Press, Indiana State Police's District 35

[00:05:26] Post built up a 2-inch thick folder on the Wilhite case.

[00:05:30] But all those leads went nowhere.

[00:05:34] I came across this case while researching restaurant-related disappearances.

[00:05:39] The details really haunted me.

[00:05:41] I traded some emails and phone calls with the Indiana State Police

[00:05:45] Post in Evansville, Indiana. There's still the lead agency on the case. At one point,

[00:05:51] it sounded like we might be able to interview one of the retired detectives who worked on

[00:05:55] the case. But that fell through. They apparently didn't see the need to keep talking about

[00:06:01] it. When it comes to high-profile cases, I understand that impulse.

[00:06:06] But I generally feel talking about lesser-known cases is helpful. Still, I kept researching

[00:06:11] Deborah's story. There was something about her and her mysterious disappearance that

[00:06:16] really got to me. Kevin and I even tried to find the windmill on September 8, 2021.

[00:06:23] As backstory, that was the day my then editor asked me to go to

[00:06:26] Evansville to report on a shop that sold unclaimed mail of all things. But while there, I wanted to

[00:06:33] stop by a few notable crime sites in the area. It's surreal to listen to the tapes I recorded

[00:06:39] that day, because I accidentally left them rolling for a long while. We were talking about the

[00:06:44] murder sheet,

[00:06:45] and you can hear us start to envision that we could do this work full-time.

[00:06:49] In our search for the windmill, we ended up in one spot.

[00:06:52] But to tell you the truth, we could have been totally wrong.

[00:06:55] The windmill was reportedly located at the convergence of US Highway 41

[00:07:01] and Indiana State Road 57.

[00:07:03] Indiana State Road 57 springs from the side of 41.

[00:07:08] That state road is a north-south two-lane road

[00:07:11] that runs up to Worthington, Indiana in Green County.

[00:07:14] US Route 41 is a north-south highway

[00:07:17] that runs from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

[00:07:20] all the way down to Miami, Florida.

[00:07:22] It cuts through a rural portion of Indiana,

[00:07:24] as well as Evansville.

[00:07:26] I ended up settling on a place where anchor industries, a tent manufacturer, is headquartered.

[00:07:30] We went inside and feeling somewhat ridiculous asked the receptionist if she'd ever heard of the windmill.

[00:07:36] She hadn't, but she was very nice about it.

[00:07:38] It seemed like a crisp, modern office.

[00:07:40] Probably very different from the 1970s truck stop restaurant it may have once been.

[00:07:46] Outside, past a sprawling freshly mowed lawn, there was a lot of traffic on the two busy

[00:07:52] roads. The congestion was worsened by the large orange traffic cones near the intersection.

[00:07:57] Some kind of construction must have been underway. Across 57, there was a small sales office

[00:08:03] for Columbus, Indiana based engine giant Cummins.

[00:08:06] We stood out there in the sun, listening to the cars go past.

[00:08:15] This is the site where Deborah Wilhite went missing from the windmill restaurant, we think.

[00:08:43] Had Deborah driven down one of those roads on her own volition that night or had someone

[00:08:49] taken her away.

[00:08:50] At some point we were able to connect with Misty Wilhite Walker, Deborah's daughter.

[00:08:56] She was interested in sharing her story.

[00:08:59] You see, she was just a baby when her mother disappeared.

[00:09:02] What happened on that October night has had repercussions for as long as she can remember.

[00:09:09] And Deborah's disappearance wasn't the only devastating tragedy to affect her family.

[00:09:14] We interviewed Misty in November 2023.

[00:09:17] Misty talked to us about her mother's case, the different leads that have come up over

[00:09:21] the years, the subsequent loss of her other family members, the advocacy she's done for the missing, and how she has coped with the tragedy

[00:09:30] over the course of her life.

[00:09:32] We're running this interview with minimal editing.

[00:09:34] I just want to say that we are awed by Misty's strength and incredibly grateful that she

[00:09:39] trusted us with her story.

[00:09:41] My name is Anya Kane.

[00:09:43] I'm a journalist.

[00:09:44] And I'm Kevin Greenley. I'm an attorney.

[00:09:46] And this is the Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reported,

[00:09:52] interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet. And this is...

[00:09:58] The turn of the windmill, the disappearance of Deborah Ann Willhite. So So my mother, Deborah Wohite, and my father, Jeff Wohite, they got married very young.

[00:10:56] She was 15.

[00:10:57] I think he was 19, four years older than she was.

[00:11:01] They had my sister, Amy, in 1971.

[00:11:05] And then I was born in 73.

[00:11:08] And my mother disappeared in 1974.

[00:11:11] She was 19, getting ready to turn 20.

[00:11:14] And I was a year and a half old at that time.

[00:11:18] Not long after she went missing,

[00:11:20] my sister, Amy, was diagnosed with leukemia.

[00:11:24] I think she was about four at the time.

[00:11:26] After my mother went next day,

[00:11:31] and my father and that's a girl, my sister,

[00:11:33] he needs us and she,

[00:11:35] his mother-in-law's health,

[00:11:37] loose feel, loose, diverse mother.

[00:11:39] And she helped raise us.

[00:11:42] Deborah had two younger sisters

[00:11:44] that were still at home at the time.

[00:11:47] And then in 1976, when I was three, our father was killed in a car train accident, which

[00:11:53] I'll go more into detail about all of this other stuff later on.

[00:11:59] After our father was gone, our grandmother Lucille got legal guardianship over 89.

[00:12:05] When I was five, Amy was, well, she died of leukemia

[00:12:10] at St. Jude's Hospital.

[00:12:12] So because I was so young and my aunt too,

[00:12:15] we're still at home called her mom.

[00:12:18] I only remember ever calling my grandmother Lucille mom.

[00:12:23] In my heart, she is my mom.

[00:12:24] She's a mom that raised me. grandmother Lucille Mom in my heart, she is my mom.

[00:12:25] She's a mom that raised me.

[00:12:26] So when I'm talking to you, I'm gonna do my best to,

[00:12:31] in the past, I've always referred to Deborah as mother,

[00:12:35] like people that I'm talking to that know me.

[00:12:37] I refer to Deborah as mother,

[00:12:39] and I refer to Lucille as mom.

[00:12:42] And so they would know who I'm speaking about because I'm talking

[00:12:46] to people who don't know me. I'm going to do my best to refer to my grandmother Lucille

[00:12:50] as Lucille instead of mom because I think it's going to get confusing.

[00:12:54] I just want to say I'm so sorry that your family, it just seems to have experienced

[00:12:59] such an unfair level of tragedy.

[00:13:03] It is. It was. yeah, it absolutely was.

[00:13:06] But, you know, I'm here today.

[00:13:09] Yeah.

[00:13:11] I'm here today.

[00:13:12] And everybody else who is left behind is here today,

[00:13:15] living in, you know,

[00:13:18] that's what you can do really,

[00:13:20] is just try to keep living.

[00:13:29] But I'll go into my understanding of the facts of my mother's disappearance. Yeah. And I, you'll have a lot of edits to do.

[00:13:35] So I'm going to say a million times I apologize. You are totally fine. So the

[00:13:43] dates about my mother's disappearance, if you look up Deborah Anwell hype missing

[00:13:48] online, you'll see a bunch of dates.

[00:13:50] She went missing October 17th.

[00:13:51] She went missing October 14th.

[00:13:53] She went missing October 16th.

[00:13:55] There's a lot of dates.

[00:13:57] She was last seen officially Monday, October 14th, 1974. She was reported missing October 16th and it got

[00:14:10] into the system October 17th. So that's where all the different variations of

[00:14:16] dates come from when you look online. So Monday, October 14th, 1974, I was 18 months old.

[00:14:25] And my older sister, Amy, was about three.

[00:14:27] Deborah was 19.

[00:14:30] She dropped me and my sister off

[00:14:32] that her mother Lucille's house,

[00:14:34] her grandmother in Elbertville, Indiana.

[00:14:37] And then she went to her waitress job,

[00:14:39] which was at, it's not there anymore.

[00:14:42] It was called the Windmill.

[00:14:43] It was at a truck stop called the windmill.

[00:14:46] I think it was that highway around highway 41 and highway 57 in Gibson County. There might be a

[00:14:52] Dairy Queen or there used to be a Dairy Queen in that vicinity. I don't know if it's there anymore,

[00:14:59] but she'd only been working there like about a week. She hadn't been working there long at all.

[00:15:03] She'd only been working there like about a week. She hadn't been working there long at all.

[00:15:05] Lucille watched us while she worked.

[00:15:06] So she dropped us off.

[00:15:08] She picked up laundry that she had done it at Lucille's house

[00:15:12] and put our clean laundry in the trunk of her car

[00:15:16] before she went to work.

[00:15:18] So she went to her job.

[00:15:20] It was in the evenings she worked at night.

[00:15:22] It was a rainy night.

[00:15:24] And while she was working, a man had come into the truck shop

[00:15:28] and he was over her talking to Deborah by coworkers

[00:15:31] that were later interviewed that he had gotten there

[00:15:33] by hitching a ride on the cattle truck from Indianapolis.

[00:15:37] And he was trying to get to Evansville

[00:15:38] because someone there owed him money

[00:15:41] and he was trying to get to Evansville

[00:15:42] to pick up his money that he was owed.

[00:15:44] And he asked Deborah for a ride. So at the end of her shift,

[00:15:50] her and the hitchhiker left at the same time, but no one saw if she actually gave him a ride or not.

[00:15:57] So that's one of the many unanswered questions. Before she left, actually, before she left,

[00:16:01] and answer questions. Before she left, actually, before she left,

[00:16:04] my father had called her at work.

[00:16:06] He was at a bar somewhere, the local bar,

[00:16:09] as she told him that she was going to pick him up after.

[00:16:12] She left work.

[00:16:13] She never showed up.

[00:16:16] And that was the last time that she was officially seen

[00:16:19] was that night.

[00:16:22] It's been about 48 years now.

[00:16:24] And the car that she was driving,

[00:16:27] it was my father's car, but she and her shared the car.

[00:16:30] And the car was never sound either.

[00:16:33] It was a green Ford Galaxy 1966 Ford Galaxy

[00:16:38] two-door hardtop.

[00:16:40] And that also was,

[00:16:42] was, has never been located after all these years.

[00:16:44] It's interesting.

[00:16:45] I know when I was doing some research on this case online, and, and this kind of speaks to

[00:16:50] sometimes how versions of the story get out that are kind of either flattened or not entirely true, but a lot of things made it out that she, you know, gave this guy a ride, but it sounds like it's not even clear that that's what happened.

[00:17:05] It's just that they happen to leave at the same time.

[00:17:07] Is that your understanding?

[00:17:09] It was not clear that if she gave her a ride or not, no one saw.

[00:17:15] They left us at the same time, like went out the door at the same time.

[00:17:19] No one physically like no one saw if he actually got in her car, at least and no one

[00:17:26] that was interviewed, that they interviewed saw.

[00:17:29] So that's not something that's known or not.

[00:17:33] We don't know.

[00:17:34] And it's also sounds like it's not like, you know, he was saying, I need a ride and she's

[00:17:38] saying, Oh yeah, come with me.

[00:17:40] It's like that's just conjecture on people's parts.

[00:17:43] Yeah.

[00:17:44] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:46] I was wondering for people who may not be from this part of Indiana

[00:17:49] or have any familiarity with this this spot, you know, I guess what do we know

[00:17:54] about the windmill and anything you can tell us about this particular

[00:17:58] stretch of Indiana, this area?

[00:18:01] I actually don't know anything else about the windmill whatsoever.

[00:18:08] I don't know anything else about the window whatsoever. I don't know anything. I mean, it was, I know it's everything that I've read says it's in Gibson County.

[00:18:12] I'm originally from Evansville, Indiana. So Gibson County is

[00:18:16] outside of the city limits of Evansville, Indiana, which is

[00:18:21] very southern, like the little toe down in the southern part of Indiana, that

[00:18:25] area, very near Henderson, Kentucky.

[00:18:29] As far as the actual windmill, I don't know.

[00:18:32] You know, there's a lot of people listening that probably know a lot more about things

[00:18:36] than I do, honestly.

[00:18:37] Yeah.

[00:18:38] And we would just encourage anybody who just remembers the windmill can contextualize any

[00:18:43] of this to reach out to murder sheet at gmail.com.

[00:18:46] And, you know, if you remember this incident, please get in touch with state police as well.

[00:18:51] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:52] It's the Evansville Post, Evansville, Indiana Post, Indiana State Police is who has the

[00:18:59] case, which we can give the number like later.

[00:19:04] Absolutely. I will be posting the number in our show notes

[00:19:07] and reading it out at the end of the episode.

[00:19:10] So we really just stress that people should call.

[00:19:13] This is one of those cases where people's memories,

[00:19:16] people talking, I think that is going to help

[00:19:20] with hopefully looking for a resolution here.

[00:19:24] Yeah. What my understanding is that you've actually been able with Hopefully looking for a resolution here

[00:19:29] Yeah, what my understanding is that you've actually been able to review the state police file And I was just wondering if you could share if anything stood out to you from that. I

[00:19:35] Did it was actually I had a couple of times actually the first time I

[00:19:40] believe was in 1994 back then I

[00:19:44] had my first son in 93.

[00:19:47] So he was about the same age as I was when my mother disappeared.

[00:19:53] And it just kind of brought everything to the surface again.

[00:19:57] But I hadn't really thought about it for a while.

[00:20:00] At that time Unfolved Mysteries was one of the big shows.

[00:20:03] So I like wrote Unfolved Mysteries. one of the big shows, so I like wrote Unsolved Mysteries.

[00:20:05] I wrote the Oprah Winfrey Show.

[00:20:07] I wrote, you know, the Evansville Currier Impress.

[00:20:11] The Evansville Currier Impress ended up doing a front page story about it.

[00:20:16] And I forget the name of the journalist, but she was, I want to say she was a relative

[00:20:23] of the detective that was on the case at the time.

[00:20:26] So she put me in touch with he was a sergeant Joe Rhodes at the time.

[00:20:31] At the murder sheet, we're all about true crime podcasts, but we also adore audiobooks,

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[00:23:30] I'm pretty sure he's retired from law enforcement now, but she

[00:23:33] put me in touch with him and he let me come in me and Lucille

[00:23:42] went to the Evansville Post Indian State Police and they put us in this room

[00:23:47] and brought in this file in front of us and I just literally sat there and looked through

[00:23:54] every single page read every single word.

[00:23:56] The first thing that stood out to me probably was the thickness of the file because this

[00:24:01] was, you know, in the 90s.

[00:24:02] Everything was still paper.

[00:24:03] Nothing was electronic like it is now. It was thick. I feel like it was like two and a half inches thick.

[00:24:09] And that kind of surprised me. I don't know why, but I guess there was a lot more activity in the

[00:24:15] past than I thought there was. That was the first thing that stood out to me. One of the things that

[00:24:22] when I think about it, when I think about sitting there

[00:24:25] and looking through this big file,

[00:24:29] one of the things that stands out to me the most,

[00:24:32] I think is this handwritten letter,

[00:24:38] note that on note that paper that was in the file.

[00:24:40] And it was actually a letter that my mother

[00:24:42] had written to another man. And I think the reason that it stood out, it was actually a letter that my mother had written to another man.

[00:24:45] And I think the reason that it stood out, it was a love letter.

[00:24:49] I think the reason that it stood out to me the most, I was aware of the letter before

[00:24:53] I knew that it existed.

[00:24:55] It had been found after she went missing in her and my father's house or apartment

[00:25:00] where everybody lives.

[00:25:03] I think the reason that stood out the most is because it was something that she wrote

[00:25:07] that was in her words and in her writing. And other than like,

[00:25:13] you know, our baby books that I looked at or something or the

[00:25:16] back of pictures where she wrote the name and the date, that

[00:25:20] was really the first time that I'd seen, you know, just kind of

[00:25:23] a look into who she was

[00:25:25] as a person. So that stands out. So I remember there was something in the file about a

[00:25:32] dismembered body that had been found in a suitcase in a bus station locker. I think it was in a different

[00:25:41] state. The body was of a woman who was pretty far along in a pregnant state. And it was in a different state. The body was of a woman who was pretty far along

[00:25:45] in a pregnant state.

[00:25:47] And it was in the file because it first came up.

[00:25:51] I thought maybe it was my mother,

[00:25:52] but it, you know, it's found not to be.

[00:25:54] But that was when I found out that my father

[00:25:57] actually told the police when he reported her missing

[00:26:00] that he thought she might be pregnant.

[00:26:02] And that was the first time that I had heard anything

[00:26:04] about that. I didn't know anything about that. So that comes to mind. And then

[00:26:09] that was also when I found out that my father, she went, she disappeared October 14th. He

[00:26:17] reported her missing October 16th two days later. He didn't go to the place to report her missing. He actually went to report

[00:26:26] that she had stolen his car because he thought that she had just left and took their car,

[00:26:35] took his car. He also told police that he had Bob for divorce and even gave an attorney's name,

[00:26:43] which is weird in their notes in the, it's

[00:26:46] where that I remember this so vividly actually. It was in the thing that they looked into

[00:26:54] who he said he talked to and he hadn't found for divorce. And of course they, you know,

[00:27:01] they looked at him as a suspect as they always do, that that was the first person I looked at.

[00:27:05] So they did look at him.

[00:27:06] He was not a suspect ever,

[00:27:09] but there was a lot of interviews that they talked to people.

[00:27:13] There was a lot of stuff about things like a body

[00:27:18] or remains were found somewhere

[00:27:20] and they looked into it to see if it was her,

[00:27:22] but it never was that type of thing.

[00:27:25] Nothing else really comes to mind right now.

[00:27:28] There was so much stuff in it.

[00:27:30] What stood out to me the most actually was what was in the file.

[00:27:38] It was what was not in the file.

[00:27:43] There was something that I had been told about that was not in the file,

[00:27:45] but I'm actually going to say that because we're going to talk about it later.

[00:27:49] But yeah, after sitting and reading that whole file, I sat and I read every word, every piece

[00:27:54] of paper. And the thing that stood out most was what I didn't read and what I didn't see.

[00:28:00] Absolutely. And yes, I just imagine that was so surreal to be looking at that after all

[00:28:09] those years. And I was wondering just to follow up on some of this is, were there any potential

[00:28:16] suspects who were cleared or even unresolved leads that were promising but never quite came together. We're going to talk about

[00:28:27] some of those specifically later, but just any other ones that come to mind.

[00:28:31] To my knowledge, there were no official suspects at all or persons of interest. There was never

[00:28:41] any kind of evidence. There was rumors and stuff that I've heard about.

[00:28:46] I don't know if it's true or not because, you know, I heard stuff secondhand, secondhand, secondhand, secondhand like it was, you know, because all this stuff happened when I was too young to know anything and someone years had passed when I heard about stuff, but even like in the file and everything, there were no suspects.

[00:29:07] There were no leads. There was no evidence. There was a lot of rumors and I don't know.

[00:29:16] Yeah. It's such a frustrating case. One sort of thing that comes to mind, I think, for a lot of people is the man who

[00:29:26] left the windmill around the same time as Deborah.

[00:29:29] And he mentioned hitching a ride with a truck driver.

[00:29:33] And one thing that's online is that two truck drivers were identified and were talked to.

[00:29:39] And I was just wondering, as far as you know, can you speak to the truck drivers who were

[00:29:46] supposedly in the county that night and how that lead panned out?

[00:29:50] I remember talking to the detective about this, and he told me that there were two truck drivers

[00:29:56] that they had been pointed that had come through during that particular time. One of them they spoke

[00:30:02] with, and the truck driver said he didn't give rides to hitchhikers

[00:30:07] because it was against policy.

[00:30:09] To me, that means, well, he may have,

[00:30:11] and he just says that he didn't because it's against policy

[00:30:13] because people do that.

[00:30:17] The other one, they just told me that the other one

[00:30:20] had moved away and so they didn't talk to him.

[00:30:23] I don't know if they'd looked for him. I don't know so they didn't talk to him. I don't know if they looked for him,

[00:30:26] you know, I don't know if they didn't talk to him because they couldn't find him. They didn't,

[00:30:30] I wasn't told if they looked for him or not. I'm not sure. It wasn't a leave that when you said

[00:30:36] you were calling me the leaves that were unresolved. This was after why I was in Evansville, Indiana.

[00:30:42] It was where I was found, but I moved to Orlando in early

[00:30:46] 2000s.

[00:30:47] So this was after I'd moved away, it was in the early 2000s.

[00:30:53] And the Indiana State Police contacted me and said that the Delaware police in Newcastle

[00:30:58] County had contacted them because one of the medical examiners offices had remains of a woman that

[00:31:06] they'd had since 1977 and they wanted to check DNA to see if it was Deborah Wohite.

[00:31:13] And I think at that time, Otis was really just getting started about that time.

[00:31:19] I think it started in like 1998, so it was just getting started, you know, the thing, the database.

[00:31:26] And they asked if me or any of Deborah's siblings would submit DNA.

[00:31:32] So one of my aunt and myself submitted DNA to be checked.

[00:31:37] I had already, like I said, I had already moved from Indiana.

[00:31:40] I was here in Florida and I actually worked at a comedy club in downtown Orlando at the time that was walking distance

[00:31:46] from the Orlando police department.

[00:31:48] And I went over there and I just kind of said,

[00:31:53] hey, whoever's at the front, hey, my name's this,

[00:31:58] and this is my situation.

[00:32:00] Can someone here help me get a DNA sample to Delaware?

[00:32:04] And they did. There was a couple officers there that helped me collect my sample and get it. Can someone here help me get a DNA sample to Delaware?

[00:32:05] And they did.

[00:32:06] There was a couple of officers there

[00:32:07] that helped me collect my sample and get it.

[00:32:09] And I bring this up.

[00:32:10] This just came to mind because this was one of the things,

[00:32:13] this is one of the times where I thought,

[00:32:16] oh my gosh, she's really gonna be found.

[00:32:20] You know, I thought this was it.

[00:32:22] And so it was just something to stand out.

[00:32:28] I feel like it took about a year to hear back about that, the DNA results though.

[00:32:33] And when I finally got that call that it was not her, they also apologized to me because

[00:32:41] and I think it was the Delaware police that I'm speaking about.

[00:32:44] I think they called me not the Indiana State Police.

[00:32:47] It's not her, and then they also apologized

[00:32:49] because it had been sitting on someone's desk for six months,

[00:32:54] so it actually had been done six months before,

[00:32:56] it only took six months, and I waited for a year.

[00:32:59] And something also had happened to my DNA sample,

[00:33:01] and it couldn't be used,

[00:33:02] but they were able to use my ant sample.

[00:33:05] So that was like what I thought was a lead

[00:33:09] and was potentially promising,

[00:33:11] but it turned out not to be her.

[00:33:13] That was a rough day.

[00:33:14] I remember that day quite visibly when they called me.

[00:33:18] I was in the, I worked at the Comedy Club.

[00:33:20] I was in the office.

[00:33:22] I was in my office, which was in the back of the box office in the front

[00:33:25] in the Comedy Club and it was during the day.

[00:33:29] So like nobody else was there,

[00:33:30] it was just that's in the box office.

[00:33:32] There was no shows or anything, no people.

[00:33:35] And after we got off the phone,

[00:33:38] I went up to the balcony,

[00:33:39] the back of the empty showroom,

[00:33:41] and I just sat up in the corner in the dark and I cried.

[00:33:47] It's actually surprising to me that this still makes me choked up. Honestly, I didn't expect

[00:33:54] to get choked up while talking about that, but...

[00:34:01] Missy, I'm so sorry.

[00:34:02] It's a, it's really surprising for that it's all chunks me out.

[00:34:09] Ever since then, I've actually looked up.

[00:34:12] I have something positive to end with that.

[00:34:15] At least, but ever since then, I've actually looked up that I call

[00:34:19] my Delaware Jane.

[00:34:20] My Delaware Jane Doe.

[00:34:22] My Delaware Jane Doe.

[00:34:24] And I would look up like every so often.

[00:34:26] And I looked her up on Friday.

[00:34:33] After you guys kind of collect myself,

[00:34:39] take your time Friday when you guys sent me the list of

[00:34:42] when I asked for specific topics of what you wanted

[00:34:44] to talk about just so I had an you know an idea of what we were going to talk about. I have this

[00:34:50] when I started thinking about that I I looked her up again. All this time she had it the night

[00:34:57] she still hadn't been identified I would look at like every few years or so. Even though she knew she wasn't my mother, but I knew that she belonged

[00:35:07] to someone and I felt their pain of not knowing. So it was kind of like me saying, I'll look

[00:35:15] out for you until they find you. And she was, she was identified in 2021. So she's been identified. Her name was Marie Heizer. It's funny though when you

[00:35:27] look up the specifics of Marie, I'm not actually sure why they thought she was my mother. My

[00:35:33] mother was 19 when she disappeared. Marie was 50. But you know, it got our family's DNA, you know, my aunt, there were sisters' DNA in the system so that

[00:35:47] it could be something to look at to see if it's a relative of Deborah and, or, you know, Deborah.

[00:35:54] And, and I, Marie had somebody looking out for her and, and caring about her and told her family

[00:36:02] found her, she had kids too. So I'm sorry.

[00:36:06] I honestly, I didn't think that I would get chucked up by this talk about this stuff.

[00:36:10] Please don't apologize.

[00:36:11] And I just, I just want to say, I think it's like really, really nice that you were

[00:36:15] like looking out for her, you know, it's like, you just, you seem like a really

[00:36:21] caring person and I don't know.

[00:36:23] Now I'm getting choked up.

[00:36:24] I just think that's really nice

[00:36:26] And I'm really glad that she got her name back. I

[00:36:29] Was really happy to see that she was identified and her kids

[00:36:33] You know, they still don't know what happened, but they always face out her

[00:36:38] You know, yeah

[00:36:40] I know I

[00:36:43] Wanted to go back to 74. One thing that I read about Deborah's case is that there was

[00:36:55] some interest in perhaps someone claiming to be your grandmother or Lucille, rather,

[00:37:07] to be your grandmother or Lucille rather, making a phone call on November 30th, 1974,

[00:37:15] making some like tip on this case. And that kind of turning out not to be her. And I was wondering if you had heard anything about what happened with all that.

[00:37:19] I looked up about that online just to see if I could because there's so many articles.

[00:37:27] I actually don't know what that is.

[00:37:29] So if I don't know enough about this to speak on it, what was, you know, what the tip was.

[00:37:35] I think it was something like, like Deborah had been seen in Elberfeld or something.

[00:37:42] It seemed weird. And one thing I want to stress is that having researched some of these older cases, stuff,

[00:37:50] you know, reporters are trying their best, but especially, you know, when it's something's

[00:37:55] breaking, you do have people make mistakes or they miss hear something and run it and

[00:37:59] it's wrong.

[00:38:01] And so I always take little things like that with a little bit of a grain of salt because

[00:38:05] sometimes it could just be their mishearing their police source saying something. And then it never

[00:38:09] gets mentioned again. And then you're kind of like, right, may have just been there.

[00:38:14] I don't, I can't speak on Lucille calling about tip saying her it was so that it was that Lucille had called that she was

[00:38:26] seen in over pose. Yes. Is that what the tip? So I can't speak on the her her

[00:38:33] calling a tip. I do remember Lucille's telling me something it's been a long

[00:38:41] time ago but I remember her saying something about, and I don't know

[00:38:49] if this would have been an elderfold or not, I remember her saying something that she was

[00:38:54] on the city bus with my sister Amy, and they got on the city bus, and through the window

[00:39:01] she looked back, and she swore that she saw Deborah on the sidewalk.

[00:39:07] And they went through to the back of the bus and got back off of the bus. You know how they

[00:39:12] helped? They'll have the exits on the back of the bus. By the time they got back off of the bus,

[00:39:18] she wasn't there. I kind of took that and again I don't know if she, I don't know if she called it in.

[00:39:27] I don't know.

[00:39:29] But I kind of took it when Lucille told me that.

[00:39:34] I kind of took it with a grain of salt because, you know, when people lose people, you see

[00:39:39] them sometimes.

[00:39:40] And it may be them and it may not.

[00:39:44] Your brain is a tricky thing when you're grieving.

[00:39:48] So did you really see her? I don't know. I also remember her saying something about

[00:39:56] somebody saying they saw the car in somebody's garage.

[00:40:04] I have no context to this or who it was. So I think there was probably more

[00:40:09] than one instance and that somebody said they saw something somewhere and there's no proof or

[00:40:13] evidence if she actually was seen or not. That's all I thought on that. Absolutely. No, no, yeah.

[00:40:19] It's one of those. It's kind of, I totally understand that some,

[00:40:22] especially in a missing person's case, there can be those kind of things where it's like was that something was it was a nothing?

[00:40:29] It's it's really hard to categorize them without any cooperating evidence

[00:40:34] Yeah, and I'm speaking of that actually can you can you tell us what you know about the duck pond and how it relates to Deborah's case?

[00:40:43] Yeah what relates to Deborah's case? Yeah, the duck pond.

[00:40:45] So earlier when I was talking about the case file

[00:40:48] and I said the thing that stuck out to me the most

[00:40:50] was what wasn't in the file and that was the duck pond.

[00:40:55] And I'll start from the beginning

[00:40:56] about what the duck pond is

[00:40:58] because people who don't know the case

[00:40:59] probably wonder what the heck that is.

[00:41:01] So this is what my grandmother Lucille told me when I was asking about everything.

[00:41:12] She actually first told me about this. It was probably in 1994, you know, when I first

[00:41:21] started asking all the questions and everything. she had never told me about the duck pond

[00:41:26] before or what supposedly happened.

[00:41:29] So she had just told me, so it was pressed in my mind,

[00:41:31] and I sat and I read, you know, in this case,

[00:41:35] and the thing that I was told, that the police

[00:41:38] had been told, was not in this case.

[00:41:40] Anyway, so I'll start from the beginning.

[00:41:43] And this may or may not have been in previous articles.

[00:41:46] I'm not sure if it was or not, honestly. So there was a family friend.

[00:41:55] This was after Deborah disappeared and it may have been several years after Deborah disappeared.

[00:42:01] I'm not entirely sure when it happened. There was a family friend sending the night

[00:42:05] at Lucille's house with one of her younger daughters,

[00:42:09] Deborah's younger sister.

[00:42:11] So she was, you know, a minor.

[00:42:13] And she was a young team.

[00:42:16] And the girl became very upset.

[00:42:19] Am I in it?

[00:42:21] I believe my aunt went and got Lucille

[00:42:24] because her friend was very upset and so

[00:42:28] Lucille was talking to her and she

[00:42:31] I'm gonna try not to get ahead again

[00:42:34] the girl said that

[00:42:36] her father

[00:42:39] told her

[00:42:42] That he had shot

[00:42:52] Deborah told her that he had shot Deborah, put her body in the trunk of her car, and then shot gunned it into a stripper pit that was filled with water. At that time, it was kind of a

[00:42:57] hangout for younger people. And it had been given the nickname the just pond. It was somewhere outside of Elbert's held, Indiana.

[00:43:08] If I'm not mistaken, I'm not entirely sure.

[00:43:11] But the girl also said that her father told her

[00:43:15] if she told anyone else that he would kill her too.

[00:43:19] Again, I'm unsure of when this actually happened.

[00:43:22] I can't say for sure what police department was actually given this info.

[00:43:27] It's been said in the past that it was given to IST, Indiana State Police.

[00:43:32] But I think it's fair to say that it's hard to say for sure.

[00:43:36] The case initially was with the Princeton, Indiana, which is a small town,

[00:43:44] Winston, Indiana, which is a small town, their police department, and then a year or more later,

[00:43:48] it was transferred over to the Indiana State Police.

[00:43:50] So Lucille told me that she called and told the police

[00:43:54] about this, but that nothing ever came of it.

[00:43:57] So she didn't think that it was true,

[00:43:59] because if they looked into it, they didn't find it.

[00:44:01] So she never heard anything else about it.

[00:44:04] So I was sitting there with a sick case file, and I'm thinking I'm gonna see this, that she called in, they looked into it, they didn't find it. So she never heard anything else about it. So I was sitting there with a sick case file

[00:44:06] and I'm thinking I'm gonna see this,

[00:44:08] that she called in, they looked into it

[00:44:09] and they didn't find anything.

[00:44:11] And there was nothing, there was nothing.

[00:44:13] There's nothing in the case file about the death pun.

[00:44:16] So I asked about it, like, hey,

[00:44:19] there's nothing about the death pun, you know,

[00:44:21] and I told about the specifics and whatever.

[00:44:23] And the officer that was there with us said anything that they received on the case, it would be

[00:44:28] in the file. And she said that she called the police and she told them what she'd been

[00:44:32] told. There was this thing. It was a thing, if you can imagine.

[00:44:37] Yeah.

[00:44:38] She, she's saying, I know that I called and I told an officer. So we have no way of knowing what happened with that. I don't know

[00:44:50] but it was not in the file. It had not been looked into yet. So one thing I wanted to point out,

[00:45:00] the DEF CON is something that in past articles that have been done. It was reflected in a way that it seemed that the tip was in the case file and it had

[00:45:09] previously been looked into, but I know for a fact that it was not brought up until 1994

[00:45:13] when I was sitting there and told it to them because they knew nothing about it and said

[00:45:19] that they didn't know anything about it.

[00:45:22] So it was looked into then by the Indiana State Police

[00:45:25] in 1994, and I was told that when they looked into it,

[00:45:30] it had been drained of all the water content,

[00:45:33] and it had been completely filled in with dirt

[00:45:35] back in the 80s, I think.

[00:45:40] And they said when it was drained,

[00:45:44] the bottom of the stripper pit would have

[00:45:46] still had like 15, 20 feet of they called it stilts like quicksand like

[00:45:51] dirt in the bottom. So if her car was in the bottom of that, it would have been

[00:45:56] covered by that and the workers that were doing that there, they wouldn't have

[00:45:59] seen it. They would have filled it in. They did say that, I remember they did tell me that they found, they found old aerial photos

[00:46:17] that were taken in that area that they looked to see if maybe they could see a car or something

[00:46:24] that they said there was nothing

[00:46:26] that they could see, but they also said that you probably, if there was something there

[00:46:29] that you probably wouldn't be able to see it from most photos anyway.

[00:46:33] But the idea of the Duck Con is always something that's going to linger in the back of my

[00:46:36] mind, I think, simply because it can never be proven or disproven.

[00:46:43] If I'm not mistaken, I think there are now buildings over that site.

[00:46:48] They later did as an adult because I've been in contact with the enos

[00:47:02] I haven't for a long time recently, but I know that they,

[00:47:05] one of the officers,

[00:47:07] because the detectives that had the case,

[00:47:10] I spoke to probably three or four different detectives

[00:47:13] because it kind of was handed off,

[00:47:15] it was a cold case, it was handed off.

[00:47:18] Somebody who told me that,

[00:47:21] at some point, the girl that told Lucille Dez

[00:47:24] about the duck pond was interviewed later

[00:47:26] as an adult.

[00:47:28] She then said that she wasn't sure if that was the actual correct location.

[00:47:34] She didn't know if it was really true.

[00:47:36] Her father was never a suspect.

[00:47:42] I think he was older.

[00:47:44] He was a lot older than never would have been,

[00:47:47] but he was someone who was involved in a lot of bad things. I don't want to give names just

[00:47:52] because he was never listed as a suspect. He's dead now. And his daughter, I don't want to put

[00:47:58] her name out there because she didn't do anything. And I don't want anybody bothering her.

[00:48:03] I know you mentioned that this may have been built over.

[00:48:06] Are there any opportunities to do like, I don't understand

[00:48:09] any of the technology around this.

[00:48:10] So I may be suggesting something really stupid or impossible, but

[00:48:13] like any of that like ground penetrating radar or some of those devices

[00:48:18] or anything like that.

[00:48:18] Oh my gosh.

[00:48:19] When I in the 90s, I spent so much of my time.

[00:48:28] Of course, like, when all this started, there was no interest.

[00:48:30] Yeah, you couldn't just go look up.

[00:48:33] I was the first one in the family

[00:48:37] to really look for what happened.

[00:48:40] And I don't want to.

[00:48:43] I don't want to I don't want it to seem like I'm saying that in a negative way.

[00:48:46] I don't mean that in a negative way at all.

[00:48:48] Like I'm not saying, oh, why didn't you guys look for her or do your research?

[00:48:52] Like it wasn't that.

[00:48:54] It was just like I was a young adult when the internet was coming about and I just, I was the one who I spent so much time just tell us time online

[00:49:12] looking for resources to get that excavated.

[00:49:15] I actually corresponded with the person who discovered the Titanic about different radar penetrating.

[00:49:26] I don't even know what, like I've spoken to so many people,

[00:49:30] so many people.

[00:49:31] There's some kind of group that,

[00:49:33] it's like a training program for excavation.

[00:49:37] And I tried to say, hey, you need to train.

[00:49:42] This needs to be excavated.

[00:49:43] Why don't you use your training to excavate this,

[00:49:46] that type of thing?

[00:49:47] It didn't work out, but yeah.

[00:49:51] The police were not gonna excavate it

[00:49:52] because there was no evidence whatsoever.

[00:49:56] It was literally decades after

[00:49:59] something supposedly happened.

[00:50:02] There was no time, there was no money.

[00:50:03] They were, they, I mean, they told me,

[00:50:06] the police are not gonna excavate this.

[00:50:09] But yeah, I had the same thought as you just did.

[00:50:13] Like there's gotta be some kind of, you know,

[00:50:16] and I brought up to the police school.

[00:50:17] What about like the radar where you can see underground

[00:50:21] to see if they're, and they were like,

[00:50:22] well, you know, back in the stripper pit,

[00:50:24] people dumped cars there all the time. There's going to be all kinds of metal.

[00:50:28] And at that time, they didn't have something that could see that there was metal and then

[00:50:33] also see if there was a skeleton inside the metal. That's what they would have to see,

[00:50:38] that there's an actual body in there in order to have, you know, cause to excavate this area. So, wow, the duck pond.

[00:50:51] That's always going to be a thing. I think if anybody listening has, you know, if you know

[00:50:57] where that duck pond used to be, like the duck pond in quotes, and you know what's there now, I would love to know what's there

[00:51:07] now. There's got to be other people that, oh yeah, I used to hang out with a duck pond.

[00:51:13] You know, they would be older, but there's got to be people that know where it is and

[00:51:18] what's there now I would think.

[00:51:20] Yes, I imagine there are and I just hope that they just let us know because I think this would be great information to have and

[00:51:29] Unfortunately, some of these kind of casual meet-up places get lost over time as development occurs

[00:51:34] But you know, I'm sure people remember it and I'm sure the people who hung out and had positive memories there would be able to say

[00:51:41] Oh, yeah

[00:51:42] Here's about where it is because we all have things in our towns where we know

[00:51:45] like this used to be a Dairy Queen or this used to be that.

[00:51:49] So hopefully people can come forward with that.

[00:51:52] Anything else on the duck pond that you wanted to get into?

[00:51:59] Well, thanks.

[00:52:00] So one of the detectives that I was speaking to at some time,

[00:52:04] I don't even know what year

[00:52:05] it would have been, but he contacted me several times.

[00:52:10] He was going to take me to where the site was.

[00:52:14] I mean, this was a long time ago and it's still in the 90s or maybe 2000 early 2000s.

[00:52:20] I was still in Evansville.

[00:52:22] So it was before 2003.

[00:52:24] But after 1995, somewhere in there, at that time, I think it had changed

[00:52:29] hands.

[00:52:30] Sergeant Rhodes had retired and it had changed hands.

[00:52:33] But I remember he would say, I wanted to take you, you know, but I looked into it.

[00:52:39] It's just really muddy.

[00:52:40] You can't really get a car back there.

[00:52:42] I don't know.

[00:52:43] But then I heard later on from somebody else,

[00:52:45] but it had been later on developed. Maybe there's houses over it. I don't, I really don't know.

[00:52:52] I'd be interested to know if anybody knows what's there now. Absolutely. I'd like to know.

[00:52:58] To go into another theory that I saw online, this is from the Charlie Project website, the page on Deborah's case mentions a kind of links to people who are

[00:53:11] convicted of another murder, Wayne Gully and Ella May Dix as

[00:53:15] possible persons of interest. And do you have any

[00:53:17] understanding about them and how they might be linked up here?

[00:53:24] To my knowledge, there's been no evidence that I'm aware of that link.

[00:53:27] Any other cases to my mother's case, I'm familiar with her page on the Charlie Project page.

[00:53:33] I've actually contacted them or tried contacting them.

[00:53:37] I think I've emailed, asking them to remove that off of her page because there's been nothing that links them to her case other than

[00:53:45] that off of her page because there's been nothing that links them to her case other than she was about the same age. It was about the same area, about the same time. But there was a lot of stuff

[00:53:51] that happened in 1974 to a lot of people. There's nothing that links them at all. Law enforcement

[00:53:57] has not linked them to her case whatsoever. Yeah, I feel like if there's nothing there as far as

[00:54:02] law enforcement is concerned, then that shouldn't be up there.

[00:54:06] It shouldn't.

[00:54:07] And I'm not sure why it is.

[00:54:09] I don't know.

[00:54:10] Because I don't even think I saw anything.

[00:54:14] When I looked up them in newspapers.com, I didn't really see anything with even like

[00:54:19] journalists being like, oh, maybe there's a link.

[00:54:21] I mean, I may have missed something, but yeah, I was confused by that.

[00:54:25] Yeah, I think it was literally, I didn't either.

[00:54:30] I think it was literally just whoever

[00:54:31] is the administrator of that site.

[00:54:33] I'm not sure.

[00:54:35] Just kind of linked it.

[00:54:37] I'm not sure honestly, but yeah,

[00:54:39] I've actually contacted them and said,

[00:54:41] hey, this is who I am, this is my mother.

[00:54:43] There's nothing that links these people to her case.

[00:54:45] So, you know, but they never answered me.

[00:54:49] And it's still there.

[00:54:50] I looked like the last couple days, it's still there.

[00:54:53] Well, hopefully someone works with Charlie Project.

[00:54:55] They can kind of maybe remedy that

[00:54:59] or at least explain why they think it's linked

[00:55:01] because I think that's not ideal. And it's tempting to link

[00:55:09] cases that may be in the same geographic area, but often that's a losing game because there's

[00:55:14] a lot of really bad people out there, unfortunately.

[00:55:16] Yeah.

[00:55:17] I wanted to ask you, out of all that we've talked about or maybe things we

[00:55:25] haven't talked about, do you have a theory about what happened to Deborah or is that something

[00:55:29] that you're just continuing to be open-minded on?

[00:55:32] It's a very hard question for me to answer.

[00:55:36] I don't think it's helpful for me to try to come up with a theory really.

[00:55:42] Like the duck pond will always stick out to me. But I think just because I think that's

[00:55:48] really the only thing that's ever come up, that's the only

[00:55:52] thing of substance that ever came up. Like it was a specific

[00:55:55] place, it was a specific person that supposedly done it. It

[00:55:58] was a specific, you know, location, it was specific

[00:56:01] information. That's the only thing of substance that has ever come

[00:56:07] up, but then it cannot be verified in any way now. So that's always going to stick out in the

[00:56:12] back of my mind just because it can't be disproven. There was a theory tossed around that she had

[00:56:18] run off to California. But the thing with that is she didn't have any money. You know, I don't know

[00:56:23] how she would have done that

[00:56:27] But that was a theory that people tossed around

[00:56:32] California does have her listed on their stuff on their site on their state site as a missing also

[00:56:34] but Yeah, I'm really open to all theories even bad ones, you know

[00:56:39] I'm open to anything like even if if she left on of hericord. I don't really, I don't

[00:56:45] really think that she did. But I'm open to all possibilities. Not too long ago I

[00:56:52] actually did the ancestry DNA thing. And it just crossed my mind since my

[00:56:59] father said he thought that she might be pregnant like he disappeared. I was

[00:57:02] like, wow, what if it comes up I I have a sibling or half the way somewhere.

[00:57:07] Like nothing's come up so far,

[00:57:09] but it does cross my mind every time I get a notification,

[00:57:12] you have a new family DNA match.

[00:57:14] And it's usually like you're the 16th cousin

[00:57:17] with this person in Idaho or, you know, it, you know,

[00:57:22] nothing's come up, but I'd be lying if I said that,

[00:57:26] that doesn't cross my mind.

[00:57:28] I don't think that she just got them left,

[00:57:34] but I'm open to it,

[00:57:35] because like, what do I know?

[00:57:36] I don't know anything.

[00:57:37] I don't think anybody really knows anything.

[00:57:39] And I don't think anybody really knows a person,

[00:57:42] especially when you're that young,

[00:57:46] you know. think anybody really knows a person, especially when you're that young. You know, she's a baby.

[00:57:48] I think I think back when I was 19, I just turned 50 this year.

[00:57:52] I think back when I was 19, oh my God, you're not the same person.

[00:57:57] I mean, you have some of the same.

[00:57:59] Yeah, some of the same stuff, but you're so different.

[00:58:03] Your outlook on life and things is so different.

[00:58:06] It's so different. I don't know. So no, I don't really have a theory. I am open to the

[00:58:15] universe. I don't know. I'm open to all of you.

[00:58:20] Yeah, I think that's probably a really smart way to be because you're not, you're not trying to fit things to what you want it to be.

[00:58:27] You're trying to just analyze what's, what's coming to you and then make a decision from

[00:58:31] there.

[00:58:32] With California, do we know why she's listed there?

[00:58:35] Did they have any evidence for that?

[00:58:36] Or they just, is that just California saying, oh, we heard a rumor she was here.

[00:58:41] There was somebody that was, oh, this is, this is actually something from the file that I

[00:58:48] remember and I forgot about. Somebody was interviewed and it was, I won't say who it

[00:58:53] is. It's someone who's a family friend, but she was a minor at the time when they interviewed

[00:58:58] her. And I remember this because as I'm reading this and I was asking questions and Sergeant

[00:59:04] Rose was telling me about it, he was like, there was a thing that said confidential or something stamped

[00:59:09] on this piece of paper that I was reading. And he was like, oh, actually this shouldn't

[00:59:15] have been included because she was a minor. Anyway, I read it, but I won't say who it

[00:59:21] was. So this minor, who was a family friend, she wasn't relative, she was a family friend.

[00:59:26] I'm not just my mother, but the whole family.

[00:59:29] And she was interviewed.

[00:59:32] I'm not sure why she was interviewed

[00:59:33] or if she came forward, that I'm not clear about.

[00:59:37] Her and somebody else were partying,

[00:59:40] Goldman, they were much older.

[00:59:42] And then one of them was talking about how it would have been really easy for her to just

[00:59:48] up and go to California.

[00:59:50] I know how to make somebody disappear.

[00:59:52] You just, you know, I was just talking about kind of talking about her in a way that made

[00:59:58] them think maybe she went to California.

[01:00:02] So I guess that's how she got in the on the California site.

[01:00:07] That's the only thing I remember about California, but I remember that from the

[01:00:11] file now. That makes sense. Over the years of the police maintained good

[01:00:16] communication with you and your family? I can really only speak for myself, from my own interaction with the police. I don't.

[01:00:27] Before I contacted them in 1994, to my knowledge, they had not like reached

[01:00:31] out to her mother or the rest of the family or anything.

[01:00:36] So I first contacted them in 1994.

[01:00:39] I was 21 years old then, and I would think contact with them periodically

[01:00:43] through probably like 2006 or

[01:00:47] something. I dealt with like four different detectives over the years. There was one time

[01:00:52] this was probably 1998. I was still in Evansville. And a detective from ISC called me during

[01:01:00] the day at work. They called me at work, which is weird. And so I get called into my supervisor's cubicle

[01:01:06] because I worked in office.

[01:01:08] And she says, there's a detective with Indiana State Police

[01:01:11] on the phone asking for you.

[01:01:14] So I go in there and I'm talking on her phone

[01:01:17] and her cubicle and she's sitting there looking at me,

[01:01:20] probably wondering what the heck.

[01:01:22] Why is this detective calling?

[01:01:24] I couldn't tell you who the

[01:01:25] detective was. I don't remember, but he said he called to tell me that there was a new lead

[01:01:30] on my mother's case. They didn't say what the lead was. I never heard anything else about that. So

[01:01:36] that's a cool. They called me in the middle of the work day at work to tell me that there was a new

[01:01:41] lead. And I never heard anything else. So like if that was the kind of communication that I was going to get, I could do without

[01:01:48] that, honestly, that was not helpful to me in any way.

[01:01:53] But I pretty much initiated from the contact that I've had and that they've had with me.

[01:01:59] I've always initiated it and kept it kind of going

[01:02:07] like out there in their face because I would call and ask about it,

[01:02:08] I'd already email, you know, other than that.

[01:02:11] And I don't know.

[01:02:14] Do you know if work is still being done

[01:02:16] and do you feel like over the years enough work

[01:02:19] has been done on Depper's case?

[01:02:21] As far as work being done now,

[01:02:23] when I first saw that question and we sent it, I was like,

[01:02:27] this is a great question.

[01:02:29] So I actually called the Indiana State Police on Friday, November 3rd.

[01:02:34] And I said, hey, this is me, who I am, and I'm calling about my mother's old missing

[01:02:43] person's case.

[01:02:44] And I talked to a sergeant

[01:02:47] Helmer with a saint, very nice. When I talked to him, he was like, I don't, is

[01:02:51] this, is there a tip or a lead on this case? I'm not familiar with this name or

[01:02:54] this case. He transferred to the M so tells him 2016 he said so he had never

[01:02:59] heard the name. So he seemed skeptical a little bit I, when he said, well, let me call you back.

[01:03:06] So I called him, he called back very fast though, because I called him on my lunch break and he

[01:03:12] called back, I was still on my lunch break. So it was within like 15 minutes, maybe. And he called

[01:03:17] me back and said it wasn't as hard to find as I thought it would be. You know, I found it. I said

[01:03:21] well, I was just really, I was going to see if there was a current detective or

[01:03:27] current contact name for the case other than just the Indian state police belt that there

[01:03:34] was a name.

[01:03:35] Because in the past when I had been talking with someone, there was always a detective

[01:03:40] that had the case.

[01:03:41] Even though it was a cold case, it was assigned to somebody.

[01:03:45] He said that because there was no current activity, because there were no leads, it's

[01:03:52] not assigned to anyone.

[01:03:54] Right now nobody's looking at it right now.

[01:03:57] He did look up the last activity for me and he said the last entry was in 2015, but it wasn't actually about her case.

[01:04:08] The somebody in the Pennsylvania police department, they had they had female remains that they

[01:04:16] they had and they checked against the C.S. It was if it was her, of course it was not, but

[01:04:20] that was the last activity in the system for her was then. So right now,

[01:04:28] like nothing's being done. I don't know what they would do though. It's such a long time now,

[01:04:37] how much time it's passed. But that doesn't mean that, you know,

[01:04:42] these old cases with the DNA systems, the national database systems

[01:04:48] and remains are found and 50-year-old cases are being solved, for at least people are

[01:04:55] being found.

[01:04:58] And sometimes it can be great to just go through the old file for a new detective to

[01:05:03] just do that and just see if anything

[01:05:05] stands out.

[01:05:06] 20% right?

[01:05:07] No, I was going to say maybe this will bring it up again and somebody else will look at

[01:05:12] it.

[01:05:13] I hope so.

[01:05:14] Everyone that I've ever dealt with has always been very kind to me.

[01:05:19] One thing I wanted to ask you and it's just kind of for the audience, for people who might be from this area.

[01:05:26] And I'm really asking our audience to, you know, if you know people who are from this Evansville

[01:05:31] area who were there back then, or who may have family members who were back there back then,

[01:05:36] please send this episode to them. Please like ask them about this. Princeton, Fort Branch, Gibson County, all those little areas.

[01:05:48] What kind of questions would you have for the public that we can maybe crowdsource a

[01:05:54] little bit and see if, you know, we talked about location of this duck pond, this stripper

[01:05:58] pond that was jokingly called the duck pond.

[01:06:01] What else?

[01:06:02] Anyone familiar with the windmill or this, what happened to Deborah,

[01:06:06] what may have happened this night, the night she disappeared? What else can we maybe look into

[01:06:12] as far as the public helping out? I don't know. I mean, if anybody, you know, if anybody listens to this

[01:06:25] or they send it to somebody and they get it

[01:06:27] and somebody says, I don't know anything about this,

[01:06:31] but I went to high school with Jeff Lowe-Heit

[01:06:34] or I went to Sunday school with Debbie,

[01:06:37] like send me an email and tell me stories about them.

[01:06:42] You know, even if it's not,

[01:06:43] even if you don't have anything about the case, I mean, great if you do any

[01:06:50] information about anything, even smallest, that'd be great. But

[01:06:53] like, any information about about them was great.

[01:07:00] Absolutely. Yeah, those those human stories. And you know, at

[01:07:04] the end of the day, these were just very young

[01:07:05] people and a tragic thing happened to this family. In terms of before we get off the case

[01:07:14] questions, we talked about some pieces of misinformation. I think we already addressed

[01:07:22] that, but any other misinfo that's around that we

[01:07:26] can debunk or alternatively details that should have been spotlighted but really haven't.

[01:07:32] I mean the only thing about misinformation comes to mind is about the duck pond being

[01:07:35] investigated back then when it wasn't.

[01:07:39] I can't think of anything else that I've seen that was wrong off the top of my head, I can't think of anything.

[01:07:50] And then anything that should have been really put out more but wasn't?

[01:07:54] All the beginning of her case was just wrong, you know.

[01:07:59] She wasn't reported missing for two days, you know.

[01:08:03] And then back in the 70s, especially in small towns like that,

[01:08:07] they weren't equipped to deal with that kind of thing.

[01:08:10] And then also in the 70s, if an adult disappeared,

[01:08:15] you know, they were like, well, they're an adult.

[01:08:17] If they wanna leave, they can just go.

[01:08:19] They're an adult.

[01:08:21] It wasn't really,

[01:08:30] you know, it wasn't dealt with as if it would have happened now.

[01:08:36] There was no media coverage, there was no, you know,

[01:08:47] there were so many things that were wrong. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. You were only 18 months when Deborah disappeared. Have you been able to piece together what she was like

[01:08:50] based on conversations with other family members?

[01:08:53] I don't have any memories of her.

[01:08:55] And as far as what I know about Deborah based on my collections

[01:09:07] from other family members.

[01:09:08] That's a question I actually can't answer

[01:09:10] because I mean, it might sound weird to others,

[01:09:13] but I haven't really heard very much about Deborah,

[01:09:16] my mother at all, like things that she liked

[01:09:19] or things that she didn't like,

[01:09:20] or what she did when she was young.

[01:09:23] I was so young when she disappeared.

[01:09:26] And then as I got older and more time has passed,

[01:09:30] people are trying to move on with their lives.

[01:09:32] It was always kind of a touchy subject with my family.

[01:09:35] People didn't just sit around talking about her.

[01:09:38] When I asked Lucille about something,

[01:09:39] she would answer me.

[01:09:41] And of course, I got much different answers

[01:09:43] when I asked

[01:09:46] her questions when I was five than I did when I was 20, but she answered many questions

[01:09:52] if I had questions, but I mostly asked about when she disappeared, like the surroundings

[01:10:02] of when she disappeared.

[01:10:04] I don't know a lot about her, honestly.

[01:10:07] That's why I said, if anybody knew her,

[01:10:09] grew up with her, had stories about her.

[01:10:12] I'd love to hear them.

[01:10:13] Her or my father?

[01:10:15] I loved her.

[01:10:18] I did.

[01:10:20] I do remember my more loose deal telling me about

[01:10:25] how Deborah did, she did leave sometimes for a couple days at a time?

[01:10:29] She ran around but she told me that

[01:10:32] She never thought that she would have left us girls on her own. She thinks that she may have left

[01:10:40] But something happened that prevented her from coming back. I mean, they think South play, of course.

[01:10:45] But I remember she told me once that she said that she was,

[01:10:50] Deborah said that she was going to go get a couple sodas.

[01:10:53] And she was gone for two days.

[01:10:56] When she came back, she had a soda in each pocket,

[01:10:59] but she was gone for two days.

[01:11:00] So maybe I haven't heard a lot because there's things like that. And of course,

[01:11:07] you don't want to tell a young, you know, when I was young, I didn't, they wouldn't tell me

[01:11:14] stuff like that. But I haven't heard a lot of things about her, honestly, which I never really

[01:11:21] thought about. And so I read that questions first first and I realized that I don't really know anything about her as a person

[01:11:29] Which was really sad

[01:11:31] Yeah, and and and we just want to if you're listening to this you you had some interactions with Deborah back in the day

[01:11:37] Shoot us an email at murder sheet at gmail.com

[01:11:40] And it doesn't matter if it doesn't have anything to do with the case as Misty said

[01:11:44] It's just about getting information about who this young woman was

[01:11:48] before unfortunately, you know, she was interrupted on her journey and just emphasizing she was 19 years old like she was so young

[01:11:58] Can you speak to how your mother's how how Deborah's disappearance affected your family

[01:12:05] your mother's, how Deborah's disappearance affected your family?

[01:12:15] That's another hard question. I think for all the different members of the family, it affected, it was probably different for everyone.

[01:12:19] It probably affected everyone a little bit differently.

[01:12:22] For me, there's never been AIDS before.

[01:12:26] She went missing and after she went missing.

[01:12:29] To me, in my mind, she has always been missing.

[01:12:32] She's always been gone.

[01:12:33] And I think, I mean, there's always been a feeling of void,

[01:12:39] even though I had my grandmother who raised me as my mom.

[01:12:44] There's still a void in your life,

[01:12:46] but it wasn't just the one thing with her disappearance.

[01:12:52] It wasn't just her disappearance, it was all three things.

[01:12:54] It was Deborah, it was Jeff, it was Amy,

[01:12:56] and they were all three kind of spun into this one big ball

[01:13:01] of intertwined bad stuff that you just kind of everybody had to figure out how to live with it

[01:13:12] so that you just could live and try to live as happy life as you can. I can't really speak for

[01:13:18] anybody else. It is something that took me a long time to be okay with like I talked about in the past house. I

[01:13:28] Spent so much time like in the 90s

[01:13:31] online just

[01:13:34] Looking at de-composed bodies and remains down here and you know a femur found in this location

[01:13:44] I You know, a femur found in this location. I became kind of defensitized to really bad stuff.

[01:13:49] Just trying to find her if not find what happened to her.

[01:13:57] Find her physical remains.

[01:14:01] I don't know, everybody just kind of has to do their own thing and find their own way

[01:14:07] to deal with the bad stuff.

[01:14:10] Because you still have to live.

[01:14:12] And you still have to, I don't know, just try to live as happy as life as you can.

[01:14:21] I think it's a bit hard for the whole family and in a lot of different ways.

[01:14:27] Really well said. And I was wondering if you could tell us about what you do remember about

[01:14:36] Lucille, but also about your sister Amy and your father, Jeffrey.

[01:14:41] and your in your father, Jeffrey.

[01:14:47] I'll start with my dad, if you don't mind.

[01:14:55] So my father, I've never heard anybody who knows him. I think I'll refer to him as Jeff.

[01:14:59] So my daddy, Jeff, he I,

[01:15:08] he was one of five children. He had two brothers and two sisters, one of his sister's cast of cancer, your sack. I actually had gotten to know her.

[01:15:10] We did phone calls and stuff for a while, and I'm in contact with his other siblings.

[01:15:16] A year ago, I went to one of my uncle's surprise birthday parties, and I met some of my first

[01:15:22] cousins for the first time on the Wohai side that I had never met before.

[01:15:25] Growing up, there was a kind of a rift of some sort between the two families.

[01:15:34] And I didn't have the Wohai side of my family in my life growing up, unfortunately.

[01:15:41] I didn't have my dad's side, definitely. I kind of looked them up as I got older

[01:15:46] and got to contact with them.

[01:15:49] But so after my, after Deborah disappeared,

[01:15:56] he moved in with Lucille with me and Amy, my sister.

[01:16:00] And Lucille had us when he worked,

[01:16:03] but she always told me that when he was home, he took

[01:16:06] care of us.

[01:16:07] We were his.

[01:16:08] Like he would get us ready for bed and give us our baths and the care of us.

[01:16:15] And Lucille thought of him as a son.

[01:16:17] I know she loved him.

[01:16:18] She never said anything negative about him at all.

[01:16:21] She thought it's a mess of fun.

[01:16:23] And I'm sure it was just so such a horrible

[01:16:28] thing when he was gone to and he was killed how it happened, which I'll talk about that

[01:16:35] what happened to him. So it was 1976. He recently got a new car because, you know, he didn't have a car. He got a, I think he got a Mustang.

[01:16:46] He got a new car.

[01:16:47] He had just turned 26 on September 18th in 1976.

[01:16:53] And then just about a week later, he was killed.

[01:16:56] I think it was outside of Fort Branch Indiana.

[01:16:58] His car was hit by a train.

[01:17:00] There's a lot of unanswered questions

[01:17:01] surrounding his accident, what happened to him also, just like Deborah, I don't think anyone knew

[01:17:08] why he was out where he was at that time,

[01:17:12] why he had someone with him,

[01:17:13] he had someone with him, it was a local boy, teenager,

[01:17:17] I think he was about 17, it was someone local

[01:17:20] that everyone knew, but he was, had him in the car with him.

[01:17:24] I can't remember his name now and I feel bad about that.

[01:17:26] I have a written down somewhere.

[01:17:28] I have a copy of the accident report somewhere.

[01:17:30] It's kind of a mystery, really what happened.

[01:17:32] No, but back then, in these more rural areas, there were, there was no train crossing lights

[01:17:40] like the arm that comes down.

[01:17:42] There was none of that.

[01:17:43] It was just a street and a train crossing,

[01:17:45] and you were on your own to make sure that there was not a train coming when you were crossing the

[01:17:49] track. So he had one eye. He had a tumor behind one of his eyes that they had to remove his eye

[01:17:57] when he was like seven or eight, I think. So he had one eye. When he was younger, he wore an eye patch. And then at this time, he had a blast eye.

[01:18:09] But he and the other person were killed probably pretty instantly.

[01:18:14] The accident report said that my father was

[01:18:17] thrown from the car and the car rolled over him.

[01:18:21] I don't remember who identified him.

[01:18:24] But Mom, Lucille had told me a little bit about that.

[01:18:29] She said that pretty much the only visibly, he was pretty much only visibly identified

[01:18:36] from the t-shirt that he was wearing.

[01:18:40] At the time, my sister Amy was in treatment at St. Jude Children's Hospital for Leukemia

[01:18:44] and he was wearing a

[01:18:47] happiness is helping St. Jude Church.

[01:18:51] And I have his class reign. I wear it sometimes.

[01:19:01] Like you know he this happened when I was I was three.

[01:19:05] Like, you know, he, this happened when I was, I was three. I have one memory of him.

[01:19:09] And I had told my Lucille about it, you know, a long time ago.

[01:19:14] And she, she, you know, described the surroundings or what my memory was.

[01:19:19] Cause I wasn't sure if it was a dream or if it actually happened.

[01:19:23] And she said that was the,

[01:19:25] that was, sounds like the trailer that,

[01:19:28] that they lived in before he moved in with her

[01:19:32] after it never disappeared.

[01:19:34] I, so I was three.

[01:19:37] I was sleeping on my parents bed,

[01:19:43] and I woke up and I had peed my pants or was wet.

[01:19:46] And right when I woke up, the alarm clock that was on the,

[01:19:53] or maybe it was the alarm clock that woke me up.

[01:19:56] I woke up, I was wet, the alarm clock was going off.

[01:20:00] I was crying because I woke up and I was wet.

[01:20:03] And I remember my dad coming into the room and

[01:20:08] reaching for me. I

[01:20:11] And that's where it stopped. I've always kind of taken that memory as him like saying. I'm not quite there

[01:20:20] but I'm still right here, you know, and

[01:20:24] but I'm still right here, you know. And I've heard a little bit more about my dad than I had my mother,

[01:20:30] but I still haven't heard a lot of things.

[01:20:32] I, someone who contacted me on Facebook after I published my book,

[01:20:39] the e-nears back and said, hey, I have a friend that was friends with your dad, and she put me

[01:20:47] in contact with him. And I can't remember his name, but I talked to him for like an hour on the

[01:20:52] phone, and he told me stories about my dad. Like, he liked to roller skate, which is neat,

[01:21:00] because I liked to roller skate when I was young. And he probably told me other stuff. I don't remember now that everything

[01:21:09] that I've heard about him is that he was just a good guy.

[01:21:15] Everyone liked him.

[01:21:18] And he was a good person.

[01:21:20] And everything that I've heard is he was a good dad

[01:21:23] when he was still with us.

[01:21:25] So my sister Amy,

[01:21:29] she was older than me,

[01:21:31] you know, and she was,

[01:21:33] so she was diagnosed with a teeny when she was about four.

[01:21:36] And so I was, you know, she was older than me.

[01:21:39] So I was like,

[01:21:41] she was very young.

[01:21:44] So the only memories that I have of her, she was nice,

[01:21:50] unfortunately.

[01:21:52] Like I would go to her doctor's appointments

[01:21:55] at Librarian Clinic with her mom.

[01:21:58] And I would sit under the exam table

[01:22:00] when the doctor was in there talking to them.

[01:22:03] And I actually still think about that when I am in the doctor's office, talking to them. And they and I actually still think

[01:22:05] about that when I am in the doctor's office sitting and waiting for them to come in.

[01:22:09] I'm sitting, I think about that pretty much every time I'm sitting in the doctor's office

[01:22:13] on the exam table waiting for them to come in. I hate going to the doctor. I have white

[01:22:18] coat syndrome, somebody call it. Anyway, so she had leukemia. Mom and her Lucille is hard for me to call her.

[01:22:27] And like, yeah, would go back and forth

[01:22:29] from Evansville in the Aniston as it's Tennessee

[01:22:31] when she was in treatment at St. Jude.

[01:22:33] She went into remission a few times.

[01:22:36] She was kind of opposite of me.

[01:22:37] We have similar features that I have dark hair and dark eyes

[01:22:41] and she had very blonde hair and very blue eyes.

[01:22:44] The leukemia really robbed me of my sister like in the short time that we had

[01:22:50] together we didn't get to really just be sisters because she was sick. I hate

[01:22:55] saying out loud but the truth is really I don't have I don't have any good

[01:22:58] memories of her and that does hurt my heart. And I said, I don't, but it was because she was sick.

[01:23:07] Um, at the end, when they knew that, you know, the end was very near.

[01:23:12] She was at St. Jude's with, um, the mom was with her and my aunt, who were teenagers then,

[01:23:20] I was at home with them in Evansville.

[01:23:23] And I remember being woken up in the middle of the night.

[01:23:25] I had on my pink study pajamas and my blankie and I was put in the back seat of the car and someone, a family friend,

[01:23:33] or I think maybe the aunt oldest, the oldest aunt, her boyfriend drove us, someone drove us through the night to take us to St. Jude. And then this will drove through the night and

[01:23:48] I'm not exactly sure how long we were there now before she passed away.

[01:23:52] But the morning that she passed away, I'll never forget it.

[01:23:56] I'm so like at St. Jude Children's Hospital,

[01:24:00] the way that it was then.

[01:24:02] And I think this was 1979.

[01:24:06] The patient's room were set up where there was a room,

[01:24:11] like there was a patient room,

[01:24:12] and then right next to it was a little room

[01:24:15] the family could stay in, and there was a window.

[01:24:18] There was a big window in between.

[01:24:19] So the family could look in and see the patient

[01:24:23] in there when they were in bed. I mean, there were curtain where you could close in and see the patient when they were in bed.

[01:24:25] I mean, there were curtains where you could close in the course bed.

[01:24:29] So I was sleeping in this big chair in the family room and I woke up and nobody was in

[01:24:37] the room listening.

[01:24:38] My aunts were in there when I went to sleep and Lucille was in the patient's room on the other side

[01:24:45] of the window with Amy.

[01:24:47] I woke up and I was in the room by myself.

[01:24:50] And I looked around and I looked through the big window and I saw everybody was in there

[01:24:55] and he was laying in her bed, mom and my two aunts were in there, the doctor was in there.

[01:24:59] So I finally left the family room and I walked the hallways by myself.

[01:25:05] You kind of had to walk around and go through this big door to get to the patient side and

[01:25:12] to open this, to open this big door to get into the patient side.

[01:25:16] There was a big red button next to the door that you had to push.

[01:25:19] Well, I had been through this way before by myself, but I could never reach the button

[01:25:23] before because it was, I was too short.

[01:25:26] I was five and it was up to hide.

[01:25:31] Someone would always have to push it for me.

[01:25:32] And I remember one time before, before this time.

[01:25:38] So we had to have been there more than a day because it was a different day.

[01:25:41] I remember one time I was bringing my mom, loose seal, a glass of ice tea,

[01:25:46] and I had this big glass of ice tea

[01:25:48] that I had to use two hands to hold,

[01:25:49] and I couldn't, I set it down.

[01:25:52] I didn't want to set it down on the floor,

[01:25:53] and I couldn't reach the button,

[01:25:54] and I ended up having to,

[01:25:56] I asked a stranger that would pass in guy

[01:25:58] if they could push it for me,

[01:26:01] and they were so apprehensive.

[01:26:02] I remember them saying,

[01:26:03] are you allowed to go in there?

[01:26:05] But anyway, so this time I was determined to get in there

[01:26:09] because everybody was in there,

[01:26:10] I didn't know what was happening.

[01:26:12] So I finally pushed it all by myself

[01:26:14] and I was so proud of myself for doing that.

[01:26:18] And I was smiling and holding my head high as I walked,

[01:26:21] you know, past the nurse's station.

[01:26:22] I didn't recognize it then,

[01:26:23] but I realized later what the expressions were

[01:26:26] on the nurses' faces when they saw me

[01:26:28] coming through to go to Amy's room, because they knew.

[01:26:33] So I get to Amy's room and I kind of lingered

[01:26:40] in the doorway for a bit, evaluating.

[01:26:43] With Amy's room, I looked back, I did that a lot when I was young,

[01:26:47] and I probably still do it now. I just kind of sit back and evaluate what's

[01:26:51] going on, but everyone turned and they saw me.

[01:26:55] They saw me standing there, but no one said anything to me.

[01:26:59] And Amy was laying in her bed, and me, she looked like she was sleeping. I thought

[01:27:02] she was sleeping, and the doctor was talking to mom to Lucille. And I finally walked over to her and I just hugged her.

[01:27:12] I just hugged around her and I looked up at her and I said her name is sleeping.

[01:27:20] And she just looked down at me and shook her head nose.

[01:27:22] then she just looked down at me and shook her head nose.

[01:27:27] And that will always be filtered to me.

[01:27:33] It's like I can picture it in my mind talking about it. It's ingrained in my brain forever.

[01:27:38] Sometimes I wish that it was not.

[01:27:40] Yeah.

[01:27:43] Oh, Misty, I'm so sorry.

[01:27:45] I feel like I'm saying that a lot in this interview.

[01:27:47] I know that's a stupid thing to say and I'm just.

[01:27:50] I appreciate it.

[01:27:52] Thank you.

[01:27:53] I heard that a lot in my life because it's just a lot of bad stuff it is and I know it

[01:28:00] is.

[01:28:01] It's just like a family had went through all of this and it's just not

[01:28:05] that's like not in such a short amount of time to.

[01:28:10] It was it was like every two years.

[01:28:15] Really?

[01:28:16] You know, and that does affect you that they say that, you know, the first five years of

[01:28:22] your life is when your brain is developing.

[01:28:24] So I do have some I got some problems probably.

[01:28:26] Well, I mean, I, I mean, we're going to talk about this in a minute, but you've done a

[01:28:32] lot of work for others.

[01:28:33] And so I would not, I mean, you're, I feel like you've, you've taken a lot of bad stuff

[01:28:38] and tried to do good for others.

[01:28:40] So I mean, that's ultimately all we can do.

[01:28:48] How looking back, how did not only your mother's disappearance, but

[01:28:52] all of this strategy, how did it change your life?

[01:28:56] I've had my share of therapy over the years, that's for sure. I

[01:29:03] was a suspected my life. I mean, I have a task and issues. That's something I still struggle with sometimes,

[01:29:05] which just stems from all the loss by the age of five.

[01:29:08] It just kind of gets ingrained in your brain

[01:29:09] during those years.

[01:29:14] I had some very serious depression in my 20s.

[01:29:16] I hadn't attempted suicide.

[01:29:20] And I know that sounds like a lot,

[01:29:21] but it's, I guess that I'm 50 now, that was 30 years ago,

[01:29:26] but I made it through and I'm all good for the most part.

[01:29:32] One of the things that helped me,

[01:29:34] I don't wanna say move past because you don't wanna pack it,

[01:29:37] but really just learning to cope and live with it.

[01:29:43] And this is probably stems from therapy,

[01:29:46] positive coping skills instead of negative coping.

[01:29:49] Right.

[01:29:53] And writing my book, just letting it,

[01:29:55] just letting it all out there.

[01:29:57] It was a hugely positive thing for me.

[01:29:59] Like I said, nobody really,

[01:30:01] it wasn't all of this wasn't really something that was discussed

[01:30:05] a lot.

[01:30:06] You know, if I asked questions, people answered me, but it was, it was very helpful for me

[01:30:18] to just talk this.

[01:30:21] I'm doing it, just talking about it.

[01:30:23] Even though it's hard, I don't know.

[01:30:26] Like I said, it affects everybody differently in their own way. I

[01:30:35] don't have any memories of my mother, so

[01:30:40] that can be a positive and it can also be a negative. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, but we can circle back to about my grandmother Lucille.

[01:30:52] I skipped that one.

[01:30:54] So after my, after our father was killed, pretty soon after,

[01:31:03] our grandmother, Lucille

[01:31:05] Deborah's mother gained legal guardianship over us. They

[01:31:09] went to string. And I think probably because the two ants

[01:31:15] were, I think I talked about this in the beginning. Because the

[01:31:20] two ants, the Deborah's, you know, her sisters were still at home and they called

[01:31:26] our grandmother Mom. Amy and I always called Lucille Mom. I don't remember ever calling her

[01:31:34] grandma to me. She was Mom. She's always been Mom. I think she was probably,

[01:31:42] she has to be the strongest woman that I've ever known to have gone through

[01:31:45] all of these things. First-hand like that she did and she never broke. She just kept

[01:31:52] going and she kept doing what she needed to be done and she was always taken care of

[01:31:55] others. She raised me and Amy like we were her own. I really can't imagine. I think

[01:32:02] most people that have not, you know, endured stuff like

[01:32:06] that can't imagine going through all of these things that she did.

[01:32:12] She's really been, she was a fighter her whole life though really.

[01:32:15] She was born with a congenital heart defect and when she was born her parents were told

[01:32:20] she wouldn't live past like a couple of years I think and she lived a very long life.

[01:32:25] She actually, she passed away on October 17th 2019. She was 91 years old.

[01:32:37] And I still, I will still for a split second. Sometimes something will happen and I'll think

[01:32:42] oh I got to call mom and tell her this. I miss her every day.

[01:32:47] There's a there are a lot of us that

[01:32:50] that missed her and think very highly of her.

[01:32:54] She sounds like an amazing woman.

[01:32:56] You want?

[01:33:00] I mean, I want to say you yourself have done some really amazing things.

[01:33:04] You've you've done advocacy work to help others, you know, with with a I mean, I want to say you yourself have done some really amazing things.

[01:33:05] You've done advocacy work to help others with a variety of different kinds of causes, including

[01:33:12] bringing awareness to the disappearance of Jennifer Kessie.

[01:33:16] Can you talk about some of your advocacy and what role that's had in your life?

[01:33:23] I'm not involved in anything now.

[01:33:25] I haven't been for a while.

[01:33:26] I used to.

[01:33:27] So I have in the past, I used to work in a comedy club here in Orlando, Florida now.

[01:33:35] I worked in a comedy club and I didn't stand up for a while.

[01:33:39] And I created a monthly show called Comedy for the Cause.

[01:33:42] Well, it started out as a monthly show.

[01:33:44] I think we did some five months later. Misty Lynn called Comedy for the Cause. Well, it started out as a monthly show. I think we did some by monthly, but

[01:33:47] Miss D. Lynn's Comedy for the Cause.

[01:33:49] You Google it, nothing comes up because there's nothing left on the,

[01:33:53] it was all on the Comedy Show for the Comedy Club website,

[01:33:56] which that location doesn't exist in the one, but

[01:34:00] Miss D. Lynn's Comedy for the Cause,

[01:34:02] and I hosted the show when we had about

[01:34:04] Ms. Stulins, comedy for the cause and I hosted the show when we had about

[01:34:11] 10 amateur and throw comics performing and the door proceeds were donated to that show's cause.

[01:34:14] It's something that I founded and I hosted it.

[01:34:16] I did those back in 2006. So that's the last time I was on stage was in 2006.

[01:34:22] And it was for one of those shows that was part of something called the squeaky wheel tour.

[01:34:27] We're different artists from all over the world.

[01:34:30] I think it was all over the world.

[01:34:31] And it's at least a national.

[01:34:34] Different artists all over would highlight

[01:34:36] their local missing person cases in their areas

[01:34:40] during their shows.

[01:34:41] So it started out with musicians.

[01:34:43] The founder of the Squeaky

[01:34:45] Wilter tour is Janelle Rapp and I actually met her through MySpace, but that tells you

[01:34:53] how long ago it was. MySpace, but that was the last time. And you can read about that.

[01:35:01] The website is 411jina.org.

[01:35:05] I think they used to be a yearly thing.

[01:35:07] I think they do it every couple of years now.

[01:35:09] But I did that in 2006.

[01:35:12] And I did the first show that I did.

[01:35:14] I did on August 2nd, 2006.

[01:35:17] August 2nd would have been with my sister Amy's birthday.

[01:35:20] And the cause for that show was American Cancer Society.

[01:35:32] It was an honor of seeing my sister. The second show actually that I did, they just kind of got

[01:35:40] stuck in there was for Jennifer Keffi, which if anyone's not familiar, she is a missing person from who disappeared in 2006 in January 2006 from Orlando, here in Orlando.

[01:35:47] Kessie has sold K-E-S-S-E. Her website is jenniferkessie.com.

[01:35:53] But so Jennifer disappeared in January. I just started doing my comedy for the cause shows

[01:35:59] not long after that. And Jennifer Kessie's family had asked the community for help in keeping

[01:36:08] the case, you know, out there, because the coverage was, you know, starting to dwindle

[01:36:13] up, it does. And I reached out to Jennifer's father, Drew Kesser, and I said something

[01:36:19] like, you know, I know this may sound weird, but I do this comedy for the college show,

[01:36:24] where we have comics, so I was in, you know, in between the may sound weird, but I do this comedy for the college show where

[01:36:25] we have comic fellows and, you know, in between the comics I give info about a particular

[01:36:29] cause.

[01:36:31] And I tell them about, you know, my mother is a missing person and I do stand up.

[01:36:36] So this kind of, you know, would bring my two worlds together.

[01:36:40] So to speak, and the family was all in.

[01:36:43] We did it.

[01:36:44] We did the show on on I think it was

[01:36:46] August 9th 2006 the next week I called it stand-up for Jennifer and it was very well received I

[01:36:54] think we had about 200 people 200 something people that came and you know that I had a big

[01:37:01] drop-down projector screen on the back of the stage, so I did a little comedy

[01:37:06] in the beginning, like Icebreaker comedy and opening the show, and then in between each

[01:37:11] act that came up, I had stuff up on the big screen in between each bed with insult about her case,

[01:37:18] like about the car that her car was later found at the end and you know, a parking lot.

[01:37:24] that her car was later found as the end of, you know, a parking lot.

[01:37:31] That's about her car. There was a video of a person, a person of interest, you know, I had still shots of the video and just little facts about her case. And I remember we had a professional

[01:37:38] headliner for that show, Alex from Mundo. He was one of the original Latin teams of comedy.

[01:37:43] I think he used to open for One Light, but he's headlining all over now.

[01:37:46] But he, I had contacted him about Jennifer's show

[01:37:49] and told him what we were doing.

[01:37:51] And it was something that you know,

[01:37:51] life never done before.

[01:37:52] And he, he was gonna be headlining

[01:37:55] at the comedy club that weekend.

[01:37:56] He came in on his own two days early

[01:38:00] and did the show for free for me.

[01:38:02] Like he just donated this time and headlines that show

[01:38:10] just, you know, to try to help. He's a good guy. He sounds like a really good dude.

[01:38:14] I knew him from when I worked at the funny but uncommon club and Evan's all back when that was open. He's a good guy. But the media came, they covered it. It got some

[01:38:21] coverage about the case, which was good. We actually did another one in

[01:38:26] at the Tampa, Florida improv after that as well. That was something like,

[01:38:34] that was kind of a big deal for me to be able to

[01:38:39] to be able to do that. You know, I did a lot of shows like that like I stopped doing comedy in 2006 I

[01:38:45] the last like I said the last show the last time I was on stage was October

[01:38:49] 2006 and I did them the missing person show the Sweetie Well tour I ended up

[01:38:55] I stopped I stopped doing comedy altogether but the next show that I was

[01:38:59] gonna do after that I was gonna highlight the whole listen for the

[01:39:03] homeless of Central Florida, which was

[01:39:05] there in downtown Orlando.

[01:39:07] They had a women and children facility there for homeless and I was going to do a show.

[01:39:14] I ended up quitting comedy.

[01:39:16] I quit the comedy club.

[01:39:17] I ended up working at Coalition for the Homeless for two years and said I just went over and

[01:39:21] I worked in the admin development office and the women and children's facility.

[01:39:26] But after that, that was a tough job. Just being around the little kids especially, it was rough.

[01:39:35] Since then, you know, there were times where I thought I need to use what I have been given,

[01:39:42] all of that stuff that's been happening in my life. I need to use what I have been given, all of that stuff that's been happening in my life.

[01:39:45] I need to use it.

[01:39:47] I should be speaking engagements or something.

[01:39:52] And then I realized, I'm not obligated to do that.

[01:39:59] And I allowed myself to just live my life and try to be a happy person and just live, just live. So that's what I've been

[01:40:12] doing. That's awesome. Just living my life. Do you have any advice for anybody, but especially

[01:40:20] maybe families of other missing people on how to cope with tragedy.

[01:40:26] I'm just a tough one.

[01:40:28] You know, my situation is very different from a lot of others.

[01:40:34] It's a very like Jennifer, Kathy's case.

[01:40:37] It's, that's a very different case

[01:40:41] when someone is just ripped from your life

[01:40:44] that all of a sudden they're gone.

[01:40:45] I don't know how you can tell someone how to deal with it.

[01:40:52] See, just see if everybody has to figure it out on their own.

[01:40:55] There's no way to do it. I don't even know. I don't know how I did it.

[01:41:04] In order to survive, I mean, if you're going to survive, you just have to figure

[01:41:08] out a way.

[01:41:09] It's rough.

[01:41:10] It's hard.

[01:41:11] But not fun.

[01:41:13] I don't know.

[01:41:14] I don't know.

[01:41:15] I totally, yeah.

[01:41:16] It's different for everybody.

[01:41:17] Everyone's case is different.

[01:41:18] Everyone's situation is different, but I just want to commend you for, for turning some of that pain into advocacy

[01:41:29] for others and putting that work in and, and just coming to a place where you can just

[01:41:35] drive at being happy and living your life. And is there anything I didn't ask you about

[01:41:42] that you wanted to say? Just when we weren't talking about it's a lot.

[01:41:47] I remember when I was, I think I was in kindergarten, maybe six, when I realized that I think I

[01:41:56] was talking to a teacher and adult from one school.

[01:41:59] I realized that it was a lot easier to lie about my family tree

[01:42:06] than give all of the details.

[01:42:09] And then it comes to all of the questions.

[01:42:11] Like, so I knew when I was five or six,

[01:42:14] I knew that Lucille was my grandmother.

[01:42:18] I knew that my two aunts were my two aunts.

[01:42:21] I knew that my mother went to work one day

[01:42:23] and she was never, like she disappeared, no one knew what happened. I knew that my mother went to work one day and she was never like she disappeared. No one

[01:42:26] knew what happened. I knew that my father was killed in you know the car train accident.

[01:42:31] I knew the very basics at that age but I also very quickly learned that it was easier just to say

[01:42:39] this is my mom. These are my sisters and my dad was still in an accident because it saved people from asking so many

[01:42:47] questions. And I got probably also that tired of that,

[01:42:53] that head tilt. Oh, poor little missy like that.

[01:43:00] Anyway, that's something that came to mind. Yeah, I I

[01:43:04] refer to Lucille as my mom, and I referred to my ancestors growing up.

[01:43:09] It just made my life easier.

[01:43:12] It made me not have to answer questions about everything all the time.

[01:43:18] Because as soon as someone found out, everyone has a million questions.

[01:43:24] And usually, we'll even now, I don't tend to talk about it a lot, really, because I don't want to hear the questions.

[01:43:32] It's always the same questions that I've heard before. You ask me questions that, you know, they're different, but anyway, that's all I got. Well, Misty, I just appreciate it.

[01:43:45] And that's, I think a perfect note to end on actually because, yeah, people,

[01:43:52] people sometimes realize, you know, don't realize that, you know,

[01:43:54] especially with when talking with a child, like their own curiosity shouldn't

[01:43:57] supersede boundaries or something that might be emotionally difficult for

[01:44:02] someone so young to be dealing with in the first place.

[01:44:05] But we just want to thank you for coming on the murder sheet to talk about Deborah's case and all of this.

[01:44:14] And I just want to say thank you so much. It's really been meaningful to speak with you and have you on here.

[01:44:23] I thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this.

[01:44:26] Like I said before we started,

[01:44:29] you know, before there's been a lot of articles done

[01:44:33] where journalists just, they interview me over the phone

[01:44:36] and then they put everything in their own words

[01:44:39] and put their own spin on things.

[01:44:40] And this was a great opportunity for me to

[01:44:48] been on things and this was a great opportunity for me to just speak about everything in my own words and my own voice. So thank you.

[01:44:55] We want to conclude this episode with an appeal. Misty has questions. We have questions. If you have answers, please email us at murder sheet at gmail.com.

[01:45:07] We'll make sure that your correspondence gets wherever it needs to go.

[01:45:11] If you don't have answers on the case, but you know someone with ties to Evansville,

[01:45:16] please send this episode to them. Even if they weren't around back in the early 70s,

[01:45:22] they might have friends and relatives who were.

[01:45:25] This is one of those cases that we feel could really benefit from raised awareness, especially

[01:45:29] in that area.

[01:45:30] Let's get people talking about Deborah and what happened to her.

[01:45:34] We're also interested in non-case related information on Deborah or Jeffrey Wilhite.

[01:45:40] Misty would love to hear more about what her parents were like.

[01:45:44] We want information on the windmill itself, too.

[01:45:48] What was the atmosphere there like?

[01:45:49] The clientele.

[01:45:50] Are there any former customers or workers who can shed some light there?

[01:45:55] We'd also like to hear about the duck pond.

[01:45:58] Where was it?

[01:45:59] What was it like?

[01:46:00] Who hung out there?

[01:46:02] What's there today?

[01:46:04] Another topic we really want some more clarity on is that possible hitchhiker, as well as

[01:46:08] Debra's car, a green 1966 Ford Galaxy. Again, the license plate number was 26b2953. We

[01:46:17] want to know more about Debra herself. If you have information on any of those topics,

[01:46:22] you may be able to help us understand what happened to this young mother.

[01:46:26] If you have any pertinent information on Deborah's case, you should also call the Indiana State

[01:46:32] Police in Evansville.

[01:46:34] Their number is 1-800-852-3970.

[01:46:42] Please, Misty and her family have waited long enough.

[01:46:45] If you have information, you may have the power to get this off your conscience.

[01:46:50] We'd like to thank Misty again for speaking with us.

[01:46:53] It was a pleasure and we are again incredibly grateful that she trusted us with her story.

[01:47:00] Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet.

[01:47:03] If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheet at

[01:47:10] gmail.com.

[01:47:12] If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate

[01:47:18] authorities. If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com slash

[01:47:29] murder sheet.

[01:47:31] If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www.buymeacoffee.com

[01:47:39] slash murder sheet.

[01:47:41] We very much appreciate any support. Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenley, who composed the music for the murder sheet,

[01:47:49] and who you can find on the web at kevinkg.com.

[01:47:54] If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join

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[01:48:15] again for listening.